One second, Shane was lost in a red-hot haze of need. The next, he was slammed against the wall with enough force to knock him stupid.

“Shane.” Nadia’s voice, frantic with worry. Her hands framed his face. “Can you hear me?”

He shifted with a grunt, lifting one hand to the back of his head. “What the hell was that?”

“The magic,” she whispered, voice shaking. “It was trying to protect me. It didn’t know.”

Memory assailed him, the feel of her body pressed close to his. “Fuck.” Self-loathing washed over him, and he cursed again. “Shit, what the fuck did I try to do?”

“No, Shane. It wasn’t like that.” The words came too fast, tumbling over one another in her rush to get them out. “You didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have enjoyed, if it had been you.”

He’d attacked her. The proof of it was staring him in the face, from her bloody, bitten lip to the marks on her neck. “Jesus Christ.”

“It was my fault.” She stroked his cheeks with her thumbs. “The magic wouldn’t have taken you if I hadn’t gotten careless. You didn’t have a chance.”

Even now, he could feel the ghost of that feral need rising in him. He had to get her hands off him, had to look away from the soft, fervent forgiveness in her gaze. “I have to get out of here.”

Her hands fell away. “There’s nowhere to go.”

“Other rooms. Places.” He wasn’t even making sense. “I can’t be around you if I’m out of control, Nadia. I can’t. You don’t understand what I can do, what I am.”

“I understand what you can do. I didn’t stop you because I fear you. I stopped you because you have the right to choose whether you wish to bed me.”

“I could have killed you.”

“No.” The word came out hoarse. Almost angry. “I wouldn’t have let you.”

His head throbbed, and he pulled his hand away. It was slick with blood, and he vaguely remembered Nadia’s whispered chant. “Did you heal me?”

“Not all the way. I can’t.” She bit her lip, then winced as her teeth snagged the cut. “Werewolves have some minor healing ability, don’t they? My spell stabilized you, but your own body must have done the rest.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He shifted to his knees with another groan.

“I’m sorry.” Nadia rocked to her feet, her balance odd because she favored one leg. Her right foot bled, and she slipped as she tried to take a step back. “I could have killed you.”

She was naked, but she was also hurt. Shane picked her up without a thought. “Are you really trying to one-up me on the danger scale?”

That earned him a smile. “You’re not the only one capable of darkness.”

No, but Nadia didn’t have to guard against it every moment. It didn’t sleep inside her, waiting for a chance to rear and consume like a caged, hungry animal. “It’s not funny.”

Her smile faded. “Please put me down.”

“I have to look at your foot.”

“Put me down before you drop me. You have a head wound, and I have a scrape.” A little twist and she took the choice from him, squirming out of his grasp. Instead she got one arm around his waist and led him toward the sitting area, with its dusty, barely used couches. “I was dying when you found me. I’m not anymore, and it’s time you stopped treating me as if I were fragile.”

Fragile was a relative term—but so was dangerous. “You’re still bleeding. I’m not.”

Nadia spun so fast her damp hair whipped past his face. “I’m bleeding from an inconsequential wound. My protective spells will guard against infection. I get worse than this every time I practice with the other warriors. I’ve walked miles with broken bones, with knife wounds. I was shot once.” She held out her arms, almost daring him to look at her naked body. “Our healers take away the scars. Maybe if I had them you’d believe that nothing you can do to me physically is worse than what I’ve gone through a hundred times before.”

For a moment, Nadia disappeared. The room disappeared, and he was bleeding onto the new spring grass as Cilla’s screams echoed through the clearing. “Have you fought wolves? Seen them kill?”

“Yes. When I was twenty-four, a pack formed just south of the freeze line and destroyed three of the Fifth Tribe’s villages.” Her voice softened. Her fingers touched his shoulder. “How did you become a werewolf, Shane?”

He ignored the question, because he had to make her understand. “Not fought them in battle. By yourself, when it’s just you and— One wolf isn’t a problem, not even for an armed human or a pack, if you’re ready for them. See them coming. But if a pack gets the drop on you…”

“Is that what happened? A pack ambushed your family?”

No time to hide from the truth. “Her name was Priscilla. She died, and I lived. Sort of.”

Those warm, gentle fingers cupped his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

He caught her hands. “Stop. I survived, but now I’m exactly the sort of monster who killed her. Exactly.” He’d risen from the bloody grass that way, a creature meant to rend and kill.

“Not exactly. The magic can make us powerful. Make us wild. It can make us a little bit crazy.” She tugged one of her hands away, then pressed it to his chest. “It can’t make us hate. It can’t make us evil. Do you know why my people need warriors?”

Why did anyone need to fight? “Because the world is fucked-up, and it’ll gladly eat you alive if it gets the chance.”

“Because some people are bad. And hate fueled by the earth’s power is the vilest danger of all, whether it’s a werewolf’s or a witch’s.”

It was worse than simplistic; it was a cop-out. “Maybe you’re just making excuses for what we all are, right down there at the lowest common denominator. Animals.”

Her eyes cooled as she pulled away from him. “Animals survive. They protect and they kill when they have to. There’s honesty in their brutality. Humanity and its children have always been the masters of cruelty.”

His temper spiked with her withdrawal. “Fine, make my point for me. Lower than animals. Monsters.”

“At our worst,” she agreed. “Maybe what makes the rest of us different is how willing we are to turn cruelty on ourselves. You hate yourself for the things you might do, and I shame myself for the things I’ve already done.”

“Name one thing.”

Nadia lifted her chin, and challenge filled her eyes. “I’m ashamed I stayed with a tribe that scorned me instead of following my sister. And I’m ashamed I showed you the most vulnerable parts of myself for all the wrong reasons.”

Just like that, she shamed him. “I’m sorry.”

“You saw what I let you see.” The words trembled, and her eyes were too bright. She stepped back and spread her arms again, revealing her naked body, smeared with blood, her wet hair clinging to her neck and shoulders. “This is what I am. Savage. And it isn’t fair to ask you to accept something in me that you can’t tolerate in yourself.”

The comparison startled him. “When you go below the freeze line, you don’t lose your mind.”

Nadia lowered her right arm and turned enough so the intricate tattoo circling her arm and shoulder faced him. “This is the mark of a warrior.” Her fingertips found a small crescent with five black dots marching along the top. “And this is a mark of honor. Fifty kills in battle.”

“In battle,” he repeated. “Battles you chose to fight, right? You don’t get it, Nadia. You don’t understand what it’s like to not be in control, to just…just fucking check out.”

Her eyes narrowed. “To do things you don’t want to do?”

“To be gone,” he snapped. “I’m not talking mistakes or regrets or survival. I’m talking no more thought, no stopping everything dark in you that wants to be freed.”

“I see.” She crossed her arms across her chest, and for the first time, she seemed uncomfortable in her nudity. “Maybe it’s time we went our separate ways. I’ve seen what the darkness inside you desires, and it may plague you less once I’m gone.”

She’d be fine without him now, and her plan was nothing less than what he’d been about to suggest—but it still cut deep. “You should take the truck and the supplies. You need them more.”

“If you think that’s best.” No sweet, grateful smile. No soft thanks. She turned without so much as a wobble and walked away from him, her spine stiff and her stride even, despite the bloody footprints she left with every step.

He watched her, numb and exhausted. There was nowhere to go, not for either of them. No matter what, they had to wait out the storm before continuing.

Perhaps before saying goodbye.

***

After all the pain, all the longing, their goodbye was anticlimactic. Nadia sat behind the steering wheel and watched as Shane listed the functions of the various knobs and handles for the third time. This was the only thing they’d seemed capable of discussing in the two days they’d ridden out the storm, as if anything more personal than her feeble knowledge of automobiles and tactics for driving on snow would shatter the awkward truce they’d struck.

“When you get farther south, you’ll have to take the chains off the tires. It’s not complicated, but you might have to work at it for a while. Break them if you have to.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d told her, but she didn’t point that out. “All right.”

“And if you need to take it out of four-wheel drive—”

“I know, Shane.” With every repetition, she waited for the moment he’d break. When he’d touch her. Kiss her. Tell her it was a mistake. Ask her to stay.

The last vestiges of the weakness she couldn’t bring herself to banish. Her heart was tender, but it would heal with time—if she left.

She had to leave. “Thank you for everything. I’ll send payment north, once I retrieve my belongings.”

“Don’t.” His shoulders tensed. “Just let me know you made it okay.”

It was one more thing she didn’t want to fight about. “I’ll send word.”

He nodded, and his hand skipped from the gearshift to her arm. “I’ll go with you if you need me to, Nadia.”

Her bruised pride offered half-truths that would spare them this interminable parting. All she had to do was let them out. Say something misleading like, I’ll be safer on my own, and not tell him she feared for her heart, not her body.

A petty part of her wanted to, but she couldn’t bring herself to form the words. He’d hurt her deeply, but her pride would eventually forget his disregard, and regrets wouldn’t make her heart heal faster.

So she smiled and shook her head. “You’ll feel better once you’ve gone north again. And I’ll feel better once I’ve gone south. This is how it needs to be.”

Instead of pulling his hand away, he slid it up, over her shoulder to the back of her neck. “It’s how it needs to be.”

That hungry look was back in his eyes, and she didn’t trust it anymore. The darkness inside him might crave her, but the man had kept his distance time and again, and every withdrawal hurt more than the one before. “I need to leave.”

He blinked. The hunger remained, stronger than ever, but he released her anyway. “Drive carefully.”

“I will.” Maybe when she was gone, he’d regain his control. Maybe he wouldn’t remember that urge to kiss her at all, just like he couldn’t remember the way he’d touched her as if she was vital to his survival. The beast scratching the most primal itch.

She pulled the truck’s door closed before she spilled out of the seat and offered herself to him. Her hands trembled against the steering wheel, but a deep breath provided the steadiness she needed to remember how to start the vehicle.

She navigated the driveway carefully and refused to look in any of the mirrors to see if Shane was watching. It felt like he was, in any case, perhaps laughing at her inching, nervous progress. If she failed this quickly, he’d never let her make the trip alone, and she’d never have the self-preservation to walk away a second time.

Walk. Her morbid sense of humor stirred a sad laugh out of her, and it echoed in the empty cab. Call it what it is, Nadia. You’re running away.

Not far, though. Shane might not leave for another day or two, and she could give him one parting gift.

She eased the truck onto the snow-covered road and used the compass mounted on the dash to steer her toward the border. Slow going, with the latest storm, and her hands ached from clutching at the steering wheel. Tiny numbers marked her progress—the odometer, he’d called it, when telling her how often she’d need to stop to replenish the fuel from the supply packed in the back. The numbers ticked off a mile and a half before she found a stand of trees that suited her purpose.

More than a mile but the earth still sang in her blood. Whatever pocket of power fueled the magic beneath the research station extended so far that it reached for her even now. Calming the magic in the land had been difficult once she’d spilled her blood, but Nadia had accepted the offerings and unleashed them in trivial things. Bright lights to cheer her lonely bedroom. Heating spells to warm her empty bed.

She’d be out of range soon, and the magic would rebound. If Shane was within range, it might claim him again with the same viciousness as it had before. She could spare him that.

The magic reached up, eager to please her as soon as she slid out of the truck. A whispered greeting and the snow began to melt around her, every footstep toward the trees widening the circle of suddenly bare ground. If there had been grass before the endless winter, it was long dead, leaving her tramping across increasingly mudlike dirt as she looked for a good spot to say goodbye.

In the end she found a large, smooth rock that looked like it had been left by one of the earthquakes. The pines around her were young enough to have grown after the explosion. A spell dried the surface of the rock enough to kneel, though her bulky clothing made doing so awkward.

Priscilla’s clothing. A woman who’d died, torn apart by werewolves while Shane was condemned to live as the thing he must hate most in the world. He had every right to fear his beast, and she’d poked and prodded him at every turn, driven by her selfish need for him to accept the wildness inside her.

“No more pain from me,” she whispered, stripping off her mittens. The rock should have been cold under her bare hands, but it was as hot as cement on a summer day.

Nadia sighed and closed her eyes. “I’m leaving. It’s time for me to go home. To walk my own lands, where I’ll be safe. With my own people.”

monsters-danger-run

“Shane’s not a monster.” She fixed an image of him in her mind, not so much his features, but the feel of him. Warm and a little wry. Prickly when his temper was stirred. Playful when he wanted to tease. Intense. Protective.

It took time. She could have been kneeling there for hours, pouring her heart into the unyielding rock. Her legs ached, and the cold made her weary, but she focused on Shane and offered him to the land, wrapped in her emotions, the sharp bite of longing and the first fragile strands of something so hopeless she refused to call it love. “This is Shane. He should always be welcome here. Don’t offer him magic, but don’t keep it from him if he needs it. Protect him, and you’ll protect me.”

MONSTERS

Frustration pricked at her. “He’s not a monster. He’s—”

The howl of a wolf filled her ears. Distant, so distant it could have been Shane, if he’d given in to the power—or it had taken him. She had time for one moment of dread before the earth rose up, all its power focused on a warning that screeched through her soul.

RUN

Another howl to the east. A third, southeast, and closer. Hunting cries, tearing through the air again and again, and sluggishness faded from her body as she came to her feet with a grace that did her training proud.

“No more running.” This was a battle she could understand. Knives and magic and blood and death, not breaking hearts and flowing tears. It was time to be who she was. A warrior. A daughter of the Second Tribe.

A witch, even north of the freeze line.

No more running.