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My breath caught.

I leaned into his palm, my fingers curling lightly around his wrist. “Then hold on,” I whispered, “because I’m not going anywhere.”

A long silence stretched between us—heavy,meaningful.

Then he squeezed my wrists a little tighter, his voice dropping lower. “When we stop for the night, Lia?”

My breath caught. “Yeah?”

He leaned in, his mouth near my ear. “You and I are going to have a longdiscussionabout what happens to defiant little mates who disobey their Alpha.”

A slow shiver ran down my spine, my core sparking at the dreadful promise in his voice.

I knew what that meant.

“Yes, Alpha,” I whispered.

“Good. Now come on, let’s get back to the group,” he said. When we returned to the rest of the men, they were ready and waiting to get back on the trail.

The trek that day was long.

The deeper we went, the worse the air smelled. It settled in the back of my throat, sour and pungent, clinging to my skin like it was trying to sink into me. At first, it was just little things that started to get to me. A few ravaged deer carcasses, their ribs gaping open, the meat torn away in strips. Then it got worse.

A moose, its body sprawled across the forest floor, half of it missing. The exposed muscle was gnawed down to the bone, its thick hide shredded, entrails spilling onto the dirt in rancid, clotted ropes. The eyes had been ripped out.

Then a bear.

A really big one.

Something that should have been too strong to be brought down by anything in these woods. Yet, there it was in the underbrush, its thick fur matted with drying blood, its massive body split open like something had tunneled inside of it and burrowed its way out.

I gulped back a surge of bile, pressing my sleeve over my nose, but it didn’t help. It was everywhere: the smell, the decay, the unnaturalness of it all.

Silas stepped ahead of me, stopping for a second to survey the carnage with a calculating stare. “They’re messy,” he muttered.

Varek crouched near the bear, poking at its exposed ribcage with the tip of his knife. “They rip into everything, then stop.” He frowned. “Like they don’t just kill for food. They enjoy it.”

Hale muttered a curse under his breath. “This is—fuck. This is worse than I thought.”

Then Silas turned, his mouth a hard line. “You still think you should’ve come, Lia?”

My chin jutted out instantly. “I’m fine.”

His gaze shifted, like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned back to the others. “Let’s move. We’ll stop when we find a safer place to camp.”

I blew out a breath, forcing my pulse to steady, and kept walking.

* * *

We made camp near the edge of a ridge, close enough to hear the faint trickle of a stream down below.

The fire burned low, casting dancing shadows across the clearing, the light barely reaching the edges of the trees. Everyone sat in a loose circle, their voices quiet, their movements stiff. Everyone was a little scared, but there was an understanding between them—between all of us. What we saw today had shaken every member of this group, myself included.

Even Varek was quiet, leaning against a fallen log, his expression distant. Rowan sat across from me, methodically sharpening his blade as always, while Ryan, Caleb, and Hale muttered among themselves in low voices, their hands going to their sides to touch their weapons every few minutes.

I sat next to Silas. I could feel the reassuring weight of his presence beside me, the slow, steady heat radiating from his body. Everyone had given us space, like they felt the tension between us, poised and waiting for something.

I wasn’t sure if I was more afraid of what I had seen today or of what was waiting for us in the caves… I tried to be still, tried to look like I wasn’t waiting for the inevitable, but Silas knew.