Chapter 4

Thick branches laden with snow tugged at my hair, scraped ice across my cheeks as we raced farther into the forest. Shivering, I tucked my body as close to Hellbreath's back as I could.

"Go, girl." I flicked the reins and kicked her sides again. "Go as fast as you can."

The forest grew wild and was untouched by man since most feared to go anywhere near it, so there were no paths except the one Baba and Hellbreath had made themselves every month for the last two years. On days when there was sun, the canopy of trees was too thick to feel it, but I knew what direction we headed because of the crush of wind at our backs. Northeast. I could set a compass to it if I had one. 

A shotgun cracked behind us. I gasped. Hellbreath tensed but kept going. It hadn't been aimed at us. We were too deep in the forest now, and it had sounded too far away. The man... Who had he fired at? Baba? Surely the man had noticed Hellbreath was gone and could easily follow our tracks. I squeezed Hellbreath's reins tighter and urged her onward with another kick. 

The few trips I'd gone with Baba on Hellbreath, it had taken him roughly an hour to get to Old Man's Den, but he hadn't ridden Hellbreath as hard as I was now. The closer I drew and the farther I got from Margin's Row, the more my shoulders loosened. I could make the delivery, get paid, and find a slightly different route through the forest to get home before that man could pick up our trail again. No problem.

A prickling sensation rode up my back and lifted the hairs along my scalp. Hellbreath whinnied. Fresh snow cracked to our left. Scrapes sounded over wet rock to our right under too many feet. 

Dread plummeted into my gut, heavy as stone, crushing any wisps of hope I might've had. We were being watched. 

Hunted by wilds.

I could smell them now, their wet fur and the mud clinging to their paws.

More feet closing in sounded through the forest, all of them keeping pace with Hellbreath. This had never happened before during my few trips with Baba, but he'd always brought his gun with him, just in case. I still had my bow slung over my shoulder and one arrow. One arrow for all of them.

They wouldn't attack something as large as Hellbreath. Would they?

"Keep going, girl," I whispered into my horse's ear. "You can outrun the wilds."

But even as I said it, I sensed them closing in around us like a noose about our necks. A growl sounded from ahead, terrible and dangerous, and echoed all through the forest, cinching the promise of our fate even tighter.

Hellbreath skittered to the side and made a terrified whinny. Then she reared up, something she never did when it was just her and me. The reins flapped free from my hands, and I made a mad grab for them. But I was already falling. Falling so long that my stomach turned itself inside out with panic. I landed hard and with a loud crack. The breath surged from my lungs, every last bit of it, but nothing I did would draw more air inside. I croaked, attempted to gasp, anything I could do to get a breath, and in the back of my mind, pain registered, a violent storm of it in my side, my arm, and the back of my head.

But it was the sound of hooves on snow snaking through the forest without me that brought tears to my eyes. She'd left me, terrified and alone, the both of us.

Finally, I drew in a pained hiss, the smell of wet fur and mud and dead leaves so thick that it coated my tongue.

Something nudged my foot. Something else sniffed the side of my head loudly. The wolves were closing in. It had to be wolves.

I lay there, my cheek pressed to the cold snow, my arm flaring pain even brighter with every heartbeat, and tried to unscramble myself. I couldn't die here.

My arrow. I had one in the quiver attached to my back. My bow was there, too, but I likely didn't have enough time to grab both.

A terrible sound I'd never made before heaved from my mouth while I forced myself to sit upright. Sharp pain pierced my side, and I knew something had to be broken. I took the arrow from my quiver with my good arm and struck out with it. A wolf yelped as I buried it deep, but another latched onto my leather boot and yanked, sliding me easily across the snow. I cried out, holding fast to the arrow, my only weapon, and kicked wildly. Another yelp when my foot connected. A growl on my other side, ferocious and growing louder. Fangs punctured through my coat and the flesh on my bad arm and shook it viciously. I screamed in pain and jabbed with my arrow again, but before I could strike, two more wolves clamped down on both feet and pulled so ferociously that the arrow ripped from my hand.

They were going to tear me in half, shred me limb from limb, and leave me here to die in the middle of the Crimson Forest. The scent of my blood brought more wolves, their feet padding across the snow toward me. I had no idea how many, and it didn't matter. The pain was leaking into my consciousness now, creeping in like shadows and turning my vision even soupier than it already was.

I'd failed, and I hadn't just failed me, but Jade and Lee. Baba, too, if he was still alive.

Useless.

I'd tried so hard to prove I wasn't.

Teeth snapped together to my right, yet another wolf. A low, vicious growl crawled up its throat, and I sensed those around me immediately take a step back. This was a new wolf. A different one.

Snow crunched underneath it as it lunged forward. The sounds of a brutal fight slipped through my fading consciousness, and I realized as I sank under that I could see my body from above. A red patch against stark white in clear definition, my tangled, dark hair, the tilt to my eyes, even the curve of my blood-spattered lips, while my life seeped into the snow.

I could see. And that was how I knew I was dying.