2. Flight Through Frost

Hannah’s feet found the servants’ corridor before her mind could catch up; stone walls blurred, breath fogging in front of her like a translucent curtain. The metal grate at the back of Larkspur Court rattled open, and for a second she thought she could hear Marcus’s voice, steady and close, cutting through the chaos: Stay with me. She shoved that command into the dark like a talisman and ran.

Snow hissed against her cheek as she slipped into the courtyard. Lantern light pooled on the flagstones, painting everything gold and fragile. The taste of wolfsbane still clung to the air - sharp, metallic - and her wolf recoiled inside her like a child pulled from a bonfire. She pressed her palm to her throat, feeling the echo of his heartbeat under her ribs as if he were somehow still there with her.

Footsteps answered hers - lighter than the guard’s boots, patient, the soft tread of someone who had tracked wolves before. Hannah didn’t look back. She knew the hunter’s cadence by then: careful, calibrated for silence, every step mapped to corner and shadow. She cut across the outer garden, ankles wet with melting frost, breath coming jagged and fast. The hunter’s voice was a whisper behind her, male, low, edged with a cruel satisfaction. “You can’t run forever.”

Her pulse stung in her ears. She should have turned, used the moonlit hedges, risked a fight. Instead she dove into a narrow coppice where brambles snagged her skirt and tore at the embroidered cuff Marcus had once steadied with a touch. Tears - angry and cold - blurred the path. Somewhere in the hall a bell tolled again, meaning nothing good. Hannah crawled under a low wall, forcing herself to breathe slow, to count heartbeats until the wolf sheathed itself enough for her to think like a human.

Branches snapped. The hunter’s silhouette passed, lantern swinging, a silver glint at his hip - too bright, too deliberate. She held still, pretending to be absence itself. The lantern drifted, light skittering over her face, and for an instant she saw a knife’s edge, the flash of thin silver near his hand.

Pain lanced her left calf like an electric brand. Someone had thrown something - a hook, a barbed tool - and it had snagged her by bad luck, not intent. Panic flared; she scrambled out into the open, slipping on snow and sliding beneath a low arch. The hunter cursed and accelerated. Closer. Closer.

A shot rang, muffled and rough. The hunter stumbled, hands flaring to his chest, and then a familiar voice bellowed orders in the old pack tongue. Marcus. The name struck her like a pebble cast into still water; the connection tightened, invisible but fierce. She forced herself to look up. Through the ironwork of the arch she saw him - broad, blood darkening the silver seam on his coat where a blade had nicked him. He moved through a cluster of attackers with the calm violence of someone who’d been trained to hold the line; each time a hunter lunged, Marcus met them, not with blind fury but calculated force, and the hunters fell back.

He didn’t look at her then. He had to deal with the threat, with the silver and the wolfsbane that stained the air like a sickness. Still, his eyes flicked once in her direction when a hunter made for the corridor she’d just fled. In that brief glance she read what he couldn’t say aloud: get away, live, and find me after.

Hannah obeyed. She limped into the trees, breath cutting in shards, the wound in her calf shallow but burning. Behind her, wood and iron sang with conflict; a hunter’s cry turned into a groan, then silence. Marcus’s voice, ragged now, called a name she didn’t catch, then barked commands. He moved like a man carrying an injury but refusing to be defined by it - each step measured, each strike economy and intent.

She wanted to race to him, to cross the distance and press her fingers to the red on his sleeve, to demand that he let her stay until healers arrived. But the hunters had other weapons - wolvesbane, silver - and the last thing Marcus needed was another life tangled in his wake. Her hands trembled as she tugged at the torn hem of her skirt to fashion a crude bandage for her calf. The cold bit, but the thought of his blood warmed her in a way that made her stomach ache with longing.

When at last the footsteps retreated and the courtyard fell into an uneasy hush, Hannah pressed her forehead to the trunk of a pine and let herself slide down until the snow cushioned her knees. Marcus’s scent drifted to her on the wind: rain, smoke, and a metallic tang she now knew too well. He was wounded; he was out there fighting for them all. She wrapped her arms around herself and let the bond between them hum, low and insistent, a promise she hadn’t asked for and yet wanted more than air.

A decision rose, hot and undeniable. She could stay hidden, nurse her injured calf, and wait for the healers to sweep through at dawn. Or she could follow the direction Marcus had taken, find where the pack had corralled the remaining hunters, and risk everything to be at his side.

Her wolf pressed a low, urgent warning; her heart, still remembering his fingers curled with hers, decided long before her head could argue. She forced herself up, snow seeping through thin layers at her ankles, and went the other way. Each step was careful - the makeshift bandage biting into fresh skin - but she walked with a purpose she didn’t feel. Instead of heading back to the ball, she kept to the courtyard’s outer wall, melting into the shadows where Marcus’s scent grew faint and then fell away. The path took her past broken lanterns and a smear of dark blood that burned her eyes; she met it without flinching and kept going, toward her pack and away from the carnage.