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CHAPTER 22
Protector

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The store manager was seated behind the counter when she came back in, glancing up from the inventory lists he was bent over; first at her, then out the window to the now utterly empty lot. Picking up her basket – right where she'd left it – she sent a smile to the man, and went about the rest of her shopping.

The situation could not be a permanent one. A convenience store didn't sell things like rice and chicken broth or fresh fruit and vegetables outside of the little snack packs she discovered in the fridges along the back wall, things she would want if she was going to be living here now. She would have to find a way to get to town and bring groceries back, and she would have to find a way to either repair the appliances in the lodge or acquire new ones. Or else find a new place to live entirely, which really wasn't something she was sure she could do, if she even wanted to. And all of that would likely require getting a job, which might prove a challenge. At least until she could go to the house and get her car.

She probably should have asked Clay if he could find a way to get it to her. She hadn't been thinking about it. Oh well, she would cross that bridge later.

For now, she gathered enough to supplement her diet of the last month for at least a week until she could plan. She filled her basket with snack packs of fruit and veggies, instant oatmeal and peanut butter, nuts, beef jerky, crackers, and more trail mix. She also snagged a new toothbrush – not the best quality, but it would do – a pack of hair ties, and some new deoderant. Though she considered booze (she could have used a drink or six after the conversation she'd just had), she decided against purely for the sake of weight.

If the manager thought anything about her selections to be odd, or anything about her, for that matter – dressed in fraying jeans and with two bags slung over her shoulders like a runaway teenager – he said nothing about it. Even when handling the condoms he didn't so much as offer a glance, thought she was blushing like a child.

What was she, twelve?

"Thank you again," she blurted, trying to distract herself from her sudden embarrassment, "for earlier."

The man made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. "'s no problem. Though I am gonna have to ask again, are you sure you're ok?" He spared a pointed glance at her bags before looking back at her, brown eyes steady and sharp and very clearly aware that while maybe she hadn't been having trouble with a guy, or at least not that particular one, she might be having trouble of some other kind.

"Yes," she reassured him, "I'm fine. There was a—death in the family, and I'm in the middle of moving, so it's just kind of crazy right now."

"Movin' to the area?" he asked, his frown a formidable one that might have cowed her had she not known it was well-meaning.

"Is that weird?"

A stocky shoulder rose in a shrug. "Unusual. Most young people're tryin' to get as close to the city as they can. Not that it's my business, 'cause it isn't."

She answered his shrug with one of her own. "I'm looking for a pretty drastic change."

"Fair enough."

He read her total and she handed over some of the cash Clay had given her. Though she was fairly confident she would have been fine, she wasn't going to say it wasn't handy. It would probably be best if she could avoid using her name for a little while, until she figured things out.

"Right, you're all set," he told her, sliding her change across the counter. "Need any help with these?"

She looked up from where she'd been tucking the paper bags full of groceries into the duffle bag. "No, thanks, I've got it."

"All right, then."

Having stuffed the duffle to its maximum capacity, she gathered the last bag into her arms and headed for the door.

"Thank you again," she called over her shoulder.

"You take care, miss."

The gas station fell away behind her like a guttering old light at the end of a tired road. She'd talked more today than she had in weeks. In terms of conversation, that was. She might have gone longer reading aloud, but that was far different from conversing with other people, especially where heightened levels of emotion were concerned. She felt socially drained and bone-weary, and was not looking forward to the long walk back.

In the last few days she had found herself noting continuously just how much had changed, and the walk back to the lake was no different.

She could remember how oppressive the trees had seemed on the hike in – ancient and towering and almost mean. It had seemed like the forest itself veiled an anger as if on behalf of the brethren lost to the cities from which she, the interloper, had come. It had seemed like the shadows beyond and between them concealed all manner of hazards, and the threat to unleash them. She had put it down to her own stress projected outward at the time. Now, she understood. There had been anger, just not of that kind.

Though they hadn't spent long on the road last time, the same trees surrounded her now, still towering, still ancient. But now they seemed almost a protective force, leaning in around her to form a shield. It felt as if they were welcoming her back.

As silly as that was – as outlandish – it felt weirdly, cosmically right.

Part of her wanted to rail against it, condemning herself as selfish and undeserving for not being wracked with grief and guilt upon the confirmation of her mother's death. Yet she couldn't help feeling as if, somehow, through some weird karmic twist of fate and random chance, in sending Whitney off to live her life instead of waiting by her bedside to die, Ellen had sent her daughter somewhere she would be needed, and where she would be happy. As if she had known all along.

It was impossible, she knew that logically, and not believing in fate or God or anything of that nature would direct her strictly to thinking otherwise. But right there in that moment, surrounded by the trees that had become so familiar and welcoming, it felt right and real.

Adjusting her grip on the paper bag in her arms she tried to think of how far she had to walk still and debating whether or not she should stop and rest. She had already been tired physically, add to that the emotional tumult of her talk with Clay and the awkward weight of the burden she was carrying and she felt like she had just attempted to scale the side of a mountain.

Attempted being the key word there.

She almost didn't hear the car moving up the road behind her. She might have missed it completely had it not struck her how abrupt and out of place it seemed – the dull rumble of an engine. Especially when she hadn't passed a single car on the walk out.

Before she could turn to look the truck passed her with a heavy thrum from the engine. A big Ford, only a few years old by the look of it, with a pristine blue paint job and not a ding or scratch to be seen. She spared it a glance, not thinking much of it aside from a faint curiosity as to whether it was coming or going. Then the taillights flared red and the vehicle slowed, coming to a stop some yards in front of her.

A thread of unease uncoiled in the back of her mind.

There was probably no reason to worry. It was different out here than it was in the city – people talked to one another casually and comfortably without prior knowledge of each other. It was considered polite. Nothing to be concerned about.

Yet as she drew nearer to the truck she could feel the unease rise and curdle like sour milk.

She caught the faint whirr of the driver's side window lowering just before an arm lifted to settle along the frame of the door and the man inside leaned his head out to speak to her.

"Hey there," he greeted.

He had a long, thin face, with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass and likely a jaw to match under the dark blond beard. His hair was too long, curling slightly under his ears, his teeth very white when he tossed her a winning smile. In his mid-thirties maybe. Not a bad looking guy, altogether.

"That's a lot of stuff to be lugging around on foot. You need a ride?"

It was a perfectly nice offer, kindly given. He hadn't drawn attention to the fact that she was a girl – like she didn't know – or that she was small and therefore must be weak and helpless. It was just common decency. There was no reason for her hackles to go up, but they were well on their way to being so for reasons she couldn't quite put her finger on.

There were so many reasons not to accept, the largest and most dire being that she couldn't risk accidentally bringing someone onto the grounds. As confident as she might be that she could keep them from meeting an untimely and violent death, she didn't feel much like testing the theory just now. Plus, it wasn't wise to alert someone to the possibility that she might be heading to the lake; not when they might talk about it, and not when that talk might lead to questions and curiosity and all that might follow. And then there was the whole thing about accepting rides from strangers.

Shrugging off the unfounded sense of alarm she offered a smile in return and shook her head. Maybe it was a little on the tight side, but she was tired, damn it – she just wanted to get back, put her shit away, and find Jason.

"No, but thank you anyway."

Rather than drive off, the driver waited until she was in line with the window and lifted his foot from the brake, letting the vehicle roll idly along next to her.

Her heart started to beat a little faster.

"C'mon now, don't be like that," he told her, all kinds of amiable. "Let me give you a lift."

Whitney kept walking, consciously making sure not to let her feet carry her faster, the way they wanted to.

This was probably just a bit of overly pushy civility. He was probably just going to drive on as soon as she declined again. Whitney had no reason to think any different. But there had also been a night, not too many years ago, that she had also spent at a friend's house, helping her care for a two black eyes, a split lip, and four cracked ribs after having had the audacity to tell a man at a bar with impeccable kindness that no, she didn't need him to buy her a drink. He had cornered her in the parking lot as she'd been leaving, thinking she would be safe in the small, well-lit space. Whitney wasn't sure the girl ever felt safe again after that.

As for herself, she had seen – and heard – enough in her almost-thirty years of life to know that it didn't always matter how polite you were, how prettily you smiled or how sweetly you talked. It wasn't always good enough. Sometimes simply saying no was tantamount to a grievous insult, the punishment for which could be severe, and which occasionally came down to a price paid with death.

She scanned the empty road in front of her, trying to calculate how much farther it was to the camp property. Too much farther to run. Her eyes shot to the trees to her left, thick and dense here, possibly enough to help her gain some ground and hide if she had to.

She was already unconsciously trying to note distinguishing marks on the car, of the man's face. She had already recalled part of the license plate and the numbered vinyl sticker she'd glimpsed on the rear window that identified vehicles for specified parking – before she remembered how little good any of it would do her. Even if she could get the phone out of the duffle where it was buried underneath groceries, and even if she got a hold of the police there was no way they would be able to get to her in time. She was in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere and she was on her own.

It was funny, she had stopped thinking about these kinds of dangers; the kind of dangers only other people posed, far more unpredictable and sometimes more dangerous than any to be found in the woods. It had been so easy to forget when she had spent so long in a place where the worst thing that could happen to her would likely be a result of her own stupidity.

Steeling herself, she offered the man another tight smile. "I appreciate it," she said, perhaps a bit too firmly, "but I'm fine. Thank you."

Angling her face back to the road in front of her, she kept walking.

For a few long, uncomfortable seconds he kept pace with her. Then the truck slowed further, fell back, and a shock of pure alarm snapped through her. But she didn't react.

Not until she heard the steady rumble of the engine cut and the click of the door latch.

In one fluid movement she dropped the bag cradled between her arms, shrugged the backpack and duffle from her shoulders, and bolted for the trees.

A shout chased her. She paid it no mind, dodging between trees and heavy foliage to gain as much distance as swiftly as she could. She was slower than she should be, the weariness dragging at her knees and whining in the muscles of her legs and back. But maybe she wouldn't need to push. Maybe he hadn't followed her. Maybe he'd decided she was more trouble than she was worth, gotten back in his shiny truck, and drove off.

The crash of a heavy weight into dry brush behind her told her she was not that lucky.

Oh, shit. Shit, shit.

She pushed. Hard. Hard enough for the complaint in her legs to become a full on scream. Her heart was a concussive thunder inside her own skull, her breath short and hard and completely incorrectly measured for a sprint like this – not that she could have corrected it with the fear and adrenaline flooding her system as though a dam had given way.

Launching herself over what remained of a rotted stump, she groped at her back pocket for the knife that wasn't there.

Here was the exact reason Jason had given it to her (although he'd probably thought she would need it for something like a coyote, not…this) and like an idiot she'd gone and forgotten it. It would be right where she had left it on the little table by the lodge door, utterly useless. Her only hope now was that she either outpace or outlast, and quite frankly neither seemed likely. The driver was still coming, and she was waning fast.

Why couldn't he just have been a nice stranger who took no at face value and respected it enough to leave her be? Why couldn't he have just passed her by? What cosmic force had she offended so badly to deserve this?

The weight slammed into her from behind, nearly driving her to the ground. The wind left her in a choked wheeze. He had her by the arm, fingers biting into the flesh above her elbow, tight enough to hold her fast even when she thrashed and tried to dig her nails into the tender skin between his fingers. The panic already blazing in her burned white hot.

"Now why'd you have to go and do a thing like that?" he panted, and though he sounded calm, almost pleasant, she could feel the quivering tension in his too-tight grip indicating he was good and pissed. "I was trying to be nice."

She lashed out with a foot, the heel of her shoe striking shin instead of the knee she was aiming for. Her fingernails raked down the back of his hand, gouging deep into skin. He cursed, his other hand fisting in the back of her sweatshirt to yank her around.

"Let go!" she shouted, trying to sound fierce but succeeding only in a panicked cry. "Let go of me!"

She threw her weight to one side, trying to tip him off balance in the hope she could twist free and get back to running…however far she could get with the burning stitch in her side. He swore again spreading his feet with a flail to keep from tumbling to the dirt. His elbow clipped her under the jaw. Her teeth clacked together, her head jerking so sharply back that she spent half a second absolutely certain she was going to black out. She probably would have if he'd been actively trying to hit her. Hell, she was lucky she hadn't bitten straight through her own tongue.

She swayed, trying to pitch herself sideways, to twist and squirm and whatever else she could think to do to get him off. But with her head buzzing and half her face on fire it was difficult to focus.

He locked other arm around her and wrenched her backward into his lean, wiry body. She thought she heard a drawn-out hiss of bitch against her hair, or else her ears were ringing.

When she heard the quick, low-pitched whistle she thought nothing of it, imagining it to be her brain compensating for having rattled around in her skull. Then she felt it. The man staggered as though he'd taken a kick to the back of the knee, his yell of startled pain intertwined with the meaty squelch of something sharp slicing into flesh.

That was no hallucination.

"Augh, wha—!" the man at her back bellowed, his grip flexing at her arm so that she felt tingling in the tips of her fingers.

She craned her head to one side, then the other, trying to see what had happened but finding nothing but the grimace on her attacker's thin face, flushed red with anger and exertion.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught movement – a flicker of shadow amidst the green – and she angled her chin over her right shoulder, eyes searching the trees. Her breath left her in a broken rush, her heart stuttering like a candle flame when she saw the off-white flash of the mask.

Jason slipped from between two trees on silent feet, stalking toward them like a big cat. There was a bow as long as she was held in one fist, the other setting an arrow to a string that had to have at least a seventy-pound draw weight. Possibly more.

Smooth as a knife through butter he pulled the string back to his ear and on instinct she twisted away to offer up the target at her back. Only belatedly did she realize that she should have turned the other way, made clearer the distinction between where she ended and the truck driver began to lessen the chance that Jason might hit her without meaning to. A projectile with that much power behind it might have cut clean through a grown man and sink into her on the other side.

She needn't have worried.

The arrow hit him in the side. She felt it in her own back, the pressure radiating through one body and into hers, but she felt no sting, no burn of pain, no punch of an arrowhead through her skin. Whether by practice or just incredible control, it had not gone through. The impact drew a scream ragged and breaking with a gasp.

The grip on her failed and Whitney lurched away, throwing herself into the gnarled old fir tree to her left. She leaned heavily against the rough trunk, nails curling into the bark as she clung and dragged air into her lungs.

When she looked back, the driver was clutching at the arrow shaft protruding from his side, skin slick with the blood soaking his flannel shirt in a blooming dark stain. There was another arrow lodged in the meat of his calf – the source of his initial stagger, she surmised. That one had gone right through, point and fletching sticking out from each side like one of those prank headbands in cartoons. Only this one gleamed shiny and red, and was very, very real.

"Uhg, god…" the driver wheezed, sinking weakly to one knee. From the liquid burble that laced his voice, the lung had been grazed, if not pierced through.

She was shaking, in adrenaline or rage or a noxious cocktail of the two. But there was no fear. She wasn't afraid now. Which was fascinating, because she hadn't seen Jason look quite like this since the night she had seen him for the first time; the wrath in him burning black as brimstone straight from hell.

Scratch that. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen him this angry. She was almost surprised the grass under his feet didn't wither and die he was putting off so much furious heat. He hadn't stopped moving – not even, she suspected, while shooting – his strides long and unhurried as dropped the bow and descended on the wounded man like a beautiful, terrible avenging angel.

You should have let me go, she thought, as her eyes fell from him to the driver who had just looked up to see the man bearing down on him, radiating death.

How he didn't immediately piss himself was completely beyond her.

"W-what the shit, man?" he stammered, the indignant, pain-addled bewilderment in his words a living, shuddering thing.

Did he think this was a joke? A prank? Even if he wasn't a local and simply passing through, it shouldn't take a genius to put together that the scary man in the mask with the big fucking knife that had just shot him through the ribs had no intentions aside from doing serious and lethal harm. And it should take less of a genius to realize that she wasn't screaming, or attempting to flee, and that maybe the two things might be related.

A length of mere yards was between them now, and it seemed to hit the driver all of a sudden that he was probably not leaving this spot of woods alive. His back stiffened, his shoulder hunching defensively almost up to his ear.

"No, wait…" he began. Blood was trickling from between his lips, dripping down his chin, and Whitney couldn't look anywhere else.

Five yards.

She could stop this. Right there in that breathless eternity of a moment, she knew it. All she had to do was ask and the man would be left to crawl back to his truck – grievously wounded, but alive. Would he have made it to a hospital way out here? Maybe, maybe not. But he would have had a chance.

Jason's hand went to his belt, freeing the machete from its holster with a whisper of steel.

He didn't need the blade to put the fear of god in anyone who crossed his path. He was a weapon unto himself, and he was menace, pure and undiluted. She was by no means the first person to think it, though perhaps to do so quite so calmly.

Three yards.

"Wait!"

Two.

"No, please n—!"

Jason struck like a rattlesnake, seizing the man by the front of his shirt and throwing him to the ground flat on his stomach with a thud and a gurgling cry. Planting a knee against his back, Jason wrapped an empty hand about the shaft of the arrow buried between ribs and pulled it free with sharp, brutal jerk.

He showed no reaction when the man gave a burbling whimper, but she could see the heat in his eyes behind the mask, the burning dark fury the likes of which she had only seen once: when he'd looked at Clay. When he'd looked at Clay and saw another man with their hands on a woman he'd as good as claimed. In any other man she might have thought the rage stemmed in part from a kind of jealousy, but Jason wasn't jealous. This wasn't a man lashing out due to insecurity or uncertainty. He was territorial. Jealousy was to want something that wasn't his; to be territorial was to protect what already was.

A part of her might have bristled at that…but honestly, it felt rather accurate just now.

Whitney would have sworn Jason's eyes flicked up to rest on her, just for an instant, before tossing the arrow to the grass. His knee ground down into the driver's back, eliciting an awful gurgling scream. Bone splintered with a series of faint, popping cracks – ribs or vertebra, maybe even sternum. She flinched purely by reflex. The pain must have been…she couldn't honestly imagine. And even if she could she would have been too distracted to truly dwell on it.

The man was gasping, his breaths rattling through rapidly collapsing lungs and his bones creaked and shattered. He was spilling peas for mercy into the dirt, repeatedly, like a record skipping on its last few bars.

She had never seen Jason do this – go out of his way to inflict more pain than necessary. Granted, Amanda and Mike's deaths had each been awful and prolonged, but there had been reasons for each. Amanda had been used for her screams, to draw the rest of them in to be trapped and held until he could deal with them in turn. It was more than likely he hadn't intended her to burn to death – her struggles had caused that particular end. As for Mike, that had been the unfortunate result of an excess of rage and a victim that had fought back, plus a less than ideal leverage. This was nothing like those two deaths. This was brutality for its own sake. This was not just eliminating a pest, it was punishment.

She should have been horrified. She should have stopped it.

Jason braced a hand against the back of the driver's skull, lowered the angled tip of the machete to kiss the nape of his neck. She stared, fixated, as Jason's fingers flexed against the handle, very slightly, a split instant before he drove the blade down through the base of the head, neatly severing spine and windpipe with a single smooth thrust.

Silence rose up around her, drowning out everything from the soft rustle of air through leaves to the pound of her own heartbeat.

He was dead.

She had just stood there and let him die. Hadn't said a word. And she was trembling, her insides quaking in a way that had nothing to do with dread or revulsion. She wasn't even all that sorry.

It wasn't that any part of her had thought he had deserved to die, necessarily, or even because she had felt particularly vengeful for what he had done…what he might have been about to do. It was more that the rules out here were not her own. This man had not just unwittingly walked into the wrong place at the wrong time. He had chased her, grabbed her, threatened her, and whether or not she felt these things merited punishment didn't completely matter. To Jason, they did.

A part of her understood. There had been a certain necessity to the savagery that even the last remaining shreds of her inner hand-wringing black-and-white moralist couldn't ignore. She had never really looked at his killing in a context other than one of horror or roundabout sympathy. Suddenly she saw it rather differently.

Of all the responses she might have had to this turn of events, she did not expect the delicate butterfly flutter high in her stomach – the kind of flutter usually reserved for gifts of flowers or other such sweet little gestures. Yet she supposed it made a certain sense. There was something old and primal about this drive toward someone that proved so capable of protecting her. Even in a time when such a thing shouldn't have been necessary – with the world so civilized and improved and shit – it sure as fuck felt necessary right now.

And there was no mistaking that she was the reason why Jason's dispatch of this man had been the nastiest death she'd seen him issue.

Sliding the machete free, Jason used the man's shirt to wipe it clean. He rose, standing over the felled body like some dark god of righteous judgment, still and fierce.

For a moment he simply stood there, and then his head lifted to look at her.

A soft shudder rippled through her body – awareness at its most base and elemental – at the weight of his gaze on her. The animal in her wanted to show reverence, to acknowledge the clearly far more powerful and deadly predator. In the same moment the same animal instinct was that much more certain that she had been right to choose him, because as powerful and deadly as he was, he had come for her.

How was he here? Had she been closer to the lake than she'd thought? Even if so, he would have had to have been close enough to this side of the territory to have heard her yell. Was it coincidence? Had he positioned himself there on purpose? To wait for her? But he had seemed so disbelieving when she had reassured him that she'd come back, and she hadn't exactly been planning on doing so today and thus hadn't implied it. It could have been days – weeks. Had he intended to stay there, walking the border like a ghost until the day she maybe came back? She hoped not.

Anyway, it didn't much matter how. And while it might have been a bit paranoid to have run like she had, the fact that the truck driver had chased her all that way was enough to tell her that she had been in for more than a split lip and a couple cracked ribs. If she hadn't been stupid and had her knife, it wouldn't have come to this. But it had, and she didn't give a shit if it made her seem like some shrinking damsel to be as grateful as she was that the scariest thing in the woods wanted her safe.

Fuck being a strong, independent woman.

He was still just looking at her. But the way he was looking at her…as though he couldn't process that she was standing there in front of him. The disbelief in his eyes, the sheer incredulity, was so pure it burned like bleach. It wasn't just that she was there earlier than expected, it was that she was there at all.

He had truly believed she wasn't coming back. Not today. Not ever.

Knowing it was enough to break her heart straight down the middle.

She smiled weakly – it was either that or cry. "Hey."

As if hearing her speak was enough to prove she was not, in fact, just an illusion, he finally moved. He approached her slowly, almost tentatively, as though certain she would disappear were he to move too quickly or look away for just a second too long. She stayed right where she was, palm and shoulder blades resting against the bark of the tree behind her. His massive hand dwarfed her face as he took her gently by the chin, examining the sore spot along her jaw where the driver had caught her with his elbow. Red as an overripe tomato, no doubt. Likely it would swell into a welt by tomorrow.

"I'm ok," she was quick to reassure, "he wasn't actually trying to hit me."

That didn't seem to help. By the way Jason's eyes narrowed she would bet he was probably wishing he'd taken a little longer before administering the kill stroke.

"Thank you."

The words tasted right, but sounded odd to her own ears. From the indefinable look he was shooting her, it had landed just as oddly, though she couldn't be sure how much of that had to do with the fact that she had just thanked him for committing murder – an act she had so fiercely condemned before and the condemnation for which she had never hidden from him – or simply because she was there to say anything at all.

She felt him trace his thumb along her cheek. Unthinking, she lifted a hand, laying it lightly across the back of his wrist. "I'm ok," she insisted, not realizing until it left her mouth that it hadn't been the injured side of her face, and that he was no longer holding a belated threat of vengeance in his eyes, but rather looking at her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered.

The emotion overflowing from that single look was enough to make her knees weak.

That was the thing about someone guarded, she thought. When they loved you, you damn well knew it.

"I told you I was coming back," she said, mainly because she didn't know what else to say, and that if she didn't say something she was either going to start sobbing like a little girl or laughing hysterically. And then sob like a little girl.

The downward tilt of his chin was minute, almost nothing at all, but she recognized it as a repeat of the one he'd used earlier: the one that said he'd heard her and acknowledged that, but which hadn't agreed.

So you did.

"I, um…"

Her chin trembled, and she sucked in a breath to counter it. If they didn't move she was going to bawl her eyes out right here in the middle of the woods, and she really didn't want to do that. When she cried – and it was way beyond inevitable at this point – she wanted to be somewhere that she could face-plant into a pillow and stay there until she was all cried out.

"I left some stuff out by the road."

He gave a small nod, his hand slipping from her face with a gentle brush of fingertips as he turned from her.

Retreating back into the trees from which he'd appeared for a moment, and when he returned it was with the bow and a quiver of brown leather full of arrows slung across his back. Crouching by the body, he went about extracting the arrow from the man's leg. Rather than rip this one out, he used the machete to slice into the meat of the calf down to the shaft, and lifted it straight out.

For whatever reason this made her squeamish where everything else had not. Swallowing down a shallow dry-heave, she averted her eyes while he utilized the driver's shirt again to clean most of the blood from the two arrows he'd used and tucked them away.

When he held out a hand to her, indicating for her to lead on, she made to head back for the road automatically. Only to pause a second later. "Sh—should we do something about…about him?"

Jason spared the body a disinterested glance, his snort of derision enough to tell her that he fully intended to leave the man to rot precisely as he was.

Good by her.

It disturbed her somewhat to note how cold and unforgiving she found herself just then, but only so long as it took her to remember why and how she'd come to be there. Maybe the driver hadn't deserved to die. Maybe he simply hadn't gotten around to doing whatever might have earned him such a sentence. He had intended her harm of some kind, and frankly she would not have been willing to stay the judgment for the sake of finding out. Another rather old and primal instinct, she supposed. She was willing to forgive herself for it.

Fortunately she had managed to drop her things somewhat gracefully before racing off like a panicked chipmunk, which hopefully meant nothing had been broken in the fall. Though she supposed the only thing truly at risk would have been the phone, which had been well-padded by clothes and groceries.

The paper bag had tipped over, spilling packets of trail mix and jerky across the embankment, and when she straightened from scooping everything back inside it was to find Jason settling both duffle and backpack over his shoulder. She thought better of arguing about it, since she already knew he wouldn't budge on the issue. That and she simply didn't have the energy. She had already been tired, and now with adrenaline leeching out of her she was well on her way to exhausted.

Folding the paper bag she tucked it under her arm, and reached out to take his empty hand.

"Let's go home."

His hand flexed around hers – a sharp spasm of surprise. She didn't put together why until she looked up at him and saw the wideness of his eyes, his shock at her having used that word in reference to the lodge, the camp. Him.

She hadn't really said it consciously, it had just slipped out naturally, and now that she realized that she had no thought of correcting it. There was nothing to correct. She had rejected the opportunity to go back to the house she had spent the last ten years of her life in because what had made it a home was no longer there. Home was more than walls and a roof, more than possessions, more even than people. Home was a place where she was most at ease, and free to be her truest self. Home was safety and comfort, and happiness.

Gently she squeezed his hand, and started walking.

~/~

As soon as he left her, Jason went about putting as much space between himself and the camp side of the property as he physically could.

Every muscle in his body was tight with the urge to follow her. Not the way he would have a new quarry – it was nothing like the demanding pull of the tithe weighing down on him. But the gradually increasing urgency was similar. Everything inside him was screaming with the need to get to her, to hold her close and never let go again, and the farther away she got the more he felt the loss of her like a pain in his gut, cold and nagging and hollow.

His thoughts continuously spiraled outward as if reaching, clinging to the woman no longer there, whose absence felt like a hole punched deep in the center of his being. For no reason at all he recalled a phrase; something overheard and tossed aside from a source he no longer remembered: absence makes the heart grow fonder.

But that wasn't quite true, was it? He had already been fonder. Absence just felt like pain.

Even after he knew there was no likely chance of her being remotely near the borders of the territory he had every intention of steering clear. For days if he had to. Not that he had any idea how he was going to make it through the rest of this day let alone others. Not think of her, he supposed, as if that was possible. He was still going to try.

Four days ago he had been halfway through checking his caches before he'd stumbled across the two trespassers on the lake. At the time he had been displeased that the caches were so widely distributed, the task so time consuming. Now he could think of no better distraction.

He got through two, maybe three. Time and therefore what he did with it ran together. The sunshine of the morning had been swallowed by a monotone overcast light as though the sun itself had gone with her, making it difficult to determine the hour. He'd been picking his way through a particularly hilly stretch along the eastern border when the deer crossed his path.

With a frantic rustle of foliage the animal bounded down from the rocky slope and straight into the trees, but not before Jason had identified it as a young buck and glimpsed the wound in its flank. Several long gouges made by a bear or, more likely, a lion. Not deep enough to kill quickly, but enough to fester and rot – to become infected, as Whitney would have called it.

The thought of her brought a stinging twinge of pain. Automatically his hand rose, fingers curling around the little plastic card stowed safely over his heart.

Enough.

With a sharp shake of his head he forced his hand down and ordered himself to focus. The deer would be in for a slow and agonizing death unless Jason did something. As he had no way to contain and treat a wound of that magnitude he would have to put it down, and that would require a projectile. He didn't want to chase the poor thing down on foot. The fear that would cause would have been beyond cruel.

Jason made for the nearest cache that he knew contained a bow ready for use. It meant having to circle around toward the lake and doubling back, but so much the better. The only hurry he was in was for the sake of the creature in pain.

The cache was set at the base of a dead stump, tucked between a tangle of roots and down into the earth. He extracted the bow, two strings – coiled and stored in separate plastic re-sealable bags – and the fully stocked quiver he had just checked an hour or so (or longer, who knew) ago, and put the rest back in place, rearranging the roots to hide the weatherproof bundle.

One of the strings he tucked into a pocket on the off chance the first broke. A rarity, but after the third time it happened he had stopped taking the chance. The second he uncoiled, looping the first end into place around the notches at the lower limb.

For Jason, learning to string a bow had been harder than learning to shoot. It required just as much strength to string as to draw, but it was more difficult due to having to force two parts with opposing force to come together in order to create the tension which allowed the weapon to function as intended. When he was younger he'd had difficulty; his attempts resulting in welts and cuts to the hands, arms, once even his face. Over the years however he'd developed a good technique, and being as large as he was now he no longer needed the extra steps it used to require.

Lowering the bottom end to the ground he tucked the lowermost curve bow against a foot and bent, forcing the weapon into a gentle flex in order to slip the other end of the string into place. Smooth, quick, easy. Slipping the strap of the quiver over his head so that it sat across his back and out of the way until he needed it, he set off back to where he'd seen the deer.

From the spot by the rocks Jason tracked the animal almost a mile northward before the tracks began to look fresh. Deer were a little more difficult to track than some beasts – and certainly more so than people. They were sleeker, lighter, and moved with such unthinking care. Because of this it took him longer than it might have elsewise, requiring him to stop, crouch, double-check the patterns in dirt and leaves and forest refuse to ensure he knew what he was looking at. His right eye being slightly weaker than the left didn't help this.

At some point the tracks would either grow closer together or sloppy, indicating the animal was either tiring or weakening. Then he would be near enough to begin stalking in earnest.

He was crouched by a spongy patch of moss examining the splash of blood across the prints when he heard it.

It took him a few seconds to piece together what exactly it was he'd heard, that it had not been the product of a mind becoming steadily unhinged. That he'd heard a voice.

Her voice.

But that wasn't possible. How could that be possible? She had left hours ago, there was no way she could still be so close…

It came again, a trembling cry that he would have recognized even from the grave.

"Let go of me!"

He knew that tone. He had become quite familiar with it over the span of a few days, the meld of fear and command held tight and high in the throat as she'd tossed those same exact words at him. And he was up and moving, running before he could question it, before he could wonder how it was possible to be hearing her now, here, close enough to make out her words. The low note of terror in them.

The sound had come from across the border: out of bounds. He didn't care. He wouldn't have cared if he had to venture all the way to the town. Beyond it. He would have walked straight into hell if he had to.

He ran as if trying to outrun time itself, racing between trees as though he had become the deer he had been tracking, light and swift and half consumed by the frantic pulse of the blood in his own veins.

He caught a glimpse of her from between low-hanging branches, slowing at the flash of copper. Only when he saw her did the panic in her voice make sense, only when he registered what it was he was seeing; the arm clamped around her middle meant to restrain, the hand locked around her arm and yanking back. Her head was tipped back as if fighting to breathe, or fighting back tears, and the man behind her was muttering something low under his breath, too quietly for Jason to hear. But she could, and whatever it was had put that look of dazed, hopeless dread on her face.

The sight struck him swift and hard as a fist to the gut, burning like he'd been force-fed embers. His lips curled back, the snarl ripping through him – voiceless, but vicious – as his vision went black.

The ferocity of his own reaction was overwhelming, but it did not surprise him. Four days ago he had been faced with the thought of her being taken from him and it had driven him to rage. He had thought of her as his even as he'd known subconsciously she hadn't been, that it had been a wish and no more, and he had supposed that had stoked his rage even more than the deed itself – because he'd had no real right to feel what he did. But seeing her now, like this, at the mercy of some vile human man who so clearly meant her harm…he understood with unshakable certainty that that had changed. His fury was purely a possessive, bestial thing, a deep-set animal instinct to protect something precious. Not, he realized, because she was his. But because she had chosen him, and that made him hers.

The clawing pull behind his ribs was not that of a secondhand vengeance but one that was purely his, an urgent, barbarous need to destroy.

Whitney made a tiny sound in the back of her throat dangerously close to a strangled sob. And oh, this death would be slow. So slow, and Jason would make sure he felt every agonizing second of it.

Almost without thinking he reached for an arrow, setting it to the string and drawing so quickly that he was barely aware of doing it until the thing pierced the flesh of the man's calf, right behind and under the knee.

The man screeched, jolting forward, but did not crumple and did not release her. If anything his grip tightened further as he cursed and jerked his head around to locate the source of his injury.

Jason growled his displeasure and reached over his shoulder, fingers curling under the feather fletching of another arrow.

Whitney's face angled toward him, her eyes passing over him at first before darting back, settling, widening ever so slightly with a dawning recognition. She twisted away on instinct, shielding herself with the body at her back, not realizing that this put her in more danger than she had been with her profile to him. The weapon in his hand was meant for hunting, built to be lethal. His aim was expert, as was his control, but the potential of making just enough of a mistake brought an unpleasant hitch to his breath.

He forced it to steady and took two long, quick steps to the right as he nocked the arrow, adjusting his grip to hold the bow at a horizontal angle and drawing only halfway to better control depth. The shot was not clean, and not ideal, but he took it. He only breathed again when the man gave a broken scream and let go, releasing Whitney to stumble away unscathed. The second that happened, he dropped the bow and widened his steps, fingers closing around the handle of the machete and pulling it free as his wrath surged within him like a storm.

Jason's eyes were fixed to the man, staggering and dropping to one knee as he groped weakly for the shaft buried between his sixth and seventh ribs. The lung was filling up with blood, beginning to collapse. Painful, but not enough. Not nearly. Jason was going to shatter every bone in every finger this insect had dared to lay on her before he removed them completely, before he rent each limb from its socket. He was going to rip the eyes from his skull, split him open until his insides pooled at his feet, and Jason would hate it, but he was going to do it anyway. Because the world should be terrified when a monster like him fell in love, for he would rend the very earth open for her.

The man had been speaking, pleading for his life, no doubt, but Jason hadn't heard for the roaring in his head. His hand curled into flannel and twisted, casting the parasite to the ground and bent to rip the arrow free – the head scraping bone.

He couldn't have said what it was that reminded him of Whitney's presence. She had made no sound, moved not a single muscle where she stood, back pressed to the trunk of a tree not yards away and clinging there as if it was the sole thing keeping her upright – but he found himself glancing up at her as if she had. Though she was staring at him, her gaze was unexpectedly steady. Shock, he assumed. Maybe something else. Either way, he would not be doing any of the things the bloodthirsty part of his soul was clamoring for. Not in front of her.

He would make it fast, clean, but it was going to hurt first.

Jason crouched, lowering a knee to the man's back and putting his weight behind it – pressing steadily downward until he heard bone crackle and snap like green twigs. A gurgling wail emitted from the man's mouth, accompanied, no doubt, by an ooze of blood from between his lips. Jason pressed until he felt the spine give, the tiny bones digging into the discs between until they finally burst, and only then did he set his blade to the back of the whimpering worm's head and put him out of his misery. It wasn't completely satisfying, but Jason contented himself with the knowledge that while it had taken less than eight seconds, it would have felt like a lifetime.

Wrenching the blade free, he ran the flat of it along the back of the man's shirt to wipe it clean and got to his feet. He was sliding it back into place in its sheath when the confusion caught up to him – the disbelief.

His eyes slid to Whitney, still right where she'd been seconds ago, leaning against the tree.

She was here. Why was she here? If she had ever been going to come back he had assumed it wouldn't be for months. Had it been months? Had time warped into a void of nothing until the moment he'd heard her voice again? Perhaps he had gone mad. Maybe none of this was real, no more than a hallucination and he simply could no longer tell the difference anymore.

Her lips curved into a shaky smile. "Hey," she said, the movement of her mouth drawing his attention to the redness at her cheek, radiating outward from a point at her jaw.

He'd hit her. The steaming pile of human refuse had struck her.

If he'd had the power, Jason would have resurrected the filth just to kill him again – only much more slowly, drawing out the pain for hours if he could. Except that fortunately for said filth, Whitney was neither vengeful nor vindictive enough to have wished such a thing on even someone who had done her harm.

Before he was fully aware of moving he was in front of her, his fingers gentle as he tilted her face so he could get a better look at the mark. It would swell, he determined, become a full-on welt if she didn't get something cold on it soon.

"I'm ok," she was telling him, "he wasn't actually trying to hit me."

Jason was grateful she couldn't see his lip curl. Gladder still that his lack of voice meant she wouldn't hear his growl.

Then – out of nowhere – she thanked him.

Thanked him.

He didn't understand. Thank him for what, for protecting her? As if he wouldn't have given everything he had – his own flesh if he must – to ensure she was safe? For being near enough to do so? And thank heaven and earth he had been. It was well worth the misery of the rest of the day for chance to have granted him this one mercy. If he hadn't been, if he hadn't heard her, if she had been left out here to suffer whatever horrible things the man had been intending…he could grasp better now what some of those things might have been and the thought of it made his stomach turn and his heart constrict.

He felt her hand brush his wrist, her fingers curving gently around the back of his hand. "I'm ok," she said again, clearly with the intent to soothe. But something in her eyes changed when he continued to look at her, as he cradled her face in his hand, softened, warmed. "I told you I was coming back," she murmured, so quiet it was almost a whisper.

Yes, she had, and he in his weakness and self-loathing he hadn't been able to bring himself to believe her.

Words were darting through his head in a continuous stream, things he so dearly wanted to say to her but couldn't. You came back. I missed you. It's only been hours but I missed you. I wasn't sure how I was going to survive if I never got to see your face again, or hear your voice, feel your skin. I love you so much I can't breathe.

He would never doubt again.

Frankly, he didn't care why she'd come back, so long as she had.

He followed her back to the road to gather the bags she had left behind. Dropped, he corrected, as he took note of the truck parked a ways back with a spark of rekindled anger. In order to flee.

He took pride in her ability to think quickly enough to ditch the extra weight immediately, and in knowing that had she not been tired and worn already she probably could have outrun the threat, or dealt enough injury on her own to make the worm think twice about putting hands on her. Had she been carrying the blade he'd given her, anyway. She wasn't, which he'd known before due to its absence but confirmed now with a glance to her back pocket as she bent to gather up the packages of food scattered across the pavement. And if the look lingered a little too long to be purely for the sake of verifying a fact, he did his best not to feel guilty about it.

As she finished scooping items back into a paper bag he took possession of the other two: the one he'd given her this morning, and the other which smelled like her brother. So she had gone to see him. And yet she'd come back so quickly, though surely her brother would have discouraged it. Clearly whatever other things she had been planning to see to had either fallen through or else would be addressed again later. He would have asked if he could. Though perhaps not, since he wasn't sure his curiosity was worth disturbing whatever decision had brought her back so soon.

If any part of him had been in denial that she had returned because of him, it was eradicated when she tucked her hand in his, folding her fingers around his own, and asked him to take her home.

Wordless for reasons beyond his muteness, he did.

He delivered her straight to the lodge, taking his leave only to fetch the cooler and detour to the stream to fill it with cold water.

She was still in the midst of unpacking and putting things away when he got back, which he rather rudely interrupted by forcing her to turn around so he could put the damp, cool cloth to her jaw to ease the swelling – something he only knew to do because of the black eye he'd sustained once as a child. For the second time since her arrival he cursed his lack of a way to produce ice. The cold water would help, but not nearly as much or as quickly.

She laughed at his insistence, and winced when doing so brought pain. He frowned, unsure sure what to do about that. But when she lowered the cloth for a moment it was to extract a little case of pills from her bag, two of which she tipped out into her palm and swallowed dry, seemingly not requiring water. He took up the cloth again and laid it back against her face. She smiled. No wince this time.

He made her stay there, not moving except to switch out the cloth for another one, which she tolerated for around ten minutes before she waved him off and went back to unpacking. At the same time she set herself out something to eat: crackers and peanut butter and fresh vegetables all from little packages that were probably intended more for between-meal snacks than an actual meal.

He watched her vaguely, more attentive to the sounds than anything else – the rustle of clothing and of plastic, the scrape of a ceramic plate, the click of the lid on a plastic jar of peanut butter.

And then there came the whimper. Deep, almost guttural, the kind of sound that might have preceded being sick…or followed an injury.

Jason's head lifted, eyes landing sharp on her where she stood at the counter, her profile to him. She was leaning with her hands against the laminate edge, shoulders hunched and shivering. Then she inhaled, shuddering and laborious, and he realized that she crying.

He went to her, hardly thinking about anything but closing the space between himself and her. Reaching carefully, he brushed her hair back from her face to find her chin trembling, her cheeks gone pale and her eyes overbright and flooded. She blinked at him, looking dazed and a little lost, tears slipping from her eyes to draw shining trails down her face.

"I'm sorry, I—"

The word dissolved into a sob, and then she was falling into him, burying her face in his shirt and wrapping her arms around his waist and holding on so tightly that he almost feared she might break her own bones with the force.

He had never particularly liked it when she cried. At first it had been more an annoyance, a disturbance in the form of sound he was utterly unaccustomed to hearing for prolonged amounts of time. Then it had begun to bother him because he hadn't relished the idea of her being sad. Now, though the sight of her tears, the hard, dragging sound of her sobs, didn't just bother him – it upset him. It instilled in him a deep, visceral need to find whatever was wrong and do whatever it took to make it not wrong.

She was sinking, sliding down toward the floor as though her legs were no longer capable of holding her up; so he bent, gripping her firmly around the ribs. Taking one of her hands, he coaxed her to wrap it around his neck instead and was pleased when she did so, clinging to the back of his coat with both hands so he could tuck his other arm behind her knees and pick her up.

Unsure what else to do, he carried her into the other room. She had returned the couch cushions to their proper places – before leaving, he assumed – and he went to it, lowering them both to the cracking old imitation leather.

His hand smoothed cautiously down her back, down and back up then down again, following the gentle taper and slope along her spine. He hoped to be soothing, but he had never really comforted someone before, never wanted to and this never tried. He couldn't be sure he wasn't simply being a clumsy annoyance. At least until he felt her deep, shuddering sigh beneath his palm.

One of her hands lifted, shoving strands of hair from her wet cheeks as she looked up. "Sorry," she said thickly, sniffling. "I just—my…"

Closing her eyes she forced herself to take a slow, measured breath, grounding herself.

"I found out today that my mom died."

Dread pooled within the pit of his stomach, awful and sinking and cold.

"I mean, I already kind of knew. She was sick—really sick—for years and the doctors had said she only had a few weeks when I left, so I—I had a feeling…but I couldn't really think about it, and thinking something's probably true and knowing it is just," she took another shuddering breath, "it's different."

Jason stared down at her, stricken.

No wonder she had been trying so hard to run away. She'd been trying to get back to her dying mother while he had kept her here…and why? Because he hadn't been able to kill her and had been too selfish and controlling to let her go. And all along she might have been the only person alive to perhaps understand even a fraction of the loss he had once suffered.

Self-loathing pooled in his mouth like poison, his skin burning where she touched him as if the soft weight of her had become acidic. He wanted to push her away, wanted to fall to his knees before her and beg her forgiveness. He didn't deserve it. He would never deserve it, but he owed it to her to ask and be denied for this far more grievous wrong than simply holding her against her will. How could she have known this and ever looked at him with anything but hatred? How could she ever have let him near her, let alone…

God, how could he claim to love her when he had done something like this?

But he did, and that was why it hurt so much – why it felt like something alive and panicked trying to bite and tear its way out of him like an animal from a trap.

He had braced his hand against her shoulder, preparing to ease her away, but found he could go no further. Clearly she didn't blame him for this – however impossible it was for his brain to make sense of – and equally clear was that she was in need of comfort from him now, not penance. Almost the instant he'd touched her in the kitchen she had gravitated toward him as if he were solid land on the edge of death by drowning.

"I just need to cry for a bit," she said weakly, "that's all."

He couldn't change the past. He couldn't undo what he'd done. Not even to her. But as Whitney curled up against it, her head bowing as it came down upon his shoulder, he understood that she wouldn't have wanted him to try. The past was past. He could only control the future, and could make it better. He could be better.

He would be.

Her fingers curled into the front of his shirt, and he held her as she gave over to the sob that had been building in her breath.

She cried and cried for what seemed like hours. The kind of crying that was like seeing a hurricane contained in a human body to witness, powerful and devastating, all the while he stroked her hair, her back, cradling her to him in the way that felt natural. She cried until her sobs grew faint and hoarse, until her back no longer heaved but rose and fell and the hitches in her breathing stopped.

He wasn't sure exactly when she fell asleep, or even when exactly he'd known she had. Maybe when the hand fisted in his shirt went slack and began to slip. But he was glad of it. Grieving and exhausted, rest was the best thing for her.

Careful not to jostle her, he shifted setting his back to the inner corner of the couch and propping one leg up so that if she stretched out in her sleep, she would have the room to. His laid his hand over hers where it rested against his chest, the tips of index and middle fingers stroking softly across the back of it. Settling the other across her back, he closed his eyes.

It was a strange thing, he thought, to have become so lost in someone, yet not be lost at all.


NOTES:

Holy shit you guys, this is crazy.

I don't think I've cranked out content this fast since I was in high school scribbling into a notebook during classes, physically curled around my paper so no one could read over my shoulder and NOT paying attention to what I was supposed to be doing. I was not a good student. But this is fucking awesome. And maybe it's mania as a result of this current insanity…but if that's the case, I'll take it.

This chapter is more cliché than is justifiable, but I don't care. Fan service. That said, I do feel like the encounter with the trucker might have leaned into some less than awesome stereotypes, and I just want to clarify that it was not my intention to make any implication about men, men who drive trucks, or people who live in the more rural parts of the country. This was just an individual dude used as a means to make a point and for fan service, and any unsavory qualities he displayed were put there in the service of that. No more. City dudes are just as capable of being douchey as country dudes, or any other dudes. Or not. That's all.

I love writing. I get to research the weirdest shit. With this story in particular I had to watch a bunch of youtube videos on setting up snares, which I never would have done otherwise, but I wanted to be somewhat accurate. This chapter it was bow anatomy. I've done a little bit of archery, and I'd like to again someday, but it was high school level not really legit archery and the instruction was not great so I didn't actually learn much. For such a tiny part, one of the hardest things about this chapter was how deep into the anatomy of the bow to go for the sake of accurate description while not being confusing. Bows seem simple, but they're actually a bit more complicated. I hope it wasn't confusing. :/

If you Google hunting bows you'll see these crazy gear-and-pulley-ridden monsters. I don't hunt and they're probably awesome, but I find them extremely visually off-putting (because that matters). I also feel like they'd require a lot more upkeep than would be possible for Jason's lifestyle…though it's also probably more likely that one in that style would be left behind. Whatever. This is a wood and fiberglass recurve specimen. Not that anyone cares but me!

:D

ANYWHO. I think that's all I've got for now. Gonna start work on the next one!

First though HOLY SHIT AND THANK YOU – I don't know if more of you commented than usual, but it sure fucking felt like it and it was incredible and sweet and uplifting and I swear to goodness it fuels the passion. You darlings are the best and I love you so much. Thank you for reading and for the favorites and follows and lovely comments. You give me life.

Bless.

Until next time – be well!