Semua Bab Twice His Wife: Bab 101 - Bab 110

The silence that followed that whisper was worse than any noise. Anaïs kept her back to the wall, heart pounding so hard she could barely hear. Cassian moved beside her in a low crouch, weapon drawn. Maris clutched the child tighter, her own breath shallow and ragged.The cabin wasn’t supposed to be compromised. Julien had swept it twice. They’d run thermal checks. They’d taken every precaution. But someone was inside. And now, they had to assume whoever it was, wasn’t there by accident.Cassian signaled with two fingers—go wide, cover the left. Anaïs nodded once. Her fingers found the cold grip of her gun, and she moved.The door creaked as the wind dragged a loose shutter against the outside wall. That sound used to mean nothing. Now it felt like a countdown.Julien was already circling to the back, boots silent in the damp earth. The air smelled like pine and something sharper—smoke?Anaïs stepped lightly onto the porch. The front door hung slightly ajar. She’d closed it before the

The silence after the breach wasn’t quiet. It rang.Anaïs held the child tight, pulse kicking in her throat. The door was open behind them—busted in, wood cracked at the hinges, deadlock twisted like soft metal. Someone had been inside. Maybe still was.Cassian moved first. He didn’t speak, didn’t glance back. His gun came up, steady, eyes scanning the corners. The room looked the same. Their bags, untouched. Julien’s coat, still folded on the chair. But the air was off—like it had been stirred, just enough.“Stay here,” Cassian said, low.Julien didn’t argue. He stepped between Anaïs and the door, hands open, a switchblade loose in one. Maris didn’t make a sound. She was watching the hallway like a child who’d learned the hard way that monsters don’t live under the bed. They live in plain sight.Cassian crept into the hallway, then cleared the kitchen, bathroom, everything. No one. No sign of forced entry from outside. Just the door they’d locked with their own hands.When he came ba

The cabin was still. Too still.Anaïs moved first, stepping around the broken chair with the kind of caution that didn’t come from fear but instinct—honed, sharpened, tested. Cassian followed a step behind her, weapon drawn but lowered, his eyes flicking to every shadow like they might come alive.Julien closed the door behind them, slowly, deliberately. The wind had picked up outside. That forest stillness that had carried them this far was gone.Maris stood close to Anaïs, her small hand gripping the hem of her jacket. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.Cassian’s voice cut through the quiet. “Whoever was in here didn’t stay long.”There was a smell—old smoke, damp earth, a trace of something metallic. The back window was cracked open. Julien moved toward it, scanning the tree line. Nothing moved. But that didn’t mean nothing was out there.“They didn’t take supplies,” Anaïs said. “Whoever it was didn’t come to raid.”Cassian crouched near the table, picking up a torn page.

The snow hadn’t stopped. It came down quiet and slow, blanketing the world in something that looked like peace but felt like suffocation. Inside the cabin, the silence was sharp. Maris sat with the child pressed against her chest, her back to the wall, her legs curled protectively around her niece like she was trying to shield her from the weight of the air itself.Julien stood by the window. Watching. Still. Always watching.The storm hadn’t touched the forest much—only dusted it white—but the cold had crept in through the floorboards, into the walls, into their bones. No one had spoken since the transmission.Cassian leaned against the table. His hands were braced flat on the wood, head bowed low. Anaïs stood opposite him, not touching, not moving, not blinking. She was the only one breathing like she knew she had to. Everyone else felt suspended in a moment too heavy to carry.“They know,” Julien said, his voice almost calm. “Everything we sent out—Morgan Crane aired it. It’s publi

The forest didn’t feel like safety anymore.It felt like a holding place, like the breath between two screams. Every branch was a surveillance line. Every shadow waited to turn into a threat.Anaïs stood with her back against a moss-covered rock, her arms wrapped tight around the child. She wasn’t even sure when the trembling had started—hers or the child’s—but it hadn’t stopped since Julien vanished into the smoke. Since they heard the last of his voice on that comm. Since Cassian pulled her through the trees with blood on his hands and no words in his mouth.No one said Julien’s name.Not even Maris.The silence was harder than crying.Cassian paced a narrow perimeter around them, his shirt still soaked through with sweat, blood, and dirt. He hadn’t stopped moving since they set camp. There wasn’t much to call a camp—just a patch of flattened leaves beneath a jutting rock face, concealed from above. The rain had passed hours ago, but everything was damp. Their clothes. Their skin. T