“They’re here,” Birdie hissed through bloody teeth. “Move or we both die.”
Yael’s claws were still locked around her throat when the first torchlight spilled over the rim of the sinkhole. Heavy boots crunched across ash and bone above them. Three distinct sets of footsteps. Frostfang scouts, too close.
The massive black panther’s gold eyes burned with killing intent. His body trembled from poison and blood loss, yet every muscle coiled like he was ready to explode upward and rip them apart. A low, wet snarl vibrated through his chest and straight into her bones.
Birdie grabbed two fistfuls of his blood-matted fur and yanked his face down to hers until their noses almost touched. “Hide. Now. You’re half-dead and I can’t drag your oversized corpse up that slope. You want to live long enough to hate me properly? Then play dead and shut up.”
For one terrifying second his claws tightened. Blood welled under her jaw. Then, with a sound of pure loathing, he released her and collapsed sideways among the skeletons.
Birdie moved like her life depended on it—because it did. She scooped armfuls of ash, cracked ribs, and skull fragments over his black body, packing them fast and dirty until only a darker shadow remained in the bone pile. Her hands shook. Her thigh wound had reopened. Every heartbeat felt like a hammer strike against her skull.
Torchlight grew brighter.
She snatched the blood-smeared bone dagger, scrambled up the collapsed slope on hands and knees, and burst out of the hole just as the three scouts reached the edge.
The lead scout stopped short. He was broad, scarred across one cheek, and carried a short spear still stained from some earlier kill. His lips peeled back in a nasty grin when he saw her standing there—barefoot, half-naked, covered in blood and ash, gripping a jagged bone like it could save her.
“Well, well. The refuse lived.” His voice dripped mockery. “Alpha will be disappointed. He wanted bones.”
The two behind him snickered. One licked his teeth. The third, younger and twitchier, kept sniffing the air like something bothered him.
Birdie straightened to her full, unimpressive, height and lifted the bone dagger. Her voice came out raw, cracked, and venomous enough to strip paint.
“Touch me and I’ll make sure Fenrir knows exactly how his favorite scout begged before he died.”
The leader laughed, stepping closer. “You’re in no position to threaten anything, scentless trash. Look at you. One kick and—”
“He’s sterile.”
The laughter cut off like someone had slit its throat.
Birdie smiled through split lips, slow and vicious. She tasted copper and ash and pure reckless spite. “Your perfect Alpha. The one who stood up there and called me refuse in front of the entire tribe. He can’t sire cubs. That’s why every fertile female before me mysteriously failed the bond. That’s why he kept me around as a quiet little shame instead of rejecting me cleanly the first day. The defect was never me. It was him. And if I walk back into camp breathing and screaming that truth, the Frostfang pack will tear their precious Alpha apart before the sun rises.”
The leader’s face went sheet-white under the dirt and scars. One of the scouts behind him actually took a step backward. The younger one stopped breathing.
“You’re lying,” the leader snarled, but the spear tip trembled.
Birdie tilted her head, eyes glittering with something unhinged and bright. “Am I? Go on then. Kill me. Then explain to Fenrir why the scentless trash he threw away somehow knew the one secret he’s murdered three healers to keep buried. Or better—run back like good little dogs and tell him I’m still breathing down here. Watch what he does to the messengers who failed to finish the job.”
Wind hissed across the dead valley. Somewhere far off a corrupted beast screamed. The three wolves stared at her like she had suddenly grown a second head and started speaking in tongues.
The leader’s throat bobbed. Sweat mixed with the cold night air. He glanced at the black mist curling along the ground, then at the bleeding, broken girl who somehow looked more dangerous than the blight itself.
“Leave her,” he finally growled, voice rough. “Blight will finish what we started. We saw nothing. She was already carcass when we arrived.”
The other two didn’t argue. They turned fast, shoulders tight, clearly desperate to put distance between themselves and the girl who had just dropped a political bomb with nothing but a bone and bloody defiance.
Birdie kept the dagger raised, lungs burning, heart slamming so hard she could feel it in her teeth. Her bluff had landed, barely. She didn’t dare lower her arm, didn’t dare blink.
Then the youngest scout—the one at the rear—froze mid-step.
He turned slowly. His nostrils flared wide. Confusion flickered across his face, followed by sharp disbelief, then something like alarm. He inhaled again, deeper this time, eyes locked on Birdie.
“She doesn’t smell human anymore…”
His voice was barely a whisper, but it carried like a shout.
The other two spun back around.
An arrow whistled out of the darkness.
It punched through the young scout’s throat with a wet, meaty thunk. Blood sprayed in a black arc across the ash. His eyes went huge. He dropped without a scream, torch tumbling from nerveless fingers and hissing out in the dirt.
The remaining two roared in shock and rage, spears swinging up… and froze solid.
From the shadows at the edge of the sinkhole, Yael rose.
Barely upright. Swaying like a nightmare given form. Ash and bone fragments slid off his midnight fur. Poison still traced sickly green lines under his skin, but one gold eye glowed like molten metal.
In his half-shifted hand he held a scavenged scout bow, a second arrow already nocked and drawn. Blood dripped from his claws. His lips peeled back from fangs still stained dark.
He looked like death that had decided to walk anyway.
His ruined voice rolled out low, dark, and absolute.
“Run.”