After My Husband Abandoned Me to the Wolves

I woke to the sound before I understood it.

Low. Resonant. Not wind. Not the creek. Something alive and patient, moving through the dark just beyond the tree line.

I sat up. My bandaged hand found the tent zipper by feel. I pulled it open.

The cold hit me first. Then the smell — copper and earth and something older than both. The fire had burned down to a faint orange pulse, just enough light to see the ground.

I saw the circle.

It ringed my tent in a dark, deliberate arc. Soaked into the pine needles. Still wet in places. My mind did what it always did in the ER when something was wrong — it went very quiet and very fast at the same time.

Animal blood. Applied in a circle. Applied while I slept.

I looked up.

Three pairs of eyes at the tree line. Low to the ground. Still.

I did not scream. I reached back into the tent, pulled a burning branch from the edge of the fire ring, and pressed my back against the nearest tree. The bark was solid and cold through Rowan's jacket. I held the branch out in front of me and I breathed.

I was terrified. My hands were shaking. The branch threw orange light across the ground and the eyes in the dark didn't move.

But I was not surprised. That was the thing. Somewhere underneath the fear, in the place where I used to keep grief, there was nothing. Just a flat, clear recognition.

Of course. Of course this is what it came to.

I heard the SUV engine. Running. Idling.

I turned my head.

Through the windshield — hazed with condensation, interior light on because Dexter always left it on — I could see them. Two shapes. His shoulder. Her hand gripping his arm. His face turned toward me through the glass.

He was watching.

He was watching, and he was not moving.

I looked at him for a long moment. He looked back. The wolves hadn't moved. The branch in my hand crackled and spat.

I watched my husband choose.

It didn't feel like heartbreak. It felt like a door closing in a room I'd already left. Quiet. Final. The last unnamed thread of something — grief, maybe, or the memory of grief — went still inside me and did not come back.

I turned back to the wolves.

There were more now. I could hear them in the dark beyond the firelight, the soft displacement of weight through pine needles. Five. Maybe six. Moving in a slow, methodical arc that followed the circle on the ground.

I swept the branch in a wide arc. The nearest wolf flinched back. I stepped forward. It held.

Then I heard him.

Running footsteps from the direction of Rowan's camp — fast and deliberate, not panicked. A voice on a radio, low and clipped. A flare gun cracking open in the dark.

Rowan came out of the dark at a dead run and planted himself beside me. Not in front. Beside. Back to back, his shoulder blade against mine, the flare gun raised.

"Count," he said. His voice was completely level. "How many?"

"Five visible. More in the tree line."

"Okay." He keyed the radio. "Two positions, wide spread, bring the vehicles around on my mark. High beams, full perimeter."

A flare fired into the tree line. White-hot light tore through the dark. The wolves scattered back — not far, but far enough.

I swept the branch again. Rowan reloaded. Behind us, I heard engines, tires on frozen ground, the crunch of his security team moving into position.

We held the perimeter. I don't know for how long. Time did that thing it does in the ER — it compressed and stretched at once, every second both too fast and too long. The cold was savage. My bandaged hand screamed every time I adjusted my grip on the branch. I didn't stop.

Rowan's voice stayed low and steady behind me the whole time. Coordinates. Instructions. Calm. The way he'd always been — the one fixed point in whatever was moving too fast around me.

The vehicles came around. High beams swept the tree line in a wide, blinding arc. The wolves broke. I heard them go — a rustle, a retreat, the sound of the dark reclaiming them.

Then silence.

I lowered the branch. My arms were shaking badly now. The adrenaline was dropping and the cold was filling in behind it.

Rowan turned. He looked at me — really looked, the way he had at the water cache that first night, like he was taking inventory of damage. His jaw was tight. His eyes moved to my hand, the fresh blood soaking through the gauze again.

He didn't say anything. He just stepped closer, blocking the wind.

Behind us, the SUV door finally opened. Dexter's boots hit the frozen ground.

I didn't turn around.