Where The Ice Gives Way Chapter 38

**Charlotte**

Shanti stays quiet until I hit the edge of the trees. *Home,* she whispers, and I don’t know if she means the lake or the ice or something else entirely, but my feet keep moving anyway. Snow crunches under my shoes, the wind cuts through the branches, and the moon is thin and bright above the tree line, washing everything in pale light. When the lake finally opens up in front of me, my breath catches even though I’ve seen it before. It’s wide and still, frozen over in a sheet of dull silver with darker seams running through it where the ice froze wrong. Wind has swept some patches clean, leaving the surface exposed and shining, while other sections are dusted with snow, as if someone tried to hide it. I stand at the edge for a second and let the cold bite my cheeks. I came here to be alone. To be in the quiet. To sort through everything that got shoved into my hands in the last two days. Pack. Alpha. Mate bond. Mine. The boy outside the bathroom. The strange number of people on the street. Dad sober and smiling like he didn’t break me the night before.

I swallow hard and kneel in the snow, pulling my skates from the bag. My fingers are stiff as I lace them up, but I don’t rush. I make each knot tight. I tie them like I’m tying myself to the one thing that has never asked for anything from me. When I stand, the blades bite the ice, and that familiar sensation runs up my legs, clean and sharp. I push off. The first glide is always a release. The second is breath. The third is remembering that I still have a body that can do something beautiful even when my mind is a mess. I build speed slowly, testing the surface, listening to the lake the way Mum taught us. It creaks once somewhere far out with a deep pop that makes my stomach tighten, but the ice holds, and I keep moving. I don’t think about what it looks like. I move. My arms lift and fall with balance. My blades carve lines into the moonlit surface. My hair slips free of its tie and swings behind me as I turn, the air cold enough to sting my lungs. The first tears come without warning, but I keep skating anyway. If I stop, I’ll have to feel it all in one place. So I let it pour out through motion instead, through turns and edges and the hard push of my legs. I do a spiral and hold it longer than I should, my body stretched and shaking, and it feels like holding a scream in silence. I spin and the world blurs, snow and trees and sky becoming a smear of dark and silver, and for a second there’s nothing except the pull of gravity and the bite of the blade and my own breath. You’re a storm, Shanti murmurs, and I can feel her there, watching, not judging, like she’s been waiting for me to let myself break without falling apart.

I don’t notice him at first. Not until the wind shifts and the mate bond pulls so hard it makes my chest ache. My breath catches mid-glide as Shanti stirs. *Mate,* she whispers, and her voice sounds almost pleased. I slow, and my gaze flicks to the treeline, expecting the black shape in shadow, expecting Lex to be there and watching. He’s at the edge of the ice, massive and still, crawling forward through the snow until his paws touch the frozen surface. His head is lowered, his ears are forward, and his eyes are on me. He’s just… there. Watching… I can’t remember the last time someone…watched me. It makes my heart clench, and my eyes fill with more tears. He’s giving me space. He’s offering presence without pressure. And somehow that feels like the safest thing anyone has done for me in a long time. I circle wide, keeping distance, pretending I don’t care, but my eyes keep flicking back to him anyway. He stays at the edge, barely moving, just watching. I skate faster and give him what I don’t give anyone. A piece of me that only exists when my blades are on ice. Hours pass without me counting them. My legs burn. My lungs ache. My cheeks go numb. The tears stop somewhere along the way, as if the ice took them and buried them under its surface, and eventually I slow. The world comes back into focus. The trees are still, the moon hangs higher, and the wind has softened into a thin whisper. Lex hasn’t moved from his spot at the edge. He’s waited the whole time.

I glide toward him, blades whispering over the ice, and step off onto the snow with a small stumble. Lex’s tail thumps once in the snow as I drop down onto the bank beside him. My hands shake as I pull my cardigan tighter around myself. Then Lex moves slowly, very carefully. He circles behind me and lowers himself into the snow, curling his body around my back and side, his thick fur pressing warmth into my shoulder and spine. He makes a wall against the wind that feels like a thousand tiny fireworks going off underneath my skin. I let out a breath that feels like it’s been trapped in my chest for years. “Thank you,” I whisper. Lex makes a low sound in his chest, a rumble that vibrates through his ribs into my back. I stare out at the frozen lake, at the lines my blades carved into it, faint scars in moonlight. “I needed to get out,” I tell him, voice quiet. “The house felt… too loud. Dad was sober. He was nice and asking Charlie about hockey like he actually cared, like he used to, and I don’t know what to do with that.” Lex’s head lowers closer to my shoulder. “I don’t know how to hate him properly,” I admit. “And I don’t know how to forgive him either. I don’t know how to live with both versions of him in the same body.” My throat tightens, and I swallow hard, eyes fixed on the ice so I don’t have to look at anything else. “Charlie loves him,” I say, quieter. “Or he wants to. He wants that dad back so badly he’ll pretend the other one doesn’t exist, and I don’t blame him, because that dad was good once, and Mum was alive, and we were kids, and everything felt… possible.” Shanti shifts inside me, calm but present, like she’s listening too. *You're not alone,* she murmurs, so soft it barely feels like words. I rest my hand against Lex’s fur, fingers sinking into his warmth. “I’m tired,” I whisper. “I’m tired of being the only one holding it together.” Lex’s breath huffs against my hair. I don’t know how long we sit like that, the four of us in a strange, quiet triangle, me and my wolf and the boy who is a wolf too.