Where The Ice Gives Way Chapter 111

**Charlotte**

The diner is quiet tonight. The lights buzz overhead, and the coffee machine clicks as it cools behind the counter. One of the booths near the window still has a sugar packet torn open on the table, and I am halfway through wiping it down when the feeling starts. It moves over my skin first. A warning. A pressure low in my stomach makes me stop with the cloth still in my hand and look toward the dark windows at the front of the diner. 

Sophie left early, waving over her shoulder and asking me to lock up when I was done. I told her I would. Terry stayed behind with me without making a big deal out of it, nursing a coffee at the counter and keeping one eye on the door. Now he is no longer drinking. He is listening. I can feel the pack patrol too, scattered outside in small groups, but underneath them, beyond them, around them, there is something else. More.

I step closer to the front windows, and the movement becomes clear. Bodies slip in and out of the weak spill of light from the diner sign, circling the front of the building, and crossing the parking lot. Some move in human form, heads tilting at wrong angles. Hunger is written into the way they stare through the glass. There are at least ten of them that I can see—maybe more.

“Terry,” I say quietly. The stool legs scrape against the floor as he moves, and whatever softness was left in the diner disappears with the sound. He crosses to the front door in long, fast strides and slams the lock down just as one of the rogues throws itself against the glass hard enough to rattle the whole frame. The impact cracks through me, as another one charges and hits. The front windows shudder with the impact.

“Back door,” Terry barks. “Now.”

I run. My shoes skid on the tiles as I cut behind the counter and through the kitchen, my heart beating so hard that it blurs everything for a second. The corridor at the back is narrow and dim, the light buzzing overhead as I get closer. I stop so fast that my shoulder slams the wall. The door is already open. Held wide.

A rogue stands there in human form, one hand braced against the metal frame, his face half-shadowed beneath the weak security light outside. His body is tense, ready to pounce, and his mouth twitches when he sees me. His eyes drag over me with a sick, toothy grin that turns my blood cold. Shanti rises hard inside me, and I stumble back, running for the front again, breath tearing in and out of my chest as the sound of bodies hitting the glass gets louder.

By the time I skid back around the corner, the front of the diner is chaos. Rogues are throwing themselves against the windows now with enough force to make the frames shake in their fittings. One slams both hands flat against the glass and snarls, spit streaking down the pane. Another drives a shoulder into the front door and makes the deadbolt groan. That glass isn’t going to last long. I back into him without thinking, my shoulders pressing hard against his spine as we both face opposite directions, trying to cover too much space with two bodies. The front glass shivers under another hit, and crack splinters from one corner. “What do we do?” I whisper.

“We fight for our bloody lives, kid.”

I reach for Blake quickly. The bond is there instantly, warm and alive, stretched thin by distance but close enough to grab with both hands. *“Blake, rogues are surrounding the diner.”* I don’t wait for his reply as Shanti surges forward. The shift tears through me in one hot, brutal wave, bones pulling, skin stretching. I hit the floor on four paws, and Terry shifts beside me, larger and darker, his body blocking part of the entrance as the first window finally gives with a crack so loud it seems to split the room in half. Glass rains inward.

Terry lunges at once, slamming into the first rogue, forcing its way through the shattered front. Meanwhile, I face the rogue that followed me in from the back. He lunges, snarling and grabbing for me before I can fully turn. His hands close around my shoulders, and then he jerks back, hard, face twisting. He stumbles away from me with a sound of shock and rage tangled together, staring at his palms like he’s touched something that burned him. The rogue looks back up at me and comes again. I hit him head-on, my body colliding with his hard enough to drive us both sideways into a table. It flips with a crash, plates and cutlery scattering across the floor as he grabs at me again, fingers sinking into my fur. I twist, snapping at his arm, and he swears, half-human, half-wolf, shoving me off just enough to come at me from the side. He’s faster than he should be. Hungry. Mad.

We slam into the counter. Coffee cups shatter. Something hot spills and slides across the floor under my paws as I scramble for footing. He gets hold of me again, and again he flinches, skin pulling tight over his face as though contact with me hurts. I drive into him harder. Headlights flare across the diner windows, throwing everything into sharp white flashes. The rogue in front of me turns his head for one second, distracted, and I see it too. A car tears into the parking lot at speed, tyres screaming across the bitumen as it cuts straight through the line of rogues outside. One body rolls over the bonnet. Another disappears under the wheels. The driver’s door flies open, and my heart stops. Dad.

He gets out already shooting, the crack of the gun tearing through the night as he fires at the rogues turning toward him. One drops. Then another. The rest split, some peeling off Terry and the front windows to rush him instead. The rogue in the diner comes at me again before I can think. I meet him with all four paws planted, drive into his middle, and send him stumbling back toward the broken front, where Terry catches him from the side and tears into him with a snarl that rattles my spine.

I manage to look outside again, where my father backs toward the diner, firing round after round, but there are still too many between him and safety. I remember what it was to love him, what it became to fear him, and what it cost to leave. Shanti slams into me from the inside, forcing me to move. I might hate him, and I don’t forgive him, but none of that changes the fact that I am not going to stand here and watch him die.