When I was fifteen, Pop took me to Canada, to hunt wolves.
He told me we were going because his father had taken him a few times when he was younger. But I knew there was a more…pressing reason.
He brought me to the woods to allow me to give into my urges. To let me kill.
I appreciated the gesture. I was at the age when I was starting to realize that the black thoughts I had, together with my inability to latch onto certain situations—emotionally speaking—made me…different.
Except I didn’t have a need to murder people or anything, like some bad Dexter spinoff. It’s just that the idea of killing something or someone didn’t bother me. If it was necessary to protect one’s family and loved ones, or oneself? What was the hesitation? In my mind, killing to protect my own was like reaching for a spoon to eat the soup in front of me.
It was just…obvious.
Pop and I ended up having a good talk about the whole “my brain is fucky and a little broken” situation. And instead of letting his psycho son run amok with his bloodlust urges, he taught me how to hunt. Properly.
With patience. Control. Holding back when necessary and not acting on the first impulse that crosses your mind.
The wound in my side pulses with every movement, every breath, but I don’t really feel it. I will later, but not yet, not while Lyra is still out there.
I scan the ground, my eyes piercing the darkness.
Crushed leaves. A snapped twig. A drop of blood glistening on a branch.
…I should mention that Pop and I have gone back to Canada to hunt wolves almost every year since that first one. And I am very, very fucking good at hunting.
That includes tracking.
My gaze follows the trail of blood through the trees, locking onto the details. The way the droplets are getting farther apart—he’s started to move faster.
Arkadi was blathering on earlier about being some sort of apex predator at the top of the food chain. A ‘wolf”.
A smile curls dangerously at the corners of my mouth.
I know how to fucking hunt wolves.
You don’t chase them—you trap them. You cut off their exits.
I turn, heading back up the driveway toward the car, crashed against a tree. I ignore the blood loss and the sting of torn muscles and skin. I also ignore what I left in the passenger seat.
I pop the trunk, grabbing the spare gas can and a road flare.
Then I turn back to the woods, where the trail picks up again, and I start running.
My breath is steady. My boots silent.
I keep tracking: footprints, broken branches, any signs of a struggle. My pulse stays even. My grip on the gas canister in my hands stays steady.
The trees blur past. I can hear Arkadi’s and Lyra’s voices in the distance. He’s taunting her, twisting her mind, trying to convince her she belongs with him.
I don’t need to get to them.
I just need to make sure he has nowhere to run.
I pop the cap of the gas can, moving fast, cutting a wide arc through the trees. My fingers skim the branches as I move.
Bone dry. No rain or snow for weeks.
Perfect.
I freeze when I hear a yell and the dull thud of wood smashing into flesh. Then I hear Arkadi’s roar of fury, followed by another hit and another wrenching cry from his fucking mouth, and I grin savagely.
That’s my girl.
I keep running, pouring the rest of the gas in a thick, wide circle.
Then I pull the flare from my pocket.
I smile grimly as I remember what I told her once. Then I strike the flare, letting it roar to life in my hand, turning the woods around me demonically red.
Fire ignites instantly when I drop the flare into the trail of gas I’ve poured through the trees. The dry underbrush catches in a vicious wildfire, flames roaring through the forest like living things.
I don’t stop moving.
The wind is in my favor. The blaze spreads back through the path I just took, devouring the forest in a violent inferno.
The night turns red and gold, smoke thick in the air like the fucking apocalypse.
Then I hear it.
Lyra, crying out.
I bolt toward the sound, heat licking at my back as the fire explodes almost out of control, devouring the world behind me.
I smash through the underbrush and burst into the clearing—
And my vision goes red.
Arkadi is kneeling over Lyra’s limp body, his hands wrapped around her throat.
For just a second my mind blanks, my heart stops beating, and rage detonates through me when I think that I’m too late and he’s already taken her from me.
But then I see her loll her head to the side, eyes dazed, blinking at the fire.
And her gaze finds mine.
I’m already moving. Already with pure diesel and death burning in my veins as I hurtle toward them like an extinction-level asteroid.
I hit Arkadi so hard that my vision blanks out for a second. But I don’t need to be able to see to wrench him off her, sending us both crashing into the dirt.
My vision returns as he scrambles to his feet, blood dripping from his mouth as he raises his eyes to me.
He looks like he’s about to shit himself when he truly sees me.
The fire roars behind me like a demon from hell as we square off, my blood pumping, my body ready.
The need for violence consuming me.
Arkadi whirls, looking in bewilderment at the inferno slowly wrapping around the clearing and trapping us in its deathly embrace.
His breath becomes shaky. Uneven.
‘What have you done?’ he chokes.
He stumbles back, smoke curling around him, flames reflected in his wild, bloodshot eyes. His chest rises and falls rapidly, his fingers twitching at his sides, like he’s trying to find a way out. A last move. But there isn’t one. Not for him.
I advance on him slowly and methodically, my face devoid of emotion.
“So,” he sneers, his hoarse and mocking tone masking his fear, “are you going to take me to your little underground club now? Make me stand trial?” He flashes a taunting grin. “What is it, again? Fight or flight?”
I level my gaze at him, my chest rising and falling with slow, controlled breaths. I take one step forward. Then a second.
“You could stand trial for your crimes,” I murmur, voice like steel. My fingers flex at my sides, my body thrumming.
Another step.
“But I’m not here for those.”
I keep moving, slowly, deliberately. Every step is a verdict. A final nail in his fucking coffin.
Arkadi’s sneer falters, just slightly.
“I’m here because you laid hands on and hurt my wife.” My voice doesn’t raise, but there’s pure lethality in it.
I watch his throat bob. Good, good. Let him feel it. Let him see the end coming.
Another step, closer now.
Arkadi licks his lips, his eyes flicking to the fire. Looking for escape that isn’t there.
“No, Arkadi.” I shake my head slowly. “When you get to hell, you can ask whoever the fuck you meet there if they want to play fight or flight, I don’t really give a fuck.” My voice drops lower, steady and absolute. “But in this world, up here?”
I pull the knife—his own knife—from my waistband, the blade gleaming in the firelight as I smile coldly at him.
“Up here, I’ve already found you guilty of the most egregious crime I know.” My grip tightens. My pulse stays even. “Hurting what’s mine.”
Arkadi’s teeth bare. ‘You’re a monster, just like me,’ he snarls.
I tilt my head. Then, slowly, I smile.
“No.” My voice is almost amused as I shake my head. “I’m far worse.”
Before he can react, I explode forward.
The knife rams into his stomach in an instant, deep and brutal.
Arkadi chokes on blood as I yank the blade free, twisting it in my grip. He stumbles, clutching at his gut, his eyes wide, disbelieving.
His lips part, but I don’t let him speak.
I drive the blade up through his jaw with a sickening crunch. Arkadi jerks violently, his body spasming, then he goes still.
I let go of him, and I don’t bother watching him hit the ground.
I turn and go back to Lyra.
She’s still limp, battered and bruised as she lies sprawled on the ground. But when I scoop her up, she’s able to smile a little when her eyes lift to mine.
‘You lit the world on fire for me,” she murmurs, barely conscious.
I press a kiss to her hair. ‘Who knew I was such a romantic.’
Then I start to run. The fire is closing in, consuming everything. We’re both coughing, covered in soot, and maybe a little singed when I crash through the underbrush and lurch out of the forest back into the driveway of her old home. I slow, carrying her gently to the car as sirens wail in the distance.
‘I’m sorry, love,” I sigh.
She frowns. “For?”
“You’re going to have to share the front seat.”
