Page 130 of Tracking Snow

Trash lifts. Steam tears sideways. Red’s hair whips around her face as pale light gathers around her, thin at first, then thickening into the shape of a wolf.

A white wolf's head.

It climbs into the sky with a deafening yowl, and then it dives back down, headed straight at Four, mouth wide open.

Oh fae lords. No.

Sound drains out of the street. My pulse floods in to fill it, banging in my ears, my wrists, the split skin above my eyebrow. Copper coats my tongue from the headbutt.

The spectral jaws seal over Four's upper body in a silent, crushing eclipse.

The air buckles. Red's forbidden magic pours through him, pale light threading into his chest, hunting for something deeper than flesh. It finds it. It wrenches.

Four's body jerks.

His mouth opens on a sound that doesn’t belong to a human throat.

It’s layered.

Too many voices trying to scream at once. Seven men screaming through one mouth, and the sound tears directly into my soul. My knees soften. Ice pours through my belly and drowns the fire that lives there.

The wolf doesn’t bite down and release.

It devours.

Light streams from Four's chest in ragged strands. It burns red first. His fire. His rage. The heat that rolled off him every time he called me baby.

And with it⁠—

Him.

I'm running. I never chose to. The pavement slams up through my heels, an arm hooks my waist and hauls me off my feet, and I claw at it, screaming something that starts as his name and shreds into nothing.

Four’s face changes. Confusion first. Like he doesn’t understand why it hurts. Then realization crashes in. His eyes snap to Red. There is no anger or reproach, only terror.

"No—" he chokes, voice breaking apart as the light tears deeper.

The red in his eyes flares, bright as fresh blood.

Then it fades, a dying light. The last of it rips free in a final, violent surge, and something inside him goes with it.

Not just power. The whole person connected to it. Four's body arches, sags, folds.

His mouth hangs open, his face slack and utterly lifeless.

Four is gone.

My scream comes out with no sound in it. My mouth is open, my throat works, and nothing crosses the air. The arm around my waist lets go, and the ground arrives without my permission. I'm on my knees, skin scraping across the hot asphalt, begging him to come back. Needing him to call me baby one more time.

My chest locks, and I can’t breathe.

Then a twitch, a blink. Color returns to The Seven's cheeks as a pale, near white color floods his eyes. One.

He stares at Red like she ripped something out of him with her bare hands.

Brexley releases him and drops to all fours, smoke rising off his muzzle.

One hand presses against his chest. His fingers curl into the fabric there, clawing for something he can’t reach.