Matthias POV
She went under again.
Matthias hit the water at full speed, and the cold slammed into him like a wall of concrete. His whole body screamed. His lungs seized up. But his arms were already reaching, cutting through the dark current, searching for anything: a hand, fabric, hair, anything at all.
His fingers hit something soft.
He grabbed it and pulled.
She came up limp, her whole body dead weight against the current. The river wasn't done fighting. It yanked at both of them, dragging them sideways toward the bend where the water turned white and violent. Matthias locked his arm around her chest, kept her face above the surface, and kicked harder than he'd ever kicked in his life.
His boots hit a rock. He used it. Another rock. Another push.
The bank was closed. Come on. Come on.
His hand hit a tree root, and he grabbed it with everything he had. His shoulder screamed with the effort of holding both their weight against the current, but he didn't let go. He dragged them, inch by inch, until his knees scraped frozen ground.
He collapsed on the riverbank with her on top of him, both of them soaking and shaking.
For three whole seconds, he just breathed.
Then he looked at her face, and his stomach dropped.
Her lips were the color of a winter sky. Her skin had gone gray. And her chest was completely, terrifyingly still.
"No." He rolled her off him and onto her back in one fast movement. "No, you don't get to die. Not here. Not tonight."
Twelve years of military training cut through the panic like a blade.
He tilted her head back, opened her airway, and pressed his ear to her lips. Nothing. He turned her on her side, placed the flat of his palm between her shoulder blades, and struck hard. Once. Water trickled out. He struck again. More water. He flipped her onto her back and started chest compressions, counting under his breath, his weight behind every push.
"One. Two. Three breathe." He covered her mouth with his and gave two sharp breaths. "Come on." He started compressions again. "One. Two. Three breathe."
The wind howled through the trees. Somewhere behind him, the river kept rushing as if nothing had happened. Like her life meant nothing at all.
His hands kept moving. Push. Push. Push. Breathe.
Nothing.
His jaw locked tight. He refused to let this be another Wintermoon loss. He'd already given enough to this river. He'd already watched enough wolves slip away while he was too slow, too late, too helpless. Not tonight. Not her.
"Breathe," he growled, low and fierce. "Breathe."
And then she coughed.
It wasn't gentle. Her whole body seized, water rushing out of her mouth as her lungs suddenly remembered what they were for. She choked and gagged and shook, and it was the most beautiful sound Matthias had ever heard in his life.
He turned her on her side, hand on her back, while she coughed up what felt like half the Frozen Crossing.
Then she went still again, but differently this time. Her chest was moving. Her color, though still terrible, was shifting from gray to pale. Her heartbeat, when he checked, was weak, but it was there.
Matthias sat back on his heels and let out a breath that had been stuck in his chest for the last five minutes.
She was alive.
He looked at her face. Really looked this time. She was young, late twenties maybe, with dark hair plastered across her cheeks and a deep, tired kind of tension in her brow, even unconscious. There was a waterproof bag strapped tight across her body, double-buckled, locked. She'd held onto it even as the river tried to swallow her whole.
Whatever was in that bag, she'd almost died for it.
Matthias shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around her. Then he lifted her off the ground, one arm under her knees, one under her back, and started walking.
His border cabin was twenty minutes away. He moved at fifteen.
The storm had picked up again. Snow came sideways through the trees. The wind cut through his soaked clothes and turned his skin to ice, but he barely noticed. All his focus was on the woman in his arms, the rhythm of her breathing, the warmth slowly returning to her fingers, the way she curled slightly toward his chest like some part of her knew she was safe.
He was halfway to the cabin when her fingers moved.
He almost didn't feel it. Just the faintest tightening at the front of his shirt. He looked down.
Her hand had found the fabric of his collar, and she was holding on to her knuckles white, her frozen fingers curled in like she was afraid that if she let go, she'd be back in the water.
Then her eyes opened.
They were gray. Pale gray, like ice over a river, and they were full of something so raw and terrified that it hit Matthias somewhere behind his ribs.
Her lips moved. He stopped walking and leaned down to hear her.
"Please." Her voice was barely a thread of sound, cracked and shaking. "Please… don't send me back to him." A sharp breath. "Please. I'll tell you everything, just please… please don't…"
Her eyes rolled back.
Her grip on his shirt went slack.
She was out again, pulse steady, breathing slow and even, just gone, like the effort of those few words had taken everything she had left.
Matthias stood completely still for a moment in the middle of the storm.
Don't send me back to him.
Those five words moved through him slowly, like cold water finding all the cracks. Someone had done this to her. Someone had put her in that river. And she was so terrified of going back that even barely conscious, even halfway between alive and dead, the first thing she'd used her breath for wasn't a scream or a cry for help.
It was a plea not to be returned.
He looked down at her face, slack now, peaceful in the way only people who'd stopped fighting could manage, and felt something shift in his chest. It wasn't pity. Matthias didn't have a lot of room for pity. It was something sharper and older and harder to name.
He recognized that particular kind of fear. He'd seen it on the faces of wolves in the field who'd been betrayed by someone they trusted. Wolves who'd learned that the people who were supposed to protect them were the most dangerous ones in the room.
He started walking again. Faster.
The cabin appeared through the trees, and Matthias exhaled. He kicked the door open, carried her straight to the cot beside the fireplace, and laid her down. He stoked the fire until it was throwing real heat. He pulled the soaked blanket off her and replaced it with the dry one from his own bed. He checked her airway again clear. He checked her pulse, weak but holding.
He stood over her in the firelight and looked at the waterproof bag still strapped to her side. He looked at her face.
Don't send me back to him.
Matthias had spent twelve years trying to save wolves he'd already lost. He'd built his entire rule on a single idea that every wolf deserved someone who would show up for them.
He pulled the cabin chair to the side of the cot and sat down.
He wasn't sending her anywhere.
Not until he knew who she was. Not until he knew who "him" was. Not until she was warm and breathing and strong enough to tell him everything she'd promised him.
He folded his arms, leaned back, and watched her chest rise and fall with the firelight dancing across her face.
Outside, the storm raged on.
Inside, Matthias made the decision quietly, the way he made all his important ones without ceremony, without doubt.
He was keeping her safe.
Whatever that cost him.