Page 72 of Legacy Found

And me.

Chapter twenty-five

Jessica

The bear is down and I am still moving.

That's the first thing — that my body doesn't understand the fight is over. Everything in me is roaring, wound tight, ready for the next thing, and it takes a long, strange moment standing over the dead weight of the animal for the message to reach whatever's driving me: done. Won. Alive.

Then the world floods in.

I have never had senses like this. The forest isn't quiet anymore — it's loud, a thousand layers of it, the drip of blood off leaves and the wind a ridge over and the frantic scatter of small things fleeing. I can smell the bear's sickness, sour and wrong, and pine sap, and — under it all — fear. Human and wolf fear, coming off the tree line in waves.

And I can feel them. Luke and Torres, down the bond, far and frantic and flooding with something that isn't fear anymore — relief, so violent it nearly buckles me, both of them feeling me alive across all those miles and straining toward me still. Alive. I send it back without meaning to. Alive. I'm alive.

I'm alive.

For one wild, soaring second, it's the best thing I've ever felt. I survived. My body finally, finally became enough, and I stood over the thing that was going to kill me, and I won —

Then I notice the silence.

Not the forest. The people.

The instructors have arrived — the whole wave of them.

They're just standing there. Staring.

I'm breathing hard, sides heaving, blood in my mouth, and I look around expecting — I don't know what. Someone rushing to help. Someone saying are you hurt. Someone doing literally anything except standing frozen at the edge of the trees with an expression I can't read.

Nobody moves. Nobody speaks.

My first thought, stupid and small, is: did I do something wrong?

I killed the bear. The bear that murdered a man and was going to murder me. That's — that's the right outcome, isn't it? I fired the flare like the rules said. I survived. So why is nobody moving?

I know some of these faces.

Professor Voss, the combat instructor, mountain-broad and unshakeable, who I have watched treat charging students like mild weather. The wilderness instructor from the navigation station. Professor Faris, of all people, near the front, immaculate even out here.

And more are still arriving, breaking through the trees at a run — and every single one does the same thing. They come in fast, ready for an emergency. They see the clearing. They see the bear.

And then they see me, and they stop dead.

Eyes widening. Feet planting. That same frozen stillness rippling through each new arrival like a stone dropped in water.

Nobody comes closer.

I don't understand it. I take a step toward them — just one, cautious, because I want someone to say something, because I'm starting to be afraid and I want a person to tell me it's okay —

and several of them step back.

I freeze.

My stomach drops all the way through the ground, because it lands, then, what I'm actually looking at. They're not braced because of the bear. The bear is dead. It hasn't twitched in a minute.

They're backing away from me.

My hearing is a knife now, and it catches the whispers even though they think they're too quiet, even though half of them are barely moving their lips.