BOUND TO THE SCARS

Chapter 5: The Edge of the Divide

The wet pine needles felt like ice needles pressing into Vera's bare soles, but she did not stop. She could not stop. Every instinct screamed at her that the moment her feet slowed down, the pack hounds would be loosed from their wooden kennels.

The forest was a wall of black shapes, slick tree trunks, and sharp underbrush that tore at her thin linen tunic. Branches whipped across her face, leaving thin, stinging cuts along her cheeks and brow. Blood trickled down into the corner of her lips, warm and salty against her frozen skin, but she licked it away and kept driving her legs forward.

Her lungs felt like they were filled with crushed glass. Every breath pulled in the raw night air, cold enough to make her throat ache and her sore ribs throbbed with a dull, sickening pulse. Yet beneath the pain, something vital and wild was beginning to wake up inside her.

Keep going, Nix rasped, her small spirit surging upward into Vera's chest. Do not look back. Never look back at that place.

How far to the fence line? Vera asked silently, her mind racing as she bounded over a rotting, moss-covered log.

A mile. Maybe less. I can smell the iron wire.

Nix was right. The scent of wet pine and deep leaf mold was slowly giving way to the cold, metallic tang of rusted iron mesh and heavy wolfsbane spray. The Iron Paw pack did not just build wooden fences to mark their eastern boundary; they soaked the razor wire in concentrated wolfsbane oil to keep rogues out and keep their lower-tier members from thinking about running away.

Even from a quarter-mile out, the sour, medicinal stench of the poison drifted through the trees, making Vera's stomach turn with instant memory. For six years, that sour sludge had been forced down her throat to keep her wolf weak, small, and broken. Hearing her own wolf speak clearly now was proof that the poison was finally losing its grip.

A sudden, sharp howl shattered the dark forest behind her.

It was not the wind. It was a long, mournful cry that rose from the center of the pack compound, echoed almost immediately by three more low, guttural barks from the northern ridge.

They had found Marcus.

Vera’s heart gave a violent, painful kick against her ribs. She sprinted faster, her knees lifting high, her toes digging deep into the slick mud. The shouts of men were muffled by the dense trees, but the sharp, rhythmic snapping of heavy paws breaking through dead underbrush was terrifyingly clear. The border patrols had been alerted.

She slammed through a thick patch of wild blackberries, the thorns dragging across her bare arms and leaving bloody ribbons behind, but she did not flinch. She broke through the edge of the thicket and stumbled into a small clearing.

There it was.

The eastern boundary fence stretched through the trees like a dark, jagged spine. It stood ten feet tall, constructed of thick wooden posts woven with thick coils of razor wire that glinted wetly beneath the hidden moon. At the base, the ground was cleared of all grass, stripped down to raw gray dirt that had been drenched in black wolfsbane oil.

Vera skidded to a stop at the edge of the cleared earth. Her chest heaved, her breath coming out in thick white plumes against the freezing air.

She pulled the crushed piece of parchment from her tunic hem, her hands shaking so badly she could barely hold it steady. Clara’s map showed a small drainage culvert beneath the third wooden post past the boundary marker, a gap where small runoff streams had eroded the soil beneath the iron wire over years of heavy rains.

"Third post," Vera whispered, her hoarse voice vanishing into the sound of the rushing wind. "Third post to the left."

She moved along the treeline, keeping her shadow buried in the high grass until she spotted the thick oak timber marked with a rough notch. Just beneath it, hidden by a heavy patch of dead ferns, lay a low gap in the muddy bank. The iron wire hung barely eight inches above the mud, dripping with black, foul-smelling poison.

Behind her, the snapping of branches grew loud. A low, vicious growl echoed from the trees less than two hundred yards back.

"Over here!" a man's voice roared through the wood. "I smell the cellar rat! She went toward the fence!"

Vera did not pause to think. She threw herself flat onto her stomach, burying her chest directly into the freezing, oil-soaked mud.

The stench of the wolfsbane was suffocating. It burned her nostrils, making her eyes sting with hot tears as she shoved her head beneath the rusted wire. The razor-sharp barbs caught on the shoulders of her tunic, ripping the fabric with a loud tear.

Push! Nix screamed, her spirit flaring with a desperate, furious light inside Vera's chest. Push through it!

Vera dug her elbows into the freezing slush, ignoring the cold metal scraping raw tracks across her back. She dragged her hips beneath the lowest strand of wire. A sharp barb caught the skin along her ribs, dragging a deep, hot line across her side, but she shoved forward anyway, her face plastered against the wet earth until her feet cleared the boundary line.

She scrambled up the muddy embankment on the other side, turning around just in time to see the brush break open across the fence.

Two large grey wolves burst out of the pine trees, their eyes glowing like yellow coals in the dark. They skidded to a halt at the edge of the cleared dirt, their lips pulling back over long, wet fangs as they stared at her through the iron mesh. Behind them, a heavy-set guard broke through the brush, holding a long spear tipped with silver.

The guard stopped at the fence, his eyes widening in complete shock as he saw Vera standing on the opposite bank. She was covered from head to toe in black mud, her tunic torn to shreds, her skin bleeding, and her dark hair wild around her shoulders.

"Vera!" the guard shouted, his voice laced with forced Alpha authority, trying to reach across the boundary. "Get back over here right now! You step one foot further onto Silver Crest land and they will kill you on sight!"

Vera stood her ground on the slick mud. Her chest rose and fell in heavy, ragged gasps. She looked at the guard, she looked at the snorting wolves behind the wire, and then she looked at her own bloody hands.

She did not say a word. She did not scream, she did not hurl insults, and she did not beg.

Instead, Vera slowly lifted her chin. She spat a mouthful of dark mud and blood onto the ground right in front of the boundary line, turned her back on the Iron Paw pack, and walked into the deep, unknown dark of the wild mountain valley.