Page 136 of Hunted to Be Mine

That earned me another smile. “Always.”

The screen went dark as the call ended. My own reflection stared back from the black glass. My hair had escaped its bun, dark strands falling around my cheeks. Shadows under my eyes from too many short nights due to excessive adrenaline. But underneath the exhaustion, determination settled in. The kind that comes when you’ve made peace with what you have to do.

I closed the laptop and stood, stretching muscles that ached from the pumping station incident. My cast caught the table’s edge. I wasn’t healed. But I was here. Alive.

With someone worth fighting for.

The window drew me across the small space. Powder pressed against the glass in thick flakes. The cabin sat nestled in a fold of the Alps, surrounded by towering pines that now bent under winter’s weight. No other structures visible. No lights except our own. Just endless white and the dark shapes of trees disappearing into the storm.

I pressed my fingertips to the cold glass, observing accumulation on the sill. The weather report this morning had been clear: roads would be impassable within hours. We were being isolated, truly cut off for at least three days, maybe more.

The thought should have made me anxious.

Instead, unexpected peace settled in my chest.

For the first time since this nightmare began, we had nowhere to run. No SENTINEL hidden agenda. No Oblivion operatives closing in. No desperately fleeing for our lives.

Just winter.

A pause we’d never been given permission to take, forced on us now by nature’s indifference to human urgency.

My breath fogged the pane. Outside, the Alps slept under their blanket, oblivious to the chaos that consumed our lives. The world continued turning. People lived regular days, worried about ordinary things: traffic, deadlines, what to make for dinner.

I’d forgotten what it meant to simply stop.

I turned from the glass, surveying the space. Three weeks ago, I’d been Dr. Selina Crawford, my life neatly ordered into professional obligations and carefully maintained emotional distance.

Now I lived in a remote shelter with a man who’d been engineered to kill, running from an organization that turned human beings into weapons. My medical license sat unused. Everything I owned, everything I’d built over a decade, had collapsed in the span of days.

It should have terrified me.

Maybe it had, at first. Those early days blurred together now: adrenaline and fear, the constant weight of being hunted. Every sound a potential threat. Every stranger a possible operative. Sleep came in bits and pieces, if it came at all.

This was supposed to be temporary. A brief, terrible detour before life resumed its typical trajectory. We’d expose Oblivion, eliminate Dresner, and somehow find our way back to resembling stability. That had been the plan, fragile as it was. Now, we needed to brace for the long run.

But standing here, observing powder bury the peaks, I couldn’t picture that other life anymore. Couldn’t imaginereturning to my former apartment, my previous routines. That version of Selina seemed like someone I’d read about rather than lived as.

Mattie’s call yesterday had brought news: SENTINEL was moving on multiple Oblivion facilities, building cases, following threads. Commander Dawson himself was coordinating the operation, pulling in resources from half a dozen countries. They were close. Maybe weeks away from bringing the whole structure down.

A big maybe that I didn’t quite believe in yet.

My role in that? Stay hidden. Stay protected. Let them do their work.

Hope.

That was what I had to contribute now. Just hope, and the will to survive long enough to see Dresner’s empire crumble.

It should have seemed useless, being sidelined. But this waiting was different than before. Not the tense anticipation of prey hiding from predators, but quieter. Gentler.

Rest. Actual rest, for the first occasion since this started.

The door opened, letting in a gust of alpine air and Wolfe. He carried an armload of firewood, moving carefully. His shoulder bothered him; I could see it in how he favored his right side, the slight hitch in his movement. Bandages wrapped his left palm where he’d torn skin on the metal platform at Vessy.

Powder dusted his dark hair and the shoulders of his coat, melting in the warmth. He appeared like a creature from a winter fairy tale. Dangerous and beautiful and somehow mine.

“Roads are gone.” He shouldered the door closed. “Saw the plow drive past on the valley route. They’re not even trying to clear up here.”

“Weather report said three days minimum.”