She was already getting up.
Her teeth were set against each other and her right hand was driving into the frost-hard ground for leverage. The fury of a body refusing to accept its own failure burned hotter than any exhaustion she had felt in the clearing.
She was upright by the time she heard him coming. She heard him before she saw him.
The sound of Damien Cross moving through a battlefield at full commitment was different from the sound of him fighting at the center line. The controlled tactical engagement of a commander holding a position was gone, replaced by something that had shed the controller entirely. It was the sound of a wolf that had reduced its entire operational logic to a single coordinate.
He came through the smoke like something the dark had built specifically. She w
