Chapter 15
Chapter 15
Shadow intercepts the mother and children before they reach the mine entrance, startling them back toward the village. A Greys soldier emerges from the shaft and spots the family. Thorne kills him with a single pistol shot. More soldiers pour from the mine. Thorne lays suppressive fire while Shadow herds the family downhill. Cole hears the gunfire from his concealed position but holds his post. The woman and children reach safety. Thorne is pinned behind a boulder with limited ammunition as additional Greys deploy from the mine. Shadow circles east toward the blind spot Thorne identified, but the mine door opens wider and Thorne hears Masovich's voice issuing orders from inside.
Shadow covered thirty meters before the woman’s eyes finally registered the threat. It was a primal, instantaneous shift. The basket, laden with bread, tumbled from nerveless fingers, its contents scattering across the frost-hardened earth. A choked gasp, and the woman snatched the smaller child into her arms, her body a shield. The older boy, caught in the sudden chaos, simply froze, his gaze fixed on the impossible apparition.
To their terrified eyes, Shadow was a phantom made flesh – a wolf, gaunt and grey, a hunter in the stark, open landscape, moving with unnerving directness. She was a predator revealed, a creature of the wild breaching the fragile human order.
Shadow, sensing their fear, slowed her advance. She adjusted her trajectory, a calculated pivot away from the mother and her children, bounding past them to land with deliberate stillness on the path ahead. Her posture was a clear declaration: the route north was blocked.
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