Read Chapter 8: The Ridge

The storm broke sometime in the deep hours, leaving the world under a foot of new snow and a sky the color of old bone. Declan woke with his breath fogging the inside of the tent, Maya already sitting cross-legged by the entrance, her mitts off, turning the pouch over in her hands.

“You didn’t sleep,” he said.

“Neither did you.” She held up the pouch. “You kept this from me. Thomas Blackwood’s.”

Declan sat up, the sleeping bag crackling with frost. “I found it in a cave. His journal too. Someone left them there for me to find.”

“For you.” Maya’s voice was flat. “Not for us.”

“Maya, whatever your team was really doing out here—”

“I told you everything I know.” She dropped the pouch onto her pack and turned to unzip the tent flap. “Let’s move before the snow drifts cover the tracks.”

He let it go. There was no time to pry the rest of it out of her, not with the creature circling them in the dark not six hours ago.

They broke camp in silence. The tracks were still there, pressed deep into the fresh accumulation—the beast’s clawed impressions, and beside them, the walking boot print. The parallel lines ran north like a sentence waiting to be read.

They followed for an hour. The terrain climbed steadily, spruce thinning to bare rock and scrub, the wind scouring the snow into hard drifts that caught the low morning light. Declan read the tracks as they went. The beast had slowed here, paused, turned its head. The boot print had stopped too, heel dug in deeper, weight shifting back. You couldn’t tell which one had been waiting for the other.

Maya stopped ahead of him, one hand raised.

The ridge dropped away before them into a wide bowl. A frozen lake spread below, its surface a white plate ringed by dark treeline. The tracks continued down the slope toward it, and there—two figures in bright orange, moving slowly across the ice, one arm raised.

“Survivors,” Maya breathed. She was already cupping her hands to her mouth. “Hey! Hey—!”

Her voice bounced off the rock walls. Down below, the two figures stopped. One turned, then the other. They started moving toward the shore, toward the slope where the tracks descended.

Declan didn’t move.

He was staring at the ground between his boots.

The beast tracks curved down the slope ahead of them, clean and deliberate, heading toward the lake. But there—to the left of their own approach, almost invisible under a light dusting of windblown snow—

Another set. Clawed impressions, deeper, wider. Coming back up.

Circling around.

Merging with the path they’d just walked.

“Declan?” Maya turned, her shout dying in her throat when she saw his face. “What is it?”

He crouched, brushing snow aside. The tracks were clear now, unmistakable. The beast had come down this slope, seen the lake—seen the survivors—and turned back. It had circled wide around the ridge and folded itself into their tracks, overlaying them, so that the trail they’d been following north was not a trail at all.

It was a return path.

“It’s not running away,” Declan said slowly. He straightened, looking down at the two figures on the ice, then back at the path behind them. “It’s been following us this whole time. Herding us.”

Maya’s face went pale. “Herding us where?”

He didn’t answer. He was looking at the boot print again, the one that walked alongside the beast. It was still there beside the new tracks too—clear, deliberate, heavy in the snow. But something was different now.

The boot print leading back up the ridge was on top of the beast’s claw marks.

Whoever wore those boots was walking behind the creature. Driving it.

Or walking with it.

“Your eighth member,” Declan said. “The one who walked into the woods. What did they look like?”

Maya shook her head, a quick nervous motion. “I only saw them once. From my tent. Tall, I think. Dark coat. They were just… walking. Not running. Not looking back.”

“Toward the woods?”

“Yes. But there was something wrong with the way they moved.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Too smooth. Like they were gliding on a track.”

Declan looked at the boot prints again. They were steady, unhurried, each one placed with the same even spacing. He had spent half his life reading the way people walk, the thousand tiny unconscious signals that told you whether they were angry, afraid, hurt, or lying. These prints told him nothing except that whoever made them knew exactly where they were going.

And that they’d gone back up the ridge.

Back toward the tent where he and Maya had spent the night.

A shout came from below. One of the survivors was waving both arms now, their voice thin and distant across the frozen bowl. The other figure was helping them walk—limping, favoring one side.

“We have to go down,” Maya said. “They're hurt.”

Declan forced his eyes away from the returning tracks. She was right. Whatever was happening up here on the ridge, there were living people down there, and he was a rescuer. That was what he did. That was what Thomas had taught him to do.

He nodded once and started down the slope.

The descent took them fifteen minutes, the snow deep and treacherous over loose rock. By the time they reached the lake’s shore, both survivors were waiting for them. The one in front was a woman, mid-thirties, goggles pushed up on her forehead, dark hair plastered with sweat.

“Search and rescue?” she said.

“Declan Cross. This is Maya, one of your people.” He scanned her face, cataloging signs of frostbite, shock. “You’re hurt.”

“Not me. Jules.” She jerked a thumb at the man behind her, who was slumped against a drift, one hand pressed to his thigh. The snow beneath him was stained red, a deep ugly color against the white. “Bear attack. Except the bear had claws like knives and didn’t make a sound.”

Declan moved past her, kneeling by the man—Jules. The wound was deep, three parallel slashes running from hip to knee, edges ragged and already freezing. He’d packed it with snow, which was the only thing keeping him alive. His eyes were glassy but focused.

“I’ve seen worse,” Jules said. His voice was thin. “Get me the hell off this lake and I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Deal.” Declan tore off his pack, pulling out the med kit. “What happened to the rest of your team?”

The woman’s face tightened. “Dr. Evers didn’t make it. Elias took the eighth—Dr. Lindqvist—and went north. Told us to stay put. Said he’d be back.” She paused. “That was two days ago.”

Declan’s hands stopped working on the bandage. He looked up at her.

“Dr. Lindqvist.”

“Yeah.” She frowned. “Why?”

Declan felt the cold settle deeper into his bones. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the weathered photograph from the cave. He held it up. The image had faded, but the details were still visible: Thomas Blackwood standing beside a woman with a familiar face. He’d assumed she was his wife.

The woman on the lake was staring at the photo, face unreadable.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

“From your pack,” Declan said. “Thomas Blackwood’s pack. Left in a cave for me to find.” He watched her face carefully. “Along with a map that says something is waiting for us in the northern ice fields. Something that lives in a nest.”

The woman’s mouth opened, then closed.

Behind him, Maya made a small sound. She was staring at the woman too, recognition dawning.

“I know you,” Maya whispered. “You were in the lab. Three years ago. When Dr. Lindqvist was dismissed.”

The woman said nothing.

Declan stood slowly. He still held the photo, and he looked from it to her, and back again.

“Who are you?” he asked.

From somewhere across the frozen lake, far off in the treeline, a howl rose. It climbed the scale and held at the top, impossibly long, until it broke into something that was almost, almost a word.