Sarah stood frozen, staring at the scene before her. Without thinking about it, her legs stumbled forward, but something was holding her back. She struggled against it. “Let me go!”
Finally, the pressure disappeared, and she staggered forward. Thomas moved aside, making space for her as she grabbed Nathan’s hand.
“He’s going to be okay, right?”
Thomas was wiping sweat out of his eyes, his expression bleak. “We won’t stop trying.”
Sarah could see that something was wrong. The color was leaching out of Nathan’s face fast, despite all the frantic activity around him from his brothers working to save him.
“I can help,” she muttered, grabbing Thomas’ arm. “I can help. We’re linked. I can give him some of my strength like he gave me his when he was hurt.”
“No, you can’t,” Thomas said shortly, tightening a bandage around Nathan’s chest.
“Why not? Just tell me how, I’ll do it.”
Thomas made an impatient gesture to Gareth, who pulled her back. “It won’t work that way, Sarah. The ritual works because Bears are so strong, we have extra strength to give. You’re human. Your strength is nothing compared to ours. You’d die.”
“I don’t care!” Sarah shouted. “It’s a risk I’ll take. Are you telling me Nathan’s going to be okay like this?” She gestured to the frantic huddle around Nathan. Gareth opened his mouth but didn’t reply.
“Don’t you dare!” Thomas warned. “Nathan would kill you if he knew what you’re thinking.”
“At least he’d be alive to hate me,” Gareth said. He turned to Sarah. “Hold his hand, will your strength to him, let go of it and imagine it floating toward and into him.”
Sarah didn’t wait to be told twice. There was shouting and movement all around her, but it faded into the background as she dodged past Thomas and grabbed Nathan’s hand. She closed her eyes, trying to visualize as Gareth told her to—that her strength was floating toward Nathan. She didn’t know if it was working or not, but everything had suddenly gone very quiet.
She opened her eyes to find herself somewhere she remembered from what seemed like a distant dream. Everything was gray, and the landscape was flat with a few dead looking trees. She looked around. Nathan had to be here somewhere. Sure enough, she heard sounds coming from behind her and sprinted toward them.
She expected to see a well. She remembered being in a well last time. What she saw this time was altogether more alarming. She could just make out Nathan behind the wings of an enormous bird. He was struggling to get free of it, but it was clearly much stronger than he was.
“Nathan!” She ran toward him. He was trying to stay on the ground, but the bird was lifting him, his feet inching off the ground.
She grabbed him around the waist and pulled. The bird flapped its wings and cawed angrily. It looked down at Sarah, and she found herself looking into blank, black eyes. She tried to look away, but she couldn’t. Those eyes were drawing her in. She felt her arms loosening, automatically giving in to the bird’s will.
Nathan made a noise of pain, and Sarah jerked out of her trance, yanking on the bird’s hard claws, trying to pry them off Nathan. It seemed intent on carrying him off—to where she didn’t know, but she didn’t doubt that wherever it was, it would be somewhere from which she could never get him back.
Even as she struggled, she knew she could never unlock these talons by herself.
“Nathan! Nathan, you need to help me.”
He didn’t respond in any way. She didn’t even know if he could hear her.
Sarah grabbed his hand, forcing his fingers around the bird’s talons. “Pull, Nathan, pull them off.”
She yanked desperately at his hand, and he responded. The bird screeched angrily as its claws were pried away from Nathan. Sarah positioned his other hand and helped him pull.
As the bird finally let go of them, they fell hard. Sarah hadn’t realized how high above the ground they had been lifted.
The wind was knocked out of her, but Nathan was showing no sign of moving, and the bird was coming in for another attack. Gasping, she staggered to her feet, raising her fists. She wouldn’t let it take him. She waited, ready to throw herself at it, pull out its feathers, or stick her fingers right into its black eyes. Whatever it took…
The bird seemed to hesitate, and with a final loud screech, it turned and flapped away. Sarah stayed frozen, waiting for it to return and renew the attack, but it didn’t. Only when it had become a speck in the distance did she fall to her knees beside Nathan.
“Nathan, are you okay?”
His gaze moved blankly over her, as though he didn’t recognize her.
“Nathan? Talk to me.”
He didn’t respond. He just stared at her.
“Come on,” Sarah said, tugging on his arm. He stood up obediently and let her lead him across the gray plains, as far away from the monster bird as possible.
“Where are we? How did we get out the last time? Nathan?”
She had vague, splintered memories of the gray world the last time she was here, but she couldn’t remember how they’d gotten out.
Nathan stared straight ahead. She stopped and turned to face him. He stopped too, his gaze vacant. “Nathan!”
He didn’t respond. Sarah felt like sitting down and crying. Clearly, Nathan wasn’t going to be much help in getting out of here. She didn’t know what was wrong with him… What if she had done something wrong? What if she’d somehow damaged him, made him into this strange zombie?
Mustering all her resolve, she took his hand again and started leading him forwards. With every step, they took, it seemed harder to take another, as though this land was leeching the very life out of her. She began to stagger but kept going. It was the only thing she could do, and she was going to keep doing it.
Nathan seemed to start resisting her, pulling back. “Come on, Nathan, please. I can’t drag you. You need to help me.”
Nathan stopped completely and she turned to him. “Nathan, what—”
She didn’t finish the sentence because she saw quite clearly “what.” The ground that she was sure just a few minutes ago had been hard and firm seemed to have turned to some kind of gooey gray mud. She jumped and yanked her feet upward, but the mud only seemed to be around Nathan.
“Come on, it’s just a patch,” she said encouragingly. “Just a silly patch of mud. Just get past it and you’ll be able to walk normally again.”
She tugged on his arm, but it soon became clear that he couldn’t move. His feet were encased up to the ankles in mud.
“Okay, Nathan, come on,” she said, leaning down and grabbing his leg. “Put your hands on my shoulders. Here.” She forced his hands to clench down on her shoulders, but he gripped lightly at best. With a giant yank, she pulled one of his feet out of the mud. As she expected, he lurched backward. His light grip left her shoulders as he fell back. Sarah shrieked and grabbed his arms, pulling him upright.
“No,” she moaned, hooking his ankle under his foot to stop it returning to the mud. “Come on! Just take a step now, Nathan.”
With his foot free, he easily took the next step, seemingly willing to go along with whatever she said—in some limited capacity at least. Sarah helped him put weight on the foot and worked on extricating the next one. Finally, she had him take another step, liberating both feet.
“Okay, let’s go now. I don’t think we should spend any longer here than we have to. I feel like this place is taking my life slowly from my body…”
She tugged at his hand again, but once again, Nathan didn’t move. When Sarah looked down, she felt like bursting into tears. The ground that had been solid a moment ago had once again turned to soft, sloppy mud, and Nathan was sinking into it.
“No, no, no,” she muttered wildly. “I am not losing you, Nathan. Stay with me.”
Nathan stared blankly ahead, not even blinking. Sarah pulled as hard as she could, but every second he was sinking deeper and deeper, and she couldn’t pull him out. She didn’t know what would happen if Nathan suffocated in this gray world, but she was sure it couldn’t be good.
Sarah cast wildly around and grabbed a long, thick branch from the ground. She placed it in front of Nathan, who was now up to his waist.
“Hold this, alright, Nathan? When you get up to your neck, hold this branch. It’ll keep you up. It’s braced on the solid ground on either side of this mud patch. Hold it, okay?”
She took his hands and tried to show him, but what if he didn’t hold on? What if he couldn’t—like he couldn’t hold onto her shoulder? She couldn’t risk it.
Pulling her jacket off, Sarah quickly tore it into strips. She tied one securely around each of Nathan’s upper arms and tied them to the stick. That should keep his head above the mud…
Though it was the last thing in the world she felt like doing, Sarah ran back to the place where the bird had left them. She stared hopelessly up at the gray sky. “Hello, here I am! I’m right here, come and get me if you can!”
She barely had a second to jump away. The monstrous bird appeared out of nowhere. Sarah sprinted back to Nathan as fast as she could, knowing she could as easily be bringing death to him as life… The bird cawed loudly and snapped its jaws at her.
Nathan’s head was lolling back perilously close to the suffocating mud, but the branch seemed to be holding him in place.
Sarah dove for him, not hesitating as she slid into the mud with him. Using the strength from the training he’d given her, she fastened her legs tightly around his waist, hoping it would be enough.
The bird swooped. She held her arm up and cried out as a claw tore at her flesh.
Her body tried to shy away from the pain, but she’d lose her chance if she let it injure her any more. Her hand snatched wildly, grabbing the sharp talons. They cut into her palm, but she held on. She swung her other hand wildly until it found the bird’s leg. The thing was so huge it couldn’t reach her properly when she was hanging onto its legs.
As she had hoped, it tried to flap away, to get a bit of distance so as to dismember her properly. Nathan’s weight in the mud pulled at her legs, and she tightened her muscles, holding onto him with everything she had.
Slowly, very slowly, she and Nathan were pulled up out of the mud. The bird kept rising, and she held on. She couldn’t let them fall back to the ground. It would just turn to mud again. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold on though…
Sarah’s arms and legs were cramping. She couldn’t do this by herself. “Nathan, come on, hold on.”
She pulled at his hand and almost cried in relief when he gripped the talons strongly, taking his own weight.
The bird flew and flew, cawing angrily all the time. Sarah took her chance when they flew over what looked like a long rocky plain, kind of like a flat mountain. Surely rock couldn’t turn to mud? She waited until they were low enough and then let go.
The fall jarred her, and she toppled over, clutching her ankle. The monster bird flew on. It didn’t seem to want anything more to do with them.
“Come on, Nathan,” she said shakily, taking his hand. “Keep walking. Just keep walking…”
Sarah lost track of time. Her legs trembled with the effort, and her breath was harsh and loud. She had no idea which direction they were going, no idea if they were even moving in a straight line. Everything looked the same, and she began to wonder whether her eyes were really open at all, or if the landscape had slipped into the form of dream… or nightmare.
One step after the other. Use the momentum from the last one to fall forward into the next. Keep going. Keep going…
“Sarah? Are you alright?”
She opened her eyes, expecting any second to see the black eyes of the bird. With a thrill of panic, she realized her legs weren’t moving anymore and tried to get up, not remembering how she’d come to be lying on her back. The last thing she remembered was walking, endless walking.
“No, lie down.”
A hand was holding her shoulder onto the bed, and she fought against it, but it was no use. She had no strength to match it.
“Nathan.” She looked around wildly. She couldn’t lose him here. She may never find him again…
“Sarah, look at me. At me.”
Her wild eyes met Thomas’ calm gold ones. Gold, not gray. “You’re okay. Nathan’s okay. You’re both alright. He’s going to be fine. He’s right there.”
Sarah turned her head to see Nathan’s still form on a bed next to her. “How did we get out?” she whispered.
“Get out of where?”
She shook her head, trying to understand. She reached her hand out and took Nathan’s. She could feel his heart beating, see the smooth rise and fall of his chest. “It doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “You said he’ll be fine? You’re sure?”
“I was more worried about you, to be honest,” Thomas said. “You were completely drained. For a while, I wasn’t sure if you’d pull through.”
“Wait, how long have I been out?”
“Five days.”
Five days. “Why isn’t Nathan awake?” Sarah demanded, her voice getting higher with every word. “He’s been unconscious for five days? How is that him being okay!”
“Sarah, relax, please, or you’ll wake him up. Nathan woke up on the first day. He’s still very weak, so he’s been resting a lot, but he’s merely sleeping.”
Sarah itched to shake him, to make him open his eyes and prove he was really okay.
“Let him sleep,” Thomas said, seeming to read her mind. “He needs the rest. So, do you.”
Sarah nodded reluctantly. She rolled over, squirming her way onto Nathan’s bed, pressing herself against his back, doing her best to wrap her arms around him. For what felt like the first time since she’d seen him on that table, she took a full breath. She breathed and listened to his heart beating, solid and steady…
When she woke, Sarah was wrapped up in Nathan’s arms. “Hello.”
She looked up, her head tucked under his shoulder, to see his beautiful golden eyes smiling down at her.
“You’re alright.”
“Thanks to you, so I hear.”
“You don’t remember?”
Nathan frowned. “There are bits and pieces. I remember your hand… You were leading me somewhere... I don’t remember anything after that.”
Sarah wasn’t listening. She was watching his lips. Maybe, before he was injured, she would have hesitated, but nearly losing Nathan showed her so clearly what she hadn’t seen before.
She kissed him. Nathan was surprised for only a moment, and then his hand was in her hair, pulling her to him. His leg swung around so that he was on top of her, and Sarah arched up, leaning into the kiss.
Nathan broke off and started kissing her neck, her shoulders, and further down. His hand slipped her bra strap off her shoulder and brushed her breast.
Then his hand was gone, and Sarah looked up at him in dismay, wanting that hand back. Nathan was just holding himself up on trembling arms. He looked at her with longing.
“Lie down,” Sarah said firmly.
Nathan’s arms started to shake more violently, and he reluctantly did as she said. Only then did Sarah realize that not only was she gasping as though she’d just run a marathon, but she suddenly felt as exhausted as if she’d stayed up for five days straight.
“Thomas wasn’t kidding about rest,” Nathan muttered darkly, still out of breath. Sarah remembered how weak she had been when Nathan had pulled her back from death. The fact that Nathan could even sit up was rather impressive.
“Nathan?”
“Sarah?”
“I want to go on a date. A proper date, like dinner or something.”
Nathan propped himself up on one elbow, looking like he was trying very hard not to get his hopes up. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
Sarah took a deep breath. “I’m in—all the way. I want us to be together. I don’t care if it’s because of the bond or because of something else, but I love you and I want to be with you.”
She didn’t realize what she’d said until she had already said it. She clapped her hand over her treacherous mouth and peeked up at Nathan. She couldn’t read his expression.
“You love me?”
Unable to meet his eyes, Sarah nodded. “I think I have for a while… It just took you nearly dying for me to realize that.”
She didn’t get a chance to say anything else because Nathan’s lips were on hers, and she could feel him smiling behind the kiss, his body practically vibrating with joy.
“I love you too.”
She hadn’t expected how she would feel upon hearing those words—as though Nathan’s words were the wind, whisking her onto a high cloud, lighter than air. She laughed and kissed him again.
“I love you,” she repeated. Nathan returned her kiss, and they didn’t surface for what felt like a long time.
When Nathan finally broke away, they were both pink in the face and breathless. “You’ll have that date,” he said.
Sarah didn’t know how he hoped to accomplish anything resembling normality with the world in chaos and feral Wolves running wild, but his confidence was catchy.
“Thomas!” Nathan hollered.
Thomas came running in, looking alarmed. “What is it? Are you okay?”
“More than okay. I need a favor. I’ll need your help, and Erik’s… Come on, help me outside.”
“It’s not a good idea for you to be far from each other when you’re so weak anyway,” Thomas said warningly.
“It won’t be for long,” Nathan said shortly, holding out his arm. Thomas clasped it, looking doubtful, and helped Nathan outside. They talked in hushed voices, just too soft for Sarah to make out. She was considering sneaking to the door to hear better when Nathan came back in.
“We should get some rest. We’ll need it.”
He wouldn’t answer a single one of Sarah’s questions and stubbornly took his own advice and went to sleep. Bored out of her mind, Sarah had no choice but to do as he suggested and try to rest.
When Nathan shook her awake, by the look of the sky outside it was evening.
“Come on, this way.”
Sarah bemusedly let Erik put an arm around her as Thomas helped Nathan. They got right to the edge of the camp, to an unused area where they usually dumped old and broken things. At least, it used to be. For a second Sarah wondered if she’d gotten her internal map of the camp turned around because what was once an abandoned corner was no longer anything of the sort.
There was a table—an actual wooden table with chairs and a table cloth. On it were two glasses, a bottle of wine, and two plates of steaming—
“Pizza,” Sarah moaned ecstatically, lunging for it. Erik laughed and helped her into a chair. Sarah joyfully leaned back in it. She’d forgotten what it felt like to sit at an actual table. Usually, the Bears just ate from plates around the fire.
Nathan looked like he was trying hard not to laugh as she tore away the first slice of pizza. “What?” she said in a muffled voice through a mouthful of cheesy goodness. “So, I like fast food. Your camp is seriously lacking in the areas of grease and cheese.”
“We usually go down to the city at least a couple of times a week,” Nathan said, helping himself to a slice of pizza. “We haven’t recently, for obvious reasons.”
“How did you do all this?”
Nathan just smiled mysteriously. “Enjoy your pizza.”
Sarah couldn’t argue with that. “I love you.” The fifth slice of pizza almost completely obscured her words, but from his expression, Nathan knew exactly what she’d said.