"Stop," he murmured.
Magnolia froze. The hush snapped like a branch under too much snow.
"What?"
Beckett brushed past her, boots crunching frost. His eyes flicked to the trees ahead , a ring of birch, their trunks bent inward like ribs guarding a throat too hungry to spit out its secrets.
"There," he said. "Feel it?"
Magnolia closed her eyes. The wolf at her center pressed its snout to the hush , ears pinned, hackles bristling. Beneath the hush, something pulsed , faint but steady, like a heartbeat beneath frozen earth.
"Camille," she rasped.
Beckett's grin was a flash of teeth in the gray light. "Or what's left of her."
He shouldered his bow off his back, string creaking in the hush. "You ready?"
Magnolia huffed a laugh that turned brittle on her tongue. "No."
