Page 130 of Iron Beneath the Snow

She should not have followed.

The descent alone made the decision reckless, even in daylight, and what she had seen in his eyes inside the chamber had not been meant for anyone to witness, let alone to follow.

Still, she came.

By the time she reached the ravine, the struggle had already ended, the outcome written into the disturbed snow and the stillness that followed it.

It was not the body that stopped her.

It was him.

Blood marked his shoulder where the bite had broken through skin, dark against bare flesh and the pale spread of snow. His posture held a residual tension that had not yet returned to something fully human, his head slightly lowered, breath visible in thick clouds that dissipated slowly into the cold.

Alive.

The word did not come as thought so much as confirmation. The thread between them pulsed hard enough to echo through her ribs and along her spine, tightening at her throat with a force that made distance feel temporary rather than real.

He turned toward her.

The shift had left him bare, but something of the wolf remained in the tension beneath his skin, in the way his breath still came heavier than it should have, in the sharpened stillness of his gaze when it settled on her.

For a moment, he did not move at all.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his voice roughened.

Eira kept walking.

“You killed him.”

“Yes.”

“I know.”

Snow drifted between them, already softening the violence behind him, already erasing what had happened as though the mountain had decided it no longer mattered.

What remained was him.

And the way the space between them refused to stay empty.

She stopped close enough to see the blood running from his shoulder, dark and fresh against his skin.

Her hand lifted.

She pressed her fingers near the wound, feeling the heat of him beneath them.

His breath changed immediately.

His hand closed around her wrist.

Not removing her.

Holding her there.

She did not pull away.

“You followed,” he said, quieter now.

“Yes.”