DEMI
I waited until Black Mountain stopped pretending to sleep.
That took longer than it should have. The pack house did not fall quiet all at once; it settled in layers: closing doors, fading voices, the last clatter from the kitchen, then the noises that belonged to wolves rather than walls—boots on gravel, patrol murmurs beneath windows, a warning bark near the eastern line. Even silence here kept watch.
I sat on the edge of my bed with Hannah’s map glowing on my phone and my backpack open beside me. The route looked simple in the clean, traitorous way maps always did: out the window, across the side garden, past the old wood store, behind the training hall, then the lower trail during the patrol gap between midnight and twelve-oh-seven. Beneath the route, Hannah had added one fin
