Chapter Seven

“You have twelve minutes to eat, dress, and be ready to go,” he says, motioning toward the bowl of stew.

“Have you met a woman before?” I ask, lowering myself into the chair and turning the wooden spoon in my fingers. I’m not sure I want to eat badly enough to risk a splintered lip.

He doesn’t look back.

“I will drag you out of this house in twelve minutes,” he says flatly. “Do what you like with the time until then. The end result will be no different.”

The door shuts behind him.

“Prick,” I mutter under my breath, bringing the spoon to my lips.

God, it’s the best stew I’ve ever had.

I don’t understand how this is what happened to whatever that black stuff was.

I shove another bite into my mouth and glance over my shoulder to make sure the door is still closed. It is.

Then I push away from the table and walk along the wall, inspecting the shelves again. They’re all identical. Not a label in sight. I would be impressed by his memory if I didn’t violently hate his guts.

I reach for one of the jars and pull it down slowly. A quick twist of my hand. Nothing. I can’t hear anything inside it at all.

I furrow my brow as I carry it back toward the table, making a brief detour to scoop another bite of stew. I don’t doubt for a second that he really will starve me until I kill something myself. I might as well enjoy my last meal.

I twist the lid off the jar, expecting another obscure sludge.

There’s nothing inside.

The jar had weight when I lifted it from the shelf. I felt it. But now it’s empty.

I return it to the wall and grab the same jar he used. The one that became stew.

This time, I hear it. The thick shift of a heavy powder inside as I move it.

I pop the lid.

Empty.

I put the lid back on and shake the jar. I hear it again, the contents sliding against the glass.

I open it.

Still empty.

Great. Even whatever this place is has it out for me.

Fuck this place.

I return to the table and scarf down the rest of the soup, hating how good it is. Then I open the kitchen door, expecting to find the hallway we came down.

Instead, I’m staring at trees.

The outside door?

No. This door should lead to the hallway. The door to the outside was across the kitchen, next to the woodpile. I know it was.

The urge to bolt hits hard, pulling me forward like a rope cinched tight around my waist.

But I don’t run.

Not because I don’t want to. Because I don’t trust it.

I know this door did not lead outside. Why am I looking at wilderness? Why can I feel a breeze on my face?

No. This is another test.

Something deep in my gut tells me that stepping across this threshold would be a mistake.

I step away instead and cross to the other door, the one beside the woodpile. My fingers hesitate on the handle before I pull it open.

Rurik is leaning against the hallway wall, arms crossed over his chest.

“Smart,” he says. “That would have hurt.”

“You think you’re so funny, don’t you?”

“Hilarious,” he says, deadpan. It might almost be amusing if I thought he was joking.

“Can you move?” I ask. “I’d like to get dressed before you take me out for my torture.”

“You think working for your living is torture?” He tilts his head slightly. It’s framed like a question, but it isn’t. “Cute.”

He doesn’t move.

“Yeah, that’s what I was going for,” I mutter. I pull my phone from my pocket and try to angle past him and the wall at the same time.

I can’t.

Not without touching him.

I stop short.

“Do you plan on moving?” I ask.

“You have four minutes left,” he says calmly. “Are you going to embarrass yourself by making me drag you out of this house half-naked?”

His head cocks again, like he’s already picturing it.

“I wouldn’t care,” he adds. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen. But I will remove you from this house wearing exactly what you’re in when your time runs out.”

“You’re kidding,” I say. I know he isn’t. I say it anyway. “You seriously expect me to eat and get dressed in under twelve minutes?”

“I don’t kid.”

“What kind of bullshit time is twelve minutes anyway?” I snap. “That’s just fucking petty.”

I turn down the hall, resigned to at least pull on shoes in the three miserable minutes I have left.

“If you hadn’t slept all day,” he says evenly, following me, “you would have had plenty of time to eat, bathe, and dress. I’ve lived three lives in the time you’ve slept.”

Didn’t die in any of them, though. That’s a shame.

I keep that thought to myself. I’m a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.

We stop where my room should be.

I stare at the wall.

I could have sworn the door was right here.

“It’s in front of you,” he says with a sigh, like I’m the inconvenience, not the fact that there is very clearly a solid wall where my bedroom used to be.

“There is a wall,” I say slowly. Because there is.

He looks at the wall. Then at me.

“Unfortunate,” he says. “Nasty half-breed problems, I suppose.”

I glare over my shoulder, locking eyes with him. He doesn’t even react. The words come out of him like instinct, not intention.

“I want to put on shoes before my time runs out,” I snap. “You can’t seriously hold it against me when your freaky house hides my door.”

I wave at the solid stone in front of me.

“This place was not made for human eyes,” he says, scowling now.

He steps closer and reaches out, his hand closing around something that isn’t there. He twists, then pushes.

The wall gives way.

A doorway resolves into existence, clean and seamless, like it had always been there, and I was the one who failed to see it.

“Two minutes,” he says, without checking his watch.

“This is inhumane,” I mutter, scrambling to shove my boots on anyway. At least he let me keep these. Probably because they’re leather.

Fucking ridiculous.

“Is there anything you don’t complain about?” he asks, leaning against the doorframe as I drag a brush through my hair and twist it into a haphazard ponytail.

“Well, it’s not like I’ve had much choice.”

He steps closer and taps the face of his watch.

Time’s up.

“You’re making me regret stopping your execution,” he says calmly, like he’s commenting on the weather. “Regret is an absurd feeling. I don’t have time to waste on it. It’s inconvenient.”

I open my mouth to respond, then close it again. There’s nothing I can say to that without making it worse.

His gaze tracks the shift in my expression, brown eyes flicking over my face with clinical interest before his mouth curves into that infuriating hint of a smirk.

“Silent at last,” he says, like it’s some rare natural phenomenon.

I grit my teeth.

He turns and starts down the hall. After a few steps, his voice carries back to me, unbothered. “Come. Or be dragged by the tail.”

“You’re the one with the tail,” I mutter, but I follow anyway.

He stops at the front door and tosses a coat over his shoulder at me. It’s heavier than I expect, fox fur lining the inside, soft and warm, and unmistakably not synthetic. He shrugs into another coat, this one darker, thicker.

My stomach twists.

“Is that… wolf fur?” I ask, before I can stop myself.

“It is,” he says, like I asked whether it’s raining.

The door swings open.

Cold air slams into me, sharp enough to steal the breath from my lungs. I stagger half a step forward, clutching the coat around myself as my eyes adjust.

Yesterday, it was autumn. Cold, sure. Familiar. Crisp air and dying leaves.

Today, the world is buried.

Snow stretches in every direction, packed deep and blindingly white. Drifts rise nearly to my waist, sculpted by wind into sharp ridges and smooth slopes, like the land itself has been rewritten overnight. Pines sag beneath the weight, branches bowed and heavy. The sky hangs low and pale, pressing down on everything beneath it.

This isn’t the Montana I know.

Or maybe it is, and I’ve just never been this far out.

“How does that work?” I ask, biting down on my tongue to keep from yelping as snow swallows my bare thighs with every step behind him.

“What?”

“Wearing wolf fur,” I say. It isn’t the only thing I’m wondering about. I know the weather can be temperamental, but not like this. Not overnight. Not to a degree I’ve never seen before.

“It’s the prior alpha’s coat,” he says without slowing or turning, like that sentence is in any way normal. Or sane.

“What, in some barbaric transfer of power, you killed a man and now wear his skin as a message to the other men not to fuck with you?” I can barely restrain the urge to roll my eyes into next year.

How can magic and brutality coexist so seamlessly in this place?

“You can call it barbaric,” he says, “but that is how this civilization is run.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I snap, trudging through the snow I can barely lift my feet out of. “Just because you’re capable of killing a man means you’re fit to run a population?”

“Being willing to kill,” he says, coming to a stop so abruptly I nearly slam into his back, “means I’m willing to make hard life-and-death decisions.”

He turns his head just enough to look at me.

“What kind of hard decisions have you ever had to make, Greer?”

“Well,” I say tightly, “the situation you’ve put me in is pretty difficult.”

“It’s not,” he replies. “Die or die. What’s difficult about that?”

I stare at the back of his head, breath fogging thick in the air, thighs burning as snow soaks into my skin. The cold isn’t just cold. It bites. It digs. It feels personal.

“Choosing how,” I say finally. “That’s usually the hard part.”

He slows, then turns just enough that I catch the edge of his profile. Not surprise. Not irritation. Consideration.

“Is it?” he asks.

“Yes,” I snap. “Most people would rather die screaming than kneeling.”

A corner of his mouth lifts. Not a smile. Recognition.

“That,” he says, “is the first honest thing you’ve said since I met you.”

He turns forward and starts walking again before I can answer, forcing me to stumble after him. The snow deepens with every step, drifts rising higher, swallowing any hint of a path. No markers. No fences. No lights. Just trees, white and endless, and the steady certainty of his stride.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask.

“To the boundary.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It is.”

My fingers go numb. Then my toes. Then the ache sets in, sharp and deep, like my body is being punished for existing out here without permission.

“How far is it?” I ask.

He glances back, eyes flicking down to my bare legs, the fox fur skirt already rimmed with frost.

“Far enough.”

I trip.

Not dramatically. Just enough for my foot to catch beneath the snow and send me pitching forward.

His hand snaps around my arm, iron-strong, hauling me upright with humiliating ease. My breath stutters as the bite on my forearm flares hot beneath his grip, heat blooming fast and wrong, sharp enough to make my knees threaten to buckle.

He feels it.

I know he does.

His thumb presses once, deliberately, directly over the wound.

I gasp.

“That’s new,” he says quietly.

“Get—off,” I manage, hating the shake in my voice.

He doesn’t release me right away. His gaze drops to my face, eyes narrowing, recalculating.

“Your body is responding sooner than I expected,” he says. “That’s inconvenient.”

“For who?” I ask through clenched teeth.

“For you.”

He lets go.

I nearly fall again, catching myself at the last second. The heat fades as quickly as it came, leaving behind a hollow ache that makes my vision swim.

“What happens at the boundary?” I ask.

“We see what you are,” he says, his stride finally slowing as the trees thin.

My breath catches.

We break through the treeline and step onto a rocky shoreline.

On one side, winter still reigns. Snow piled deep, ice crusting the ground, pines bowed under white weight.

On the other—

The lake isn’t frozen.

There isn’t a single flake of snow beyond the trees. The water is clear and blue, moving gently against the rocks, unfazed by the cold just yards away. Grass shows through the stones. The air feels different. Warmer. Alive.

It’s like the land itself split and forgot to agree on a season.

Holy shit.

Where the fuck am I?

“Remind me why I’m teaching her to fish,” a voice calls from farther down the shore, casual and cruel. “Is she going to live long enough to make it worth my time?”

I recognize it before I turn.

Shoe-thrower. Of course.

“I don’t particularly care what you deem worth your time, Kline,” Rurik says evenly. “You’re doing it because I told you to.”

He jerks his head toward the waterline.

“Come.”

I side-eye Kline as I follow, watching him from the corner of my eye. God. He looks like a Kline. Long, shaggy brown hair. Pale green eyes. The kind of face that enjoys being cruel because it’s easy. A man with a proven fondness for throwing shoes at women’s heads.

“You can’t be serious,” I say, staring down at the fishing pole as Rurik holds it out to me.

“Take it, Greer,” he says with a sigh.

I’m getting really tired of him acting like my existence is an inconvenience he’s been forced to tolerate. Like he isn’t the one who stepped in front of a blade and claimed me.

I really need to stop thinking about that like it’s something I can laugh about. I can’t. Every time it crosses my mind, my throat tightens and my body locks up, memory clawing its way back in sharp, unwanted flashes.

I exhale through my nose and wrap my fingers around the pole.

Wooden. Of course it’s wooden. Metal is apparently too advanced for people with magic water basins, self-rearranging houses, and weather that ignores reality. If I get a splinter, I will absolutely lose my mind.

“You will catch what bites,” Rurik says. “You will skin it. Gut it. Cook it. That will be your meal for the day.”

“Like hell,” I reply flatly. Because honestly, I would rather die.

Kline’s mouth curls.

He reaches into a small container and holds it out toward me.

I already know what’s inside. I don’t want to look. I do anyway.

Worms.

Fat. Pale. Wriggling over one another in a damp, writhing knot.

My stomach lurches hard.

“I’d rather die,” I say, recoiling. “If you think I’m touching those things, you have got me completely fucked up.”

Kline laughs. Not loud. Not kind.

Rurik doesn’t.

“Be careful,” Rurik says calmly. “You’ve already used that phrase once today.”

“And?” I snap.

“And you’re still alive,” he replies. “Try not to waste it on dramatics.”

He nudges the container closer.

“Bait the hook.”