Chapter Text
Wednesday refused to slow down. Her boots smacked against the earth, roots clawing desperately at her heels. Wind bit at her face, brambles snatched at her sleeves, but she only counted the rhythm of her breath, the pounding of her feet, the sharp sting where another branch scored her thigh. One more step. One more ragged inhale. It was easier to count these things than to remember all the times she had almost lost Enid Sinclair.
But this time, she reminded herself, would be the last.
Behind her, the crunch of twigs splintered and popped in wild cadence; Uncle Fester lurched through the undergrowth, branches slapping at his coat and the battered sack of explosives heaved tight against his ribs. “Y’know,” he gasped, each step pitching him closer, “most folks call this ‘getting lost in the woods.’ I think they’re just in unhappy marriages—because this is quality family time.”
Wednesday ignored him and kept her eyes ahead. The world had contracted to a singular point behind her sternum, a magnetic pull threading straight through bone and muscle; above that, static prickled along her scalp in a relentless wave. Enid was somewhere out there, her blood sinking through snow, mud and shadow, every moment draining more of her life than Wednesday could bear.
Something flickered in the border of her vision: half-solid, half an unwanted memory. Then Agnes stumbled through, arms outstretched for balance. “Tracks!” she blurted. “I—I found tracks. I think. Maybe. They look… wolfy?”
“Wolvine,” Fester corrected, clapping Agnes on the shoulder so hard she flickered again. “Or lupine, if you want to sound pretentious just before you get mauled.”
Wednesday barely looked at them. The pull in her chest wrenched her left, every step magnetized by the ache that lived where Enid had gone. “They’re three hours old,” she told Agnes. “The snow’s already crusted at the edges. She’s not there anymore.”
Agnes stuttered, blinking out like a bad signal, red blooming across her cheeks as shame swallowed her up. “Right. Yes. That. I knew. Just… making sure your whole… brilliant tracking thing wasn’t, you know, broken.”
Fester leaned in toward Agnes, stage-whispering as he trudged. “That’s my niece: a human bloodhound. Emotional baggage sold separately.”
Wednesday’s eyes narrowed, though she refused the temptation to glance. Because if she did, she would see the truth reflected back: the tightness in jaws; the way fingers shook; the thin sheen of sweat at hairlines despite the biting northern cold.
The look of fear.
She could taste it, copper and bitter at the back of her tongue, and she refused to let it name itself.
So, she named evidence instead.
“Her gait is uneven,” Wednesday murmured, scanning the ground. The snow-pack was interrupted here by churned earth and broken twigs, the ghost of a path rather than a road. “Hind legs favoring the left. She’s injured. The gunshot wound has likely reopened.”
And just as she spoke the words, a bolt of answering pain tore through her own side, bright and hot beneath her ribs, sharp enough to catch her breath. She staggered a half-step before forcing her spine upright.
Agnes stilled two paces behind. “Wednesday—are you okay?”
“I am functioning,” Wednesday replied. “That is sufficient.”
There was no point mentioning how the world had just tipped out of true, how the trees had stuttered and blurred, how something behind her forehead kept clawing sideways. It was easier to bite her tongue than to explain the cold, invisible hands that clutched at her throat each time she reached for a psychic echo and found silence.
Morticia’s warning pressed at the edge of her thoughts—a vision of black tears, a memory now as useless as it was inevitable. If her gift burned her hollow, left her bones out here under the frostbitten branches, then at least she would have lost herself chasing something worth the cost.
Wednesday pinched the folded diary page from her pocket, flattening it tight against her chest. Through the rough wool, she could feel the wicked angles of Ophelia’s handwriting biting through the fabric, ink scoring her skin raw. The images flitted through her mind: frantic diagrams, a circle of ravens spiralling into the void; a wolf, gaunt and desperate, with a crown of bones; and the line already carved behind her eyelids:
Where mind is scattered and beast ascendant, follow the heart’s echo. Blood remembers what sight forgets.
She blinked shut her eyes, just long enough to stretch her awareness inward and outward all at once. The world blurred at the edges, then peeled away entirely.
Cold struck first—the deep, marrow-shuddering cold of snow clinging to fur, packed against a body burning with exertion. Muscles ached. Paws slammed into the ground in a relentless rhythm. A rib twinged—no, it screamed—each time lungs dragged in another breath. There was blood in her mouth, and under it all, under the pain and the running and the snapping of teeth somewhere behind her, there was one constant, blazing instinct:
Protect. Protect. Protect the shadow approaching through the trees.
Wednesday’s heart spasmed, stumbling hard enough that she nearly pitched forward. With a torn, rasping breath, she jerked herself back into her own flesh. Her gloved fingers came away trembling as she brushed beneath her eye.
And there, glinting against the leather: a smear of dark crimson.
Fester’s footsteps slowed to a cautious halt. “Kiddo.”
“Don’t.”
He hesitated, then spoke softer. “Just checking you haven’t completely fried yourself. Hate to have dragged all this dynamite out here for nothing. Dead nieces make for terrible company.”
“I will not be dying today,” Wednesday replied. “Enid, however, might—and I find that unacceptable.”
A wet, strangled sound came from Agnes. “We’ll get her. You always—your success rate is, what, ninety percent? Probably higher. That’s… good odds.”
Wednesday’s lip curled into a snarl. “Statistically, I’m due for a failure, but I have no interest in statistics. If the cosmos insists on balancing its books with Enid’s blood, it will have to pry it from my hands.”
They mounted the low rise in silence, and Wednesday caught the faint shift in the earth ahead—a smother of trees closing like jaws, undergrowth churned to blackened mud and fractured slush. She dropped to a crouch, fingers landing on a branch tipped with a dark fluid. Rubbing it between thumb and forefinger, she lifted the stain to her nose.
“Blood,” she murmured. “Enid’s.”
Agnes swallowed audibly. “How do you know? It could be one of the others, or—”
“It is hers,” Wednesday cut in. “And she is still moving. Slower. She is…” she paused, head tilting as she listened to the silence between the wind, “…being herded.”
Fester’s gaze flicked to the trunks nearby, their bark lacerated by deep parallel gouges—not the the ragged trace of claws, but something colder. “Hunters?”
“Perhaps,” Wednesday said. “They’re using the wolves to push her toward a fixed place. A trap, potentially. Or a rendezvous.”
“For what?” Agnes whispered.
Wednesday stared into the knot of trees below. “Information. Leverage. A trophy.”
Or bait.
Bait for her.
The memory of Enid’s grave flickered behind Wednesday’s eyes: rain-slicked stone, Enid’s name gouged into the granite. “I died because of you.”
A jolt of nausea twisted Wednesday’s insides. The taste of cold earth and grief and the sharp steel tang of panic crowded her mouth, clawing for daylight.
No. Terror was a luxury; regret was a delay.
Action was the only acceptable response to the universe’s threats.
She folded the diary page, pressing the crease flat before tucking it into the pocket over her heart. “Agnes,” Wednesday called, “move ahead. Stay close to the trees. You will alert us if anyone or anything approaches the flanks.”
Agnes nodded so rapidly her hair frizzed. “Yes. Yes, I can do that, I promise, I won’t mess this up, I—”
“You will not speak unless there is danger,” Wednesday added. “Sound can travel. So can incompetence.”
Agnes’s lips snapped shut , but she vanished obediently, leaving only the impression of nervous footsteps in the snow.
Fester jogged up. “And what about me?”
“Artillery,” Wednesday said. “Try not to incinerate the entire forest. I may want it intact.”
He beamed, giddy. “Ah. Negotiations after diplomacy fails. I like it.”
“Diplomacy has already failed,” Wednesday replied. “We respond in kind.”
She quickened her pace. The tug in her sternum tightened, dragging her spine forward like hooked wire; the static in her skull sharpened from a background hiss to a high, needling wine that made her teeth ache. There was no need to reach for the echo now—it was so present that for one vertiginous moment she knew what it was to feel snow beneath paws that were not hers, to have lungs on fire, to have a throat bloody from howling.
The snarl reached them before the open ground did—a guttural, shaking growl that rattled tree trunks, a sound Wednesday recognized; when Enid Sinclair stood between her and a Hyde. But this was somehow heavier, ragged with exhaustion, thrashed through with violence. A second, sharper snarl followed, drowned instantly by the wet snap of teeth into flesh.
Without thinking, Wednesday threw her hand back to the others: silence. She sank into a crouch and crept the final distance until the clearing came into view.
Enid dominated it.
She filled the space, immense, monstrous in the half-light, towering even larger than Wednesday remembered from the Jericho woods; gold fur bristling, every sinew coiled, braced above the body of another wolf she pinned to the ground. Her whole flank was angled to shield the slope, gums peeled back to reveal blood-slicked teeth. Injuries were everywhere, impossible to look away from: a ragged gash split her left side, fur glued into wet, clotted ropes. One eye was nearly blinded, lid glued down with blood, iris swelling dark behind it. Her leg—the same one Wednesday had seen torn by a bullet, not so long ago—was drenched fresh, the old scar gone beneath a new, savage wound. And her ribcage stuttered visibly with a hitch where bone gave way.
Wednesday triaged every injury even as something fragmented inside her, hairline cracks running through a heart she’d never thought fragile. Because she did this. Not with her hands, but in her absence, by failing to arrive first, by leaving Enid exposed to hunters, to packs, to whatever horror had done this.
Two more wolves circled just out of Enid’s immediate reach, their movements wrong for wild things. They didn’t lunge at her; they drew closer in coordinated arcs. One kept Enid’s attention with feints, while the other edged behind her, waiting, searching for any opening.
“Those aren’t campers,” Fester muttered, peering past her shoulder. “Those are… professionals.”
“They’re trained,” Wednesday replied, eyes darkening with calculation. “Pack formations. Alternating pressure. They’re funneling her toward—” Her gaze flicked to the far edge of the clearing, where it opened to a gap that led deeper into the forest, “—a channel. They want her moving, not dead.”
Agnes pressed close, crouched at Wednesday’s other side. “She’s so—she’s huge, she’s—oh God, is that really Enid? Are we sure? Because that’s more like—a unicorn, but if a unicorn was a chainsaw and—”
“Agnes,” Wednesday snapped, “if you continue narrating, I will see to it personally that you are the pack's next enrichment activity.”
The girl’s mouth clamped shut.
Wednesday turned her eyes back to the fray. In the center, Enid feinted left, jaws flashing with a savage snap that sent one wolf recoiling. Before it could recover, she pivoted, blocking another wolf’s lunge at the slope.
Protect. Protect.
The sensation hit Wednesday like a thrown knife—a sudden, crushing overlay of Enid’s body over her own again. Snow under paws, slick with blood. The sweet, metallic taste of it. Pain lancing up her side with every twist and every breath. Rhythmic thunder at the edge of hearing—a heartbeat behind the trees, dark and familiar and completely Wednesday’s. A scent on the wind—ink and rain and grave dirt and something that had become synonymous with home.
Protect the shadow. Protect the heartbeat. Protect her.
Wednesday’s grip crushed the bark beneath her hand, splinters biting into her palm. Her vision flickered, wolf overlaid on her limbs. She bit down hard, copper blooming on her tongue, clawing her way back to herself.
“She knows you’re here,” Fester whispered.
“Of course.” The answer came strangled, voice scraping through her tightening throat. “She always does.”
One of the wolves made its choice at last, launching itself in a low streak toward Enid’s exposed thigh. Enid met it with a brutal slam of her shoulder, the impact running straight into her ribs. Bones protested; Wednesday felt an answering flare of white-hot agony under her own skin, writhing a choked sound from her. The second wolf took the opportunity, darting around the collision, jaws not for the throat but the soft underbelly—it used the body at Enid’s feet for leverage, snapping forward. Enid’s snarl shattered into a ragged roar as she twisted, jaws snapping shut on the attacker’s neck. There was a wet crunch before the wolf shrieked and fell limp.
“Attagirl,” Fester breathed, his hand fisting tighter around the mouth of his canvas bag, metal glinting somewhere inside. “Hold on a little longer, pup. Uncle Fester brought party favors.”
Wednesday barely knew she was moving until she was already on her feet, reaching for the knife at her belt, parting the branches so she could step into the moonlight’s edge. Rationality—the calculations, the measured odds, the obvious futility of walking into a blood-slick kill-zone—all of it meant nothing. Enid was still bleeding, and Wednesday had promised the universe would not take her again.
Fester’s hand clamped around her elbow, yanking her back before she could cross fully into the clearing. “Whoa there, homicidal Bambi,” he hissed. “Walk out there now and they’ll treat it like a two-for-one special. Let me teach them about controlled detonation first.”
“There is nothing controlled about you,” Wednesday spat, twisting against his hold, but he didn’t release her.
“Kiddo,” Fester said. Grief sharpened his voice, enough to freeze her mid-struggle. “If you run in without a plan, you die. If you die, so does she. At least wait long enough for me to tip the odds even a little.”
“You assume I care for odds,” Wednesday countered, her eyes fixed and frozen on Enid’s battered body. “I’m interested in outcomes.”
Agnes trembled beside them, fighting the urge to vanish entirely. “She’s really… she’s protecting us. She keeps—every time they try and go this way, she—” Her voice cracked. “She won’t let them get to you.”
As if summoned by her words, Enid’s head jerked up, her good eye searching, sight latching onto the sliver of black in the trees. Her torn ears strained forward, catching every sound.
Wednesday felt it in her marrow—the exact moment Enid found her, the world collapsing down to that single sapphire iris as it locked on her. There was nothing else; no sound, no logic, just a look threaded with language older than time.
Mine, it said. Mine to protect. Mine to bleed for.
Wednesday didn’t have time to move before the last rival wolf struck. It had been lurking, patient, waiting for its packmates to whittle Enid down. Now it broke cover in a rush of gray, barrelling from the shadows for the opening at the treeline—for the girl who’d crept too close to the heart. Wednesday saw every detail: the arch of its back, the bitter curl of its mouth, the intent to tear out her throat.
But Enid saw it faster.
She launched herself off her failing legs in a motion that was less leap and more a desperate, whole hearted collision with inevitability. The blow caught the rival wolf off its stride, colliding midair, and Enid wrenched herself so the incoming teeth found her and not Wednesday.
Pain ripped through her—through them—as old wounds tore open. Wednesday doubled over as if shot, a white-hot agony detonating beneath her ribs so intense she tasted bile.
Both wolves hit the ground in a tangle of fur and blood. Enid’s snarl shredded into a hoarse, agonized cry that made Wednesday’s vision briefly blacken. For a heartbeat, it seemed she wouldn’t rise again. Then, with a trembling effort that was so quintessentially, infuriatingly Enid, the blonde wolf heaved up, shoved the limp gray body away with a staggering shove, and turned. She placed herself directly between Wednesday and the rest of the world, bleeding, shaking, breath whistling audibly in her chest—her massive frame forming a barrier.
Wednesday stared at her, heart hammering her ribcage with enough violence to imprint through fabric and bone. There was no time left for analysis or restraint; whatever plan she imagined constructing obliterated the moment Enid chose her over survival—again.
“Now,” Wednesday barked. “Fester. Whatever abomination you brought. Do it.”
Fester was already grinning, eyes wild. “Alright, doggy diplomacy coming up,” he muttered, voice laced with glee. He hauled out a battered contraption, the metal scarred from god-knows-how-many field tests, and flicked a switch. It wound up in a shrill, bone-scraping whine that made even Agnes flinch. “Cover your eyes, cover your ears, and think real hard about not exploding.”
The bystanding wolves smelled it, Wednesday realized—the sharpened edge of ozone, the metallic bite of magnesium, and beneath it all the unmistakable sourness of Fester’s signature chemistry. The pack quivered, indecision flaring in their eyes. Fester raised his arm and sent the bomb arcing over the torn and muddied snow, clearing the sprawled wolf, landing with wet finality in the slush beyond Enid.
The world inhaled.
Then it screamed.
First came the light—a blinding, merciless burst that transformed the clearing into the sterile white of a surgical table. Sound followed: a layered, spine-shaking shriek, as though the air itself was being ripped apart. High, shrill keening warred against a deep, physical thump, all threaded with an electric crackle.
Enid convulsed, her body arching as the shockwave caught her. Wednesday felt it in tandem, like a secondary echo riding the shockwave—Enid’s hearing overwhelmed, her vision wiped, every nerve screaming. The wolf’s lips peeled back around a raw snarl as she hunched lower, still angled toward them even as her senses were ripped out from under her.
Protect. Protect. Even blind. Even deaf.
The realization wrenched Wednesday forward. Fester’s hand caught at her sleeve again, but she shook him off with enough force to snap the seam.
Discipline or training or whatever foul conditioning had honed the wolves cracked under the pressure of the blast. One bolted immediately, crashing into the treeline. Another lurched after it, half-stumbling, head shaking frantically. A third tried to hold position, teeth bared at Enid, but a second, jagged aftershock hit it squarely. It flinched, threw one last ragged look at them, and vanished into shadow with its comrades.
Good. Let them run. Let them regroup or howl for further reinforcements—it would not matter. She and Enid would be gone before any return, and the wolves would remember this fear.
“Cover our retreat,” Wednesday called back to Fester. “Drive them further if they try to circle, but nothing lethal. I want them frightened, not extinct.”
Fester saluted from his crouch. “I have just the thing for that!”
Agnes remained plastered to a tree trunk, fingers digging into the bark. “I can’t—I can’t see, I—I’m seeing stars, I—”
“Blink,” Wednesday ordered, already halfway to Enid. “And do not faint. Indulgence of that sort is beneath you.”
Up close, the damage stopped being a list and became an assault. The deep gash along her left flank was worse than it looked from the treeline. Blood dripped steadily from the reopened gunshot at her leg, streaking her pale fur in ugly, spreading rivulets; the skin swollen and angry, the scar tissue given way. Her breath whistled, a wrong note in of music that signaled cracked ribs, if not snapped clean through. Her right eye remained swollen nearly shut, the lid purpled beneath the fur, lashes stuck in clumps; blood matted the fur along the side of her face, pouring from some cut at the brow that had long since clotted, reopened, then clotted again. Smaller bite marks dotted her shoulders and neck. And her claws dug into the churned snow just to keep herself upright.
Wednesday noted each injury in a single sweep even as something inside peeled open rib by rib. Enid Sinclair—ridiculous, infuriating, incandescent Enid—was still braced in front of her like a shield made of ruined flesh and bone, head lifted, good eye scanning for threats through the afterimage haze.
And when Wednesday stepped forward, it found her.
Enid jerked back, shoulders knotting; her ears flattened, body drawing in tight, as if braced for another assault. The sight made Wednesday’s hands hover. Everything in her, every thread and nerve, threatened to unravel into a sob she wouldn’t let out; her jaws worked hard, holding the sound behind clenched teeth. Rage flared at the wolves, at the hunters, at fate—not because Enid flinched from her, but because the world had taught her to.
Slowly, Wednesday lowered herself to her knees in the filthy snow.
“Enid,” she whispered, each syllable torn raw; she tasted iron, fire, the salt of desperate hope. “It’s me.”
Enid’s breath shivered. She drew in the scent: Wednesday’s coat, her skin, the earth of the graveyard and ink. Her head tipped, a faint surrender, but her trembling worsened.
Wednesday raised one gloved hand. She wanted, needed, to pull Enid close—to bury her face in the wolf’s fur and hide there—but she remembered how animals recoiled when cornered and hurt. She remembered, too, how Enid recoiled from herself, afraid she’d break anything she loved.
Her palm rested gently against the side of Enid’s muzzle.
Heat bled through, fever-hot, the shimmer of exhaustion and shock. Enid jerked at the touch, reflex snapping her jaws half-open, a broken snarl falling apart. Wednesday’s hand remained cupped to Enid’s face, thumb rubbing a line through the sticky, matted fur, her motions gentling as if she could soothe both a wild thing and a shattered girl—the one who’d filled their room with color and warmth.
“I’m here,” Wednesday murmured, voice lowering further. “You didn’t fail. You won’t lose me again.”
For a moment, nothing shifted; the aftershock still rang, wind still howled, wolves still gave distant calls. Metal clanked as Fester armed something volatile, and Agnes keened, brittle with fear.
Then Enid swayed forward, closing the space between them.
It was so slight—a meager weight settling into Wednesday’s palm. Yet for her, it might as well have been tectonic: everything spun, shifted, the world’s center suddenly redrawn. Enid’s jaw, locked hard enough to shatter stone, then loosened; any rigid snarl slipped away, and her lips drew quietly over her teeth as an exhale slid across Wednesday’s wrist. Her eyes fluttered—the good one opening in slow confusion, wildness receding by degrees. And there, in the thin gleam of recognition, Wednesday saw it: the stubborn piece of Enid she had lost herself to. Even now, it fought through marrow-deep pain and animal instinct.
Something gave in Wednesday’s chest. A hard, hot knot burned upward, threatening the humiliation of tears. She let her other hand rise, cupping Enid’s head on both sides,.
“Good girl,” she whispered, the words unexpected and painfully unfiltered. “Stay with me.”
The last sliver of distance closed between them as Wednesday leaned in. Snow slid beneath her knees and nearly sent her off balance, but she refused to let go. The wolf’s brow met her hands, rough fur cold and sticky against her palms, and Enid shifted again, nosing forward until her weight dragged downward: chin to palm, then dipping to Wednesday’s sternum. She settled there, head collapsed against Wednesday as if she would keep them attached to this world.
A strangled sound broke from Agnes behind them. Wednesday didn’t turn; she already knew—the wet, shaking breaths said more than words ever could. The girl was crying, as surely as Enid bled.
Fester, for once, went quiet. Only the faint scrape of his boots sounded for a beat, and when he finally spoke, it was low rough, “Y’know kid,” he said, “it’s a messed-up world where someone loves you more than she loves surviving.”
Wednesday breathed in, ignoring the ache that was now spreading through her. She kept her hands buried in Enid’s fur, feeling the pressure radiate behind her breastbone where Enid’s skull pressed. She looked down and saw the truth of it in the tension that still held her: Enid wasn’t gone, not wholly. She was suspended, wedged somewhere jagged and liminal between wolf and girl, the mind battered but not erased. Instinct flooded, but memories hadn’t drowned.
Ophelia’s diaries mentioned this. Wednesday felt the echo of a page beneath her fingertips—the one she had read last night.
When mind is fractured between beast and self, the heart may recognize what memory cannot.
In theory, it should have been encouraging—a sign the void hadn’t fully claimed her, that the psychic riptide Ophelia warned about hadn’t finished its work. But in practice, this drawn-out limbo was a butcher’s blade. It was killing Enid faster than any clean, mortal wound. The frame of a body could not serve two masters at once.
Wednesday bowed her head until her chin grazed the sticky, blood-matted crown of Enid’s fur. Her own lips hovered just shy of the wolf’s torn hide. “You are not staying here. Do you hear me, Enid? You do not get to choose martyrdom as a lifestyle.”
A sound came from deep in Enid’s chest—a broken, shredded noise, half snarl and half plea. It quaked through her, and she slumped harder into Wednesday’s arms, giving herself over entirely.
That was what did it. Not Morticia’s forebodings, or Ophelia’s dire warnings, or the gnawing threat of psychic burnout. Not even the battered diary. No, it was this: the weight of Enid’s head bowed in her hands, the knowledge that if Wednesday let go now, she would lose her forever.
There would be no more waiting, no more theory. The ritual Ophelia described—a last resort, dangerous and untested, a gamble no sane person would make for another’s sake—was no longer a question of should.
It was law. And she had to do it tonight.
“Fester,” Wednesday said suddenly, lifting her head, “Your ‘borrowed’ cabin. We go there. Now.”
Fester’s eyes narrowed, instantly catching the verdict already written on her face. “Thought you’d never ask,” he muttered, and then, sober, “But we gotta move fast. She’s bleeding out.”
Enid moved, answering the urgency.
One moment she leaned into Wednesday’s chest. The next, some furious animal instinct seized her and she jammed her paws hard into the slush, muscles bunched and shuddering beneath Wednesday’s grip. She forced herself higher, shoving her bulk between Wednesday and the woods, the drive to shield surfacing even now. The effort tore through the last of her control. Her whole frame shook, legs quaking under the weight.
Wednesday clamped down with both arms, the warning slipping free too late. “Stop.”
Enid’s hind leg gave out. She pitched sideways in a sickening lurch, nearly smothering Wednesday. But Wednesday braced, boots carving furrows in the snow as she gathered Enid’s dead weight up and into her arms, wrestling the massive head and chest back to her own body. The strain lanced through her spine, but she barely registered it above the hot spill of blood that smeared her coat, soaking through to her skin.
“I said stop,” Wednesday hissed into the wolf’s ear, her voice shaking with effort. “For once in your life, obey an order that involves your survival!”
But convulsions ripped through Enid, arching her spine against Wednesday’s hold. Her claws shredded the snow, jaws clacking shut on nothing; the dry snap of her teeth made Agnes flinch. Each spasm left her weaker, heavier, the slack of her body sinking deeper into Wednesday’s arms. And it was the stillness after that terrified Wednesday most.
Beyond them, the howling changed shape, threading through the trees in tight, hungry unison.
Fester whipped his head toward the sound. “They’re calling reinforcements,” he said. “We’ve got minutes. Maybe less, if one of those furry mercenaries carries a grudge.”
“Then we stop wasting them.” Wednesday’s arms were beginning to scream, but she made no move to shift her grip, not even for a moment—not if it meant the wolf would feel less securely held. “Agnes.”
Agnes startled, blinking, tears shining on her lashes. “Y-yes?”
“You start ahead. Ten meters, no further,” Wednesday ordered. “You watch the path. If you spot anything—a wolf, a person, anything—you signal, not narrate. One word. Got it?”
Agnes nodded, jaw set, and dashed off to the nearest break in the trees, swiping at her cheeks as she went.
Fester heaved himself in behind Enid’s limp form, already rolling up his sleeves. “Alright, big girl,” he muttered, eyes lingering on her raw, mangled flesh with vague respect. “Let your weird uncle help out before you end up crushing Wednesday to powder.”
Wednesday tightened her arms around Enid’s chest and shoulders, enough to give Fester room. He ducked down, hands careful as he slid them under Enid’s back legs, avoiding the worst of the torn muscles. On an unspoken count, they lifted.
The weight was monstrous. For a second, her knees nearly caved, but pure spite and Enid’s limp warmth kept her locked upright,.
“Move,” Wednesday gritted.
They morphed into an ungainly beast of three, driven by desperation, wading into the timber with Agnes bobbing ahead, darting from shadow to shadow as their lookout. Branches tore at Wednesday’s coat, at Enid’s battered fur; Fester hissed curses when a low limb smacked across his shoulders, but kept moving, boots fighting for purchase between slabs of treacherous ice and hungry, thawing mud.
“You’re doing great, pup,” Fester huffed, fingers flexing as Enid’s back paws threatened to slip away. “Would’ve preferred board games for family night, but hey, cardio’s healthy.”
“Do not drop her.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, niece. I like having all my limbs.”
Enid’s head slumped heavily onto Wednesday’s shoulder, a weight more alarming than it should have been. Wednesday’s composure cracked as she slid her hand up to support Enid’s skull, her thumb brushing over the uneven edge where fur met torn flesh, tracing absentminded circles there. “Enid,” she whispered, pressing her lips closer to the mess of fur and blood. “Focus on my voice. On the fact that you will be sleeping in a bed tonight and not in a shallow forest grave. I refuse to have suffered so much color exposure just for you to die somewhere as pedestrian as a clearing.”
Enid didn’t respond at first. Then their steps caught on a half-buried branch, and something shivered against Wednesday’s skin—a thin, ragged whine, caught somewhere between pain and disagreement. Enid’s paws scrabbled weakly, claws barely grazing the air before Fester’s arms pinned them against her side.
They kept moving. The trees pulled apart at the crest of a gentle slope, peeling away to show the clearing behind them. Wednesday let herself glance back.
Silhouettes lined the far ridge—a row of wolves, at least six, maybe more. They weren’t moving. They weren’t pacing. They were simply lined up in an unsettling file, their eyes glinting as they caught the spill of moonlight. Every single gaze locked on Wednesday and the battered, bleeding wolf she refused to set down. Ears sharp, heads up, bodies waiting in a way that felt less like fear and more like they were having a conversation she couldn’t hear. Like the next move had already been decided. Like the only thing left was to follow through.
Wednesday turned away, jaw clenched.
If it was a battle they wanted, it was a battle they’d get. But with battles came wars—and if they wanted a war, Wednesday would make sure they received only one thing:
A massacre.