[POV: Atlas]
We left Crimson Fang at first light, slipping through the northern gate while the sky was still bruised purple and the frost crunched beneath our boots.
Five of us.
Draven at the front, reading the terrain with the instinct of an Alpha who'd spent years mapping every ridge within a hundred miles.
Kobe flanked our right, moving with quiet efficiency despite the scratch still healing along his jaw. Ava walked at my left, close enough that her shoulder brushed mine whenever my stride faltered.
Elder Axel brought up the rear, a leather satchel of ritual materials strapped across his stooped back.
I lasted four hours before my body began to fail.
The weakness came in waves. The cold that had taken root in my veins pulsed with every heartbeat, and every pulse stole something: warmth, strength, the thin thread of connection I still had to Hyde.
He was barely there now. A whisper buried beneath static, like a voice calling from the far end of a collapsing tunnel.
By the fifth hour, I was stumbling every dozen steps. Ava caught my elbow twice without comment. The third time my knees buckled, Draven stopped.
"Atlas." His voice was careful, controlled, the way he spoke when he was holding back something enormous. "Shift onto my back. We'll cover more ground."
"I can walk, Draven. I just need a minute to—"
"You've had six minutes in the last hour. Each one is shorter than the one before." He turned to face me, and the look in his dark eyes cut straight through my pride. "Let me carry you. Please."
Draven didn't say that word often, and when he did, it meant he'd already exhausted every other option inside his own stubborn head.
He shifted. Sirius emerged in a surge of dark fur and coiled muscle, lowering himself to the ground with a gentleness that seemed impossible for something that large.
Those amber eyes found mine: steady, patient, fierce with a protectiveness that vibrated through the bond.
I climbed onto his back, settling against the warm density of his fur, my fingers threading through the coarse hair at his neck. His body heat seeped into me immediately, cutting through the curse's cold in a way Mia's poultices never had.
"Hold tight," Ava murmured, falling into stride beside us. "We've got a long way to go."
Sirius rose smoothly and began to run.
The landscape blurred past. Dense pine gave way to scraggly birch, then to open meadows of brown grass and grey stone as we crossed beyond Crimson Fang's borders into unclaimed territory.
I pressed my cheek against Sirius's neck and felt the steady drum of his heartbeat beneath my ear.
We made camp as the sun dropped below the tree line, settling into a shallow ravine shielded by a natural overhang of rock. Kobe built the fire while Draven helped Axel arrange the perimeter.
"How are you holding up?" Kobe asked quietly as he fed kindling into the growing flames, his eyes steady on mine.
"Still vertical," I said. "Mostly."
"That counts for something." He gave me a brief nod of acknowledgment and climbed toward the ridge to take the first watch.
Ava sat beside me on a fallen log, her shoulder pressed against mine. The fire crackled and threw orange light across the ravine walls.
My crescent mark pulsed weakly at my brow, its silver glow barely visible—a candle flame guttering in a draft that never stopped.
Draven sat across the fire, cleaning his blade, his jaw set in the tight line that meant he was thinking about things he refused to say aloud. Axel had already retreated into his bedroll.
For a while, the only sounds were the fire and the wind threading through the canopy above.
Then Ava spoke.
"You're thinking about dying."
I didn't look at her. "I'm thinking about a lot of things."
"Don't lie to me, Atlas. I can feel it coming off you like heat from a fever. You've been quiet all day, scared-quiet." She turned toward me on the log, her dark eyes reflecting the flames. "Talk to me."
I stared at the fire. The words were lodged somewhere behind my sternum, tangled with the cold and the fear and the steady, dimming pulse of the mark on my forehead.
"I'm not afraid of dying," I said finally. "I thought I was. When Mia first told me about the eclipse, everything inside me went numb, like my body was already rehearsing the ending. But that feeling passed."
"Then what is it?"
My throat tightened. I glanced across the fire at Draven—the hard line of his shoulders, the way his hands moved over the blade with mechanical precision, the dark circles beneath his eyes that hadn't faded in days.
"Him," I whispered. "Ava, I can't—"
My voice cracked and I pressed my fist against my mouth, breathing hard through my nose until I could speak again.
"You didn't see him after Annabeth. I've heard the stories. Years of nothing—no laughter, no warmth, no life behind his eyes. He became a ghost inside his own body, going through the motions of being Alpha while everything that made him Draven rotted away."
Ava was quiet, listening, her hand finding mine on the log between us.
"If I die," I continued, the words scraping out of me like glass, "he goes back to that empty place where nothing reaches him. And this time it'll be worse, because he let himself love again. He took that risk, for me. He opened every door he'd sealed shut after her, and if I'm the reason those doors slam closed permanently—"
"Atlas—"
"I can't be another Annabeth." The words left me in a rush, raw and desperate. "I can't be the name he whispers in the dark for the rest of his life while the world moves on without him. That terrifies me more than anything the curse could do to my body."
The fire popped and sent embers into the dark sky. Across the flames, Draven's hands had gone still on the blade. He hadn't looked up, but I knew that he'd heard every word.
Ava squeezed my hand with crushing force. "Then we make sure it doesn't happen. We get to those stones, we break this curse, and you come home to him whole. That's the only version of this story I'm willing to accept."
I leaned into her shoulder, exhausted and cold and grateful beyond language for the fierce, unbreakable woman beside me. "When did you get so stubborn?"
"I learned it from watching you refuse to die for the last six months."
A sound that was almost a laugh escaped my lips: thin, fragile, but real.
Kobe's low whistle cut through the moment like a blade.
We all went still. Draven was on his feet instantly, the cleaning rag forgotten, one hand on his blade. Kobe descended from the ridge in three quick strides, his face tight with controlled alarm.
"Wolves," he said quietly. "West, maybe two miles out. Howling in formation—coordinated calls, not hunting cries."
"Nightmaw?" Draven asked, his voice dropping to iron.
"Can't tell from this distance. But they're not Crimson Fang, and they're moving in our direction."
The howls rose again through the darkness—long, low, and predatory—threading between the trees like something alive. The sound crawled across my skin and settled into my bones beside the cold already there.
Draven's eyes found mine across the dying fire, and in them I read the same calculation: deep in unclaimed territory, hours from any ally, with a dying wolf who couldn't run and a fight we couldn't afford.