Page 65 of To Carve A Wolf

I froze.

His arm tightened around me, not violently, but enough to remind me of what he’d done. What I’d let him do. WhatI’d wanted—and hated myself for wanting. I shut my eyes, squeezing them tight as the shame washed through me.

The wolf inside me was purring. Stretching. Pleased. She was louder now, clearer than ever. I didn’t need to hear words—just the feeling of her circling, watching, waiting. She was closer to the surface than she’d ever been. Pressed right against it.

And I knew why. The fourth rune. The last.

Its magic was slipping. Thinning. I could feel it fraying like rotten thread, trying to hold back a force too big, too old, too wild.

I could barely breathe with her this close. My skin itched. My senses were sharp enough to hear the snow melt slowly at the mouth of the cave. I could smell everything—his skin, my sweat, the blood dried on my neck.

I was losing the war I’d fought my whole life. I hated him for helping break me. I hated myself for letting it happen. But most of all—I hated that part of me liked it.

“Get your hands off me,” I rasped.

He didn’t move. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said, voice calm but final.

“I need to leave. I need to—”

“You need to stay put,” he snapped, his voice sharp now, jaw tight against my shoulder. “You’re holding on by a thread. One more rune. You think you can ride through a fucking blizzard with that thing inside you clawing to get out?”

He shifted behind me, and I felt it—that smug, infuriating grin in his voice before he even spoke.

“Where the fuck were you going, Lexa?” he asked, his mouth brushing against my ear. “No food. No map. You don’t know this land. You had nothing but that ragged cloak and the fur in the saddlebag—which, by the way, was already strapped to the horse. You got lucky. That’s all.”

I tried to push up on my elbows, to peel myself away fromhim, but he moved fast. He pinned me again. His hand on my shoulder, his weight against my back. Not cruel. Just enough.

“Answer me,” he growled.

“As far away from you as possible,” I snapped.

“Right,” he scoffed, voice cold now. “So desperate to run, you were willing to freeze to death in a fucking blizzard? That’s not survival, Lexa. That’s suicide.”

“I didn’t ask for your concern.”

“No,” he said, pressing me harder into the furs, “but you left Dain behind.”

That hit harder than his body ever could. My breath caught.

“You were so hellbent on getting to that witch, you didn’t even look back. Was the craving that strong? Is your addiction to dark magic so fucking deep you’d leave the one person who actually loves you behind?”

“It’s not—” I bit out, anger flaring. “It’s not an addiction. I just want to—”

“Shut up,” he snarled, flipping me onto my back, face inches from mine, eyes burning. “Shut up about the damn wolf already. You keep blaming her for everything. Like she’s some disease you caught. Like you’re notherand she’s notyou. Stop running from her. Just face it.”

My jaw clenched.

“You’re not broken, Lexa. You’re bound. And I’m the only one who’s ever seen what you could be if you stopped trying to kill yourself from the inside out.”

I looked away. He grabbed my chin and made me meet his dark blue eyes. “So tell me,” he whispered. “What exactly were you planning to do once the witch carved the last piece of your soul away?”

I glared up at him, eyes burning, throat aching with the words I didn’t want to admit. But the silence between us stretched taut and brittle, and eventually it snapped.

“Carve another,” I whispered bitterly. “And another. Keep carving until the magic either silences her forever or kills us both.”

His jaw tightened. Eyes narrowed. Anger flared, bright and hot. But I didn’t give him time to interrupt—I kept going, the words falling raw from my lips.

“Because I don’t know how to live anymore.”

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