Chapter 3
"Here," she said, pressing the ragged edge of the meat against his lower lip. "Take it."
Mathias jerked his head back, stone scraping stone behind him. "Eat it yourself."
Elena frowned in the darkness. "Don't be an idiot. We don't know how long we’ll be under here. If your core crashes, mine won't last an hour behind it."
"I don't take charity from runaway traitors," he sneered. The malice in his tone was sharp enough to sever bone, dripping with all the venom of the Blackridge Alpha who had cast her family into the waste. "I certainly don't eat scraps pulled from the pocket of a rogue who violated territorial borders. Keep your garbage. If you die of starvation, it saves me the trouble of a trial."
"You stubborn, suicidal son of a bitch—"
"I don't need it," he snapped, his voice dropping into that low, resonant growl that used to make entire pack assemblies drop their eyes to the dirt. "My wolf’s reserves are triple yours. You're five feet six inches of hollow bone and spite, Elena. Chew your meat and shut your mouth before I force it down your throat."
Tears of pure, frustrated fury stung the corners of her eyes, freezing instantly into tiny grit on her eyelashes. "Fine! Starve! Freeze! See if I care!"
She shoved the pemmican into her mouth, chewing mechanically. The meat was like salty leather, requiring gallons of saliva she didn't have, but as she forced herself to swallow, a tiny, faint ember of warmth flickered in her gut. Her inner wolf stirred, lifting its battered head for a fraction of a second before sinking back into the blue dusk of torpor.
"Better?" Mathias asked. The mockery was back in his voice, but it had a strange, hollow cadence to it, echoing faintly against the cavern ceiling as if he were speaking through a long iron pipe.
"Go to hell," she muttered, swallowing the last dry fibers.
"Later. We have business here first." His hand reached out through the dark, fingers clamping around the back of her neck with an iron grip. His palm felt scalding against her chilled flesh—almost painfully so, a searing contact that sent shivers racing down her spine, though when she leaned her forehead against his chest, she couldn't feel the gentle rise and fall of a rib cage expanding. It was like resting against an engine block that had retained the ghost of an impossible heat. "Tell me about the border."
Elena stiffened, trying to pull away from his grip, but his fingers were locked into the tendons of her neck. "What about it?"
"Why did you cross?"
"You know why. Your enforcers burned our winter caches in the lowlands."
"Lies," he spat, his breath grazing her forehead—dry, carrying only the faint scent of crushed minerals and snow. "The Council ordered grain and dried meat delivered to the perimeter outposts. We don't starve exiles."
"Well, your outposts were empty!" she screamed into the darkness, the sound tearing her raw throat. "There was nothing there, Mathias! Nothing but frozen mud and rotting crates! My sister was coughing blood by mid-November. She needed medicine. She needed food. I went into the valley to trade with the river clans, and you chased me like a rabid dog!"
"You crossed the high ridge," he countered, his words relentless, hammering into her like blows. "The sacred hunting ground is forbidden to anyone without pack marks. You knew the punishment."
"The punishment was exile! We were already exiled!"
"The punishment for armed trespass is death."
"Then kill me!" she shrieked, slamming both her fists against his chest.
The impact sent a dull vibration through his torso, hard and unyielding as a marble monument. She expected him to strike back, to shove her into the gravel, to roar with the wounded pride of a high-ranked Alpha. But he only held her, his grip on her neck neither tightening nor loosening, absorbing her blows without a flinch.
"Not here," he said softly, and for the first time, the bite in his voice softened into something terrifyingly quiet. "And not like this. Keep breathing, Elena. Keep screaming at me. Every curse you throw keeps your lungs clear."
A ragged sob broke from her chest before she could swallow it. Her hands remained flattened against his jacket, her knuckles throbbing from the impact.
"I hate you," she whispered, her forehead dropping onto his shoulder. "I hate you more than the mountain. More than the snow."
"Good," he murmured, his thumb brushing over the nape of her neck in a slow, hypnotic stroke. The friction of his skin felt strange—feverish and sandpaper-rough, dragging across her sensitive nerves. "Hold onto that. Let it burn."
***
By Day Three, the cold had changed its nature.
It was no longer an external enemy beating against their fortress of rock; it was an occupant. It had seeped into the marrow of Elena’s shins, turned her fingernails brittle as mica, and painted a thick crust of rime over their clothes. The silence between the drips of water had stretched, suffocating and thick.
Elena woke with her teeth chattering so hard she bit the inside of her cheek. The metallic taste of her own warm blood felt like a luxury on her tongue.
She moved her hands blindly, mapping the cramped pocket in which they were wedged. Mathias hadn't moved an inch. His broad shoulders were still wedged against the cleft in the stone, his legs framing hers, his long coat draped over both of their torsos like a stiff tent.
"Mathias?" she whispered.
No answer.
Panic, cold and sharp as an icicle, lanced through her ribs. "Mathias!"
She shoved his shoulder. He tilted slightly with the push, stiff as an oak branch in midwinter, before settling back against the wall.
"Mathias, wake up! Wake up, damn you!"
She scrambled upward, dragging herself onto her knees in the cramped space, her head scraping against the jagged ceiling of the rock shelf. Her hands frantically searched his chest, feeling for the thick lapels of his coat, climbing up to his neck.
Under her palms, his skin was icy—so cold that her fingertips stuck to his throat for a terrifying microsecond before pulling away with a tearing sting.
"No," she gasped. "No, no, no..."
She pressed her thumb hard against the hollow beneath his jaw, digging desperately past the corded tendons to find the carotid pulse.
There.
A thrum. Heavy, slow, rhythmic—*lub-dub... lub-dub...*
Elena let out a ragged, weeping breath of relief, sagging forward until her forehead bumped his chin. "You bastard. You scared me."
"Told you..." his voice emerged from the black, barely more than a dry rasp that seemed to rattle deep within his chest, "...I'm not dying... to please you."
"Your skin is freezing, Mathias. You're losing heat."
"You're the one... shaking."
"I have to check your back," she insisted, her hands moving down his sides. During the avalanche, when the ceiling had caved, he had thrown himself over her, shielding her skull with his own body as hundreds of pounds of rock and packed snow crashed into the crevice. She had heard the sickening *crunch* of something giving way then, followed by his brief, muffled grunt.
