CHAPTER 4

KAYE'S POV

By the third morning, time stopped feeling real.

I woke before the knock again, staring at the same low ceiling while pain hummed through my body like a bad echo. My wrists still burned. The skin had not healed right. Silver never let wounds close the way they should. It sat in the blood and reminded you who was in control.

I flexed my fingers. The marks were still there.

Downstairs, the packhouse was quiet and heavy with sleep. Fog pressed against the windows, turning the world outside into nothing but gray shapes. Miriam was already moving when I stepped into the kitchen, her back stiff, her mouth set like she was chewing on anger instead of words.

“You are late,” she snapped.

“I am not,” I said carefully.

She shot me a look sharp enough to cut. “Five AM means ready to work, not walking in at five.”

I nodded. There was no point arguing. There never was.

“Today you deep clean,” she said, pointing toward the far steel door. “The freezer. Every shelf. Every corner. I want it done before breakfast.”

The walk in freezer loomed like a threat.

I took the gloves she shoved at me. They were thin and cracked, barely flexible. When I stepped inside, the cold hit hard and fast, stealing my breath. My bones ached instantly. My wolf shrank, curling tight inside me.

The light flickered on. Rows of metal shelves stretched out, packed with frozen meat and sealed trays. The floor was bare concrete with a long drain running down the center.

I dipped the brush into the bucket and scrubbed.

The smell came up almost right away.

Blood.

Old. Deep. Soaked into the concrete like a memory that refused to fade.

I froze and leaned down, ignoring the sting in my knees. I breathed in again, slower this time.

Wolf blood.

Blackwater blood.

My chest tightened. This was not a new stain. This was years old. It had been here before the freezer, before the kitchen, before the rebuilt packhouse.

They built this place on top of the dead.

The truth landed heavy and sharp. The story everyone told about clearing the land was a lie. These walls stood on bones and ash.

My hands shook as I scrubbed harder. The brush scraped frost and grime but the smell stayed. The cold crept deeper, biting through the gloves, through my skin. My teeth began to chatter.

By the time I moved to the shelves, my arms felt stiff and clumsy. Each breath fogged the air. The freezer hummed steadily, uncaring.

I was cleaning the lowest shelf when the door slammed shut.

The sound cracked through the room.

I jumped and turned, heart racing. “Hello?”

No answer.

I rushed to the door and grabbed the handle. It did not move.

The lock was engaged.

“Hello,” I said again, louder. “I am still inside.”

Nothing.

Panic rose fast and sharp. The cold seemed to sink its teeth in deeper. I banged my fist against the metal, then again, harder.

“Open the door.”

No footsteps. No voices.

Just the hum.

My breaths came quick and shallow. I pressed my forehead to the steel and forced myself to slow down. Panic wasted heat. I could not afford that.

My wolf should have responded. She should have pushed warmth through my veins, steadied my pulse.

She did not.

She curled tighter instead, conserving what little energy we had left.

The dizziness hit next. I slid down until my back met the shelf, then the floor. Cold bit straight through my clothes. My fingers went numb, then stiff.

Through the mate bond, something snapped.

A sharp pull. Sudden awareness.

Ethan.

His presence flared hard and bright, like heat cutting through ice. He felt the panic. The danger. The wrongness.

I did not call him.

The bond did it for me.

Everything I felt rushed down the line between us. Fear. Cold. The slow slide toward darkness.

The freezer felt smaller. Colder. My vision blurred at the edges.

My wolf whimpered, faint and tired. She had endured six years without shifting, silver in the blood, hunger and fear. But cold demanded more than she could give.

She began to shut us down.

No. Stay awake. Please.

The bond pulsed again. Stronger. Ethan pushing back, searching, locking onto me.

I felt him move.

The relief hit too late.

My breaths turned shallow. Frost crept across the floor in thin patterns. The light overhead dimmed, or maybe my eyes did.

My wolf folded inward, not in surrender, but in survival.

The last thing I felt was the bond vibrating with Ethan’s rising alarm.

Then the cold took everything else.