Chapter 5

Chapter 5

KADE

I took the stairs three at a time.

The door to my bedroom was open. Hilda was standing in the middle of the room with a roll of clean bandages in her hands, staring at the window. The cold morning air was blowing in through a big hole in the glass. Sharp pieces stuck out from the frame like teeth, and on the biggest one, there was blood. Fresh and red and running down in a thin line.

"I was gone five minutes," Hilda said. Her voice was shaking. "Five minutes, Kade. I went to get bandages. She was sitting on the bed. She said she was tired."

I went to the window and looked down. It was a long drop to the garden below. The rose bushes under the window were crushed flat, where she must have landed. There were drops of blood on the grass, leading toward the trees.

My palm stung again. Her palm. She had cut it on the glass climbing out.

"She could have broken her neck," Hilda whispered.

"She didn't," I said. I could feel her. Somewhere out there, her heart was pounding hard and fast. She was running.

Footsteps came up the stairs behind us. Silas pushed into the room with Tobias and two more guards behind him. He took one look at the window and swore under his breath.

"How long?" he asked.

"Not long," I said.

"I'll wake the whole house. Thirty wolves in the woods, we'll have her back before noon."

"No."

He turned to me. "Kade—"

"Thirty wolves chasing her through the forest?" I shook my head. "She already thinks we're monsters. You want to prove it? She'd run until her heart gave out. And if the humans in the valley see a pack hunting a girl through the trees two days after Willowbrook burned, we'll have a war by nightfall."

Silas opened his mouth, then closed it. He knew I was right.

"Then let me come with you," he said.

"I need you here." I put my hand on his shoulder. "Garrett is already talking about hostages. Vera is already laughing. If I leave and you leave, who holds the pack together? Stay. Keep them calm. And keep looking for the ones who wore our colors."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded.

"Bring her home safe," he said.

"I will."

I didn't bother with the stairs. I climbed through the broken window and dropped down into the garden. I tied a spare pair of trousers around my neck with a leather cord, the way every warrior does before a long run. Then I let the wolf take me.

The shift came fast. My bones cracked and stretched. Fur rolled over my skin. The world went sharp and loud and full of smells. I put my nose to the grass and found her.

Blood. Salt. Smoke still in her hair. And under it all, her own scent, soft and warm, like crushed mint.

I ran.

She had gone south. Of course she had. There was only one place she would go.

The trail was easy to follow at first. She had crashed through bushes and stepped on soft dirt. I found a strip of white cotton caught on a thorn bush, torn from the shirt she was wearing. My shirt. A little farther on, I found a spot where she had fallen to her knees in the leaves. The ground there smelled like sickness.

The bond was hurting her.

I could feel it too. It was the strangest thing. With every mile she put between us, a dull ache grew in my chest. And under my own ache, I could feel hers. Much worse. Sharper. A human body wasn't made to carry a bond like this. The pull was tearing at her, making her dizzy, making her stomach turn.

She kept running anyway.

Stubborn. Stubborn like her mother.

I pushed that thought away and ran harder.

At the river, her trail vanished. She had waded across where it was shallow, and the water had washed her scent away. I stood on the bank with my paws in the cold mud and breathed hard.

Then I closed my eyes and followed the other thing. The pull under my ribs. It was like a thread tied between my heart and hers, and I could feel which way it went.

South. Straight south. Toward the smoke that still hung over the valley.

By the time I came over the last hill, the sun was sinking. Its light turned everything orange and gold, and for a terrible second, it looked like the village was on fire all over again.

It wasn't. It was just ashes now. Black walls with no roofs. Burnt beams lying across the road. The church tower stood alone in the middle of it all, cracked down one side.

And behind the church, in the little field where the old apple trees grew, there were twenty-three graves.

I knew there were twenty-three. I had counted them. I had dug them.

After I carried Elena home, after I gave her to Hilda, I came back here alone. I didn't tell anyone. Not Silas. Not the elders. I came back with a shovel, and I worked from midnight until the sun came up. I carried every body out of the streets. I laid them down in the ground as gently as I could. I picked wildflowers from the edge of the woods and put some on each grave, because I didn't know what else to do.

It wasn't enough. It could never be enough. But it was something.

Elena was standing in the middle of those graves.

I stopped at the edge of the trees and watched her. She was still wearing my white shirt, now torn and dirty. Her feet were bare and scratched. Her left hand was wrapped in a strip of cloth soaked through with blood. She was so pale she looked almost like a ghost.

She walked slowly between the rows. She was reading the names I had carved into the wooden markers. Her lips moved with each one.

Then she stopped at one grave and fell to her knees.

I didn't need to be close to know whose it was.