Where The Ice Gives Way Chapter 63

**Charlotte**

The air outside cuts clean through my jumper the second I step out onto the back deck. Snow lies thin and bright across the yard, marked through with boots and dragged lines where tables and chairs were shifted in a hurry last night. The marquees still stand where they were left, pale against the morning, their fabric stirring softly in the wind. All the plates and food are gone now, and the fairy lights have been switched off. What remains is the ghost of a gathering. Blake walks beside me, and Gareth is ahead with John. Charlie stays on my other side, quieter than usual, his shoulders tight, his eyes already fixed on the north side of the property. Theo and Mara fall in behind us.

The snow crunches under our boots as we cross the yard and head toward the fence line, toward the darker edge where the woodshed squats low beside an older shed. Two men are already standing there. One near the corner of the house, the other pacing a short line between the shed and the trees, his breath steaming white in the air. They step aside for Gareth as he reaches the shed and puts one hand on the timber door, but he does not open it straight away. He turns instead, his gaze steady on mine. “He’s restrained,” he says. “If at any point you want out, you say so, and we end it.” I nod and look at Blake. His expression stays calm, but there is a tightness in his jaw. I know he does not want me here. He wants me behind locked doors and thick walls. I don’t even dare to look at Charlie. I know he’s ready to haul me back into isolation. Gareth opens the door, and the smell of rot floods out. It hits me before I even fully step over the threshold, making my stomach tighten and my body pull back on instinct. The space is small, with timber walls darkened with age, tools, and old shelves shoved to the far end to clear the centre. A single lamp hangs from a beam overhead, throwing a hard yellow circle over the floor. He is in the middle of it… Chained to a support post sunk into the concrete. For one terrible second, all I can do is look. He is a man… He is a wolf. He is both and neither, twisted somewhere in between.

His shoulders are too broad, his muscles knotted hard under skin streaked with dirt and blood, his spine bowed in a way that looks wrong. Dark hair hangs wet over his forehead, and one side of his face still looks like he’s partially shifted. His hands end in long, blunt claws dulled with dried red and silver chain bites around his wrists and run down to another set looped at his ankles and chest, forcing him upright against the post even as his body strains against it. His head hangs low, and blood has dried at his mouth.

My breath catches hard enough that Charlie steps closer at once, but Shanti rises through me before I can lose the ground under my feet. She settles low and steady in the centre of my chest. *Watch.* The rogue lifts his head, and his eyes move slowly and unfocused, catching on Gareth, on John, on Blake, on Charlie. His lip curls back over his teeth, and a rough sound drags out of him that is low, pure animal and raw. Then his gaze lands on me, and the snarl dies in his throat. I stand very still watching… Observing how his eyes look wrong. There is too much wolf in them, too much pale wildness blown wide across the iris, and bloodshot red worked through the white… But there is something else there too, the smallest flicker of a human. My voice comes out soft. “Can you hear me?” The rogue jerks and Blake shifts at my side, ready, but the man does not lunge. He only stares at me with those ruined eyes and breathes too fast through his nose, chest rising and falling in quick, rough pulls. I take one step closer, and Charlie’s hand catches my arm. “Lotty.”

“It’s alright.” The words leave my mouth without thought as I feel Shanti move through me.

The rogue’s gaze stays fixed on my face, and the pull at his mouth softens, while his eyes sharpen and his head tilts slightly. I can feel him… The ember under the ash. “Can you hear me?” I ask again. His throat works, and in a voice scraped so thin it barely sounds human at all, he says, “You.” The rogue’s eyes drag over my face like he is trying to fix me in place through layers of pain and fury and whatever else is clawing around inside him. Shanti rises higher, and he sees her. I know he does before he even speaks, because the wildness in him shudders hard. I can feel it. His voice scrapes again. “White...” He swallows. “Wolf.”

“What’s your name?” I ask. His head jerks back, and the chains strain as a low growl tears out of him so fast I flinch. His shoulders bunch and his wolf surges up across his face in a flash of bone and fury, and his eyes go wide and white and empty all over again. He slams forward, but the chains catch him halfway and snap him back into the post with a hard crack that shakes the whole frame. Charlie swears, and Blake steps in front of me. The rogue thrashes once, teeth bared, a roar ripping out of him so violently it bounces off the timber walls and punches straight through my chest. Just as quickly, it stops, and his body sags in the chains, while his head falls forward. A ragged breath tears in and out of him.

I can still feel it… He’s in there. I step around Blake before he can stop me and move closer again. “Charlotte,” Blake says quietly. I hear the warning, but I keep going anyway. The rogue lifts his head a second time. His eyes drag up to mine again, and this time the human flicker stays longer. “What’s your name?” I ask again, softer now. His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. His eyes squeeze shut like the effort of reaching for it hurts. For a second, I think he is gone again. Lost under the wolf, under the rage, under all that ruin. Then his lips part and he whispers, “Arun.” Arun’s eyes open again, and now there is fear in them, clear and human… He is looking at me like I am the first real thing he has seen in a very long time. “Please,” he rasps. The word barely holds together, and his body twitches, hard, like whatever lives in him besides this man has felt him reaching and does not like it. “Please,” he says again, voice breaking open on it. “Don’t let me lose myself...”