Page 66 of His Claim
I pressed a hand to the mark on my shoulder. It pulsed with heat, with memory, with bond. He was still alive. I could feel it.But the weight of the war for humanity pressed down heavier than my heart could bear.
This wasn’t just about me.
It wasn’t even just about him.
This was survival.
For humans. For all the women still caged and used and abused. For every life the Council thought they could play God with.
I squeezed my eyes shut as fresh tears spilled down my cheeks. “I’m sorry,” I whispered into the wind. My voice cracked, breaking against the stone. “I’m so sorry.”
Then I stood up and took my first step away from the mines.
My legs felt like lead, each step a betrayal taking me farther from him. My chest ached so badly I thought it might split open, but I forced myself onward, the rough slope cutting through my soft boots, the trees looming closer with every staggering stride.
Every step forward was like a fresh wound, another tear in my heart.
But I kept moving, because if I didn’t—if I failed here—humanity would lose everything.
And the Council wolves would win.
I thought of Elsie, of the fire in her eyes when she spoke of the Watch. I thought of Kendra and Lia, alive somewhere in the mountains, still fighting. I thought of every girl who had been dragged from her cell and hadn’t come back, and of all the girls who had been bred and had their babies torn from their arms.
I couldn’t let their lives, their sacrifices, mean nothing.
I couldn’t let humanity fade into memory.
The wilderness swallowed me whole.
Varek’s map was clutched tight in my hands, the edges soft from his touch, the lines smudged where he’d marked safe routes and danger zones. I’d stared at it so hard my eyes ached, but it was the only anchor I had left.
So I kept walking.
The city of Denver was behind me, the outskirts beyond the Outer Guard’s base long abandoned. What remained were stretches of jagged earth, the blackened bones of highways cracked and overgrown, and signs rusted into nonsense. The air smelled cleaner here, thinner, biting at my lungs as I climbed higher.
Truth be told, I wasn’t built for this.
Back in the cages, hell, even a long time before that, I’d imagined escaping a hundred times, a thousand times. In my wildest dreams, I always ran into the mountains, free and unencumbered, the wolves never able to catch me. I pictured myself determined and unstoppable, darting through trees like some proud heroine in a book.
Reality was much different.
The Rocky Mountains weren’t forgiving. The terrain was brutal, with slopes of loose rock that sent me sliding, thickets of pine so dense I had to force my way through, and rivers that bit at my ankles with icy teeth. My feet were raw, the thin boots Varek had found for me already fraying. My clothes clung damp with sweat, dirt streaked across my skin.
And still, I climbed.
Every ridge I crested opened to another. Every valley was deeper, darker, more tangled with roots and underbrush. The horizon never stopped moving away from me, taunting me with peaks I couldn’t reach fast enough.
I stopped once on a rocky outcrop, dragging in a breath, my legs trembling. The wind tore at my hair, and for a moment I felt small. Too small.
The city girl inside me wanted to scream. I didn’t know the woods. I didn’t know how to read tracks, or which berries wouldn’t kill me, or how to keep a fire burning when the wind hissed like it wanted everything gone, but at least I had the map, and I had Varek’s voice in my head telling me to put one foot in front of the other.
So I did.
I crossed a stream, the water so cold it made my bones ache, and scrambled up the far bank on my hands and knees. My palms stung from the sharp stone, but I didn’t stop. A hawk screamed overhead, circling, and I tilted my face to the sky. The Rockies loomed above me, vast and merciless, but something in me stirred at the sight.
Fear. And awe.
I remembered the girl I had been back before Kendra, Lia, and I had been taken, back when we lived in our grimy apartment together. Sometimes we imagined running away, hiding in the wilderness, living free in the mountains. We made it sound like an adventure. Romantic, even.
