by Kyla Stone
Her throat thickened. Somehow, Shadow seemed to sense that she needed this.
Suddenly, she was so tired she could barely stand. Every muscle in her body ached. The adrenaline stim had worn off hours ago. Her face was one big bruise. Her ribs were burning, her ankle a throb of white-hot pain.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
She stepped off her hoverboard, grimacing from the jolt of pain, and glanced at the power meter. It needed sunlight to charge. Though it was night—cicadas and crickets bursting into song, stars glinting overhead—she hoped to sleep for at least twelve hours, well past dawn. She left the board outside the cave beneath an open patch of sky.
Raven lowered herself to her hands and knees and crawled inside, her left ankle dragging.
Shadow did not come with her.
“Shadow!” she called.
She waited. But he didn’t come.
She crawled back out, unwilling to be alone. Not tonight.
Shadow stood on a shallow outcropping a few yards away. He threw his head back toward the sky, raised his muzzle, and howled.
It was a haunting, mournful sound, filled with sorrow, clear and pure as a bow drawn across a violin.
It was a requiem. An elegy. A howl of grief for the lost pack member who wasn’t ever coming back.
He howled for his lifemate, for Luna.
Raven listened. And as she listened, she felt her heart cracking open. She felt all the pieces of herself falling away, shriveling to nothing, revealing the raw, pulsing center deep within her.
All the grief and sorrow and pain she’d been burying so deep since her father died—no, since long before then. Since her mother left, abandoning her.
Since the day she first realized her father couldn’t love her like other fathers could. Since she was five, the first time she remembered feeling completely alone, and believed she deserved to feel that way.
She let the pain flow through her, a dark river of sorrow drowning her from the inside. She grieved for Zachariah. She grieved for her father. No matter whether he was the father she’d wanted, he was the father she had. And she loved him.
She grieved for her mother, for the love she’d stifled with bitterness and resentment, locking it in a place deep down. She hadn’t realized what she’d done, how much she’d lost, until it was too late.
She grieved for Gizmo and Kodiak, for Shika, Titus, and sweet Suki. For Vlad, who didn’t deserve the death he’d been given. And for Luna—a wolf, an animal, a different species—who’d still made her pack, and then proved her devotion by sacrificing her life to save Raven’s.
The world had been broken for a long time. But now it was shattered, the remaining shards sharp with cruelty, suffering, loss. It felt empty, forsaken. Bleak and hopeless.
But within the suffering, the loss, she felt the connection—silvery, thin as a spider’s web, but strong as steel—threaded between herself and the wolf howling his sorrow into the sky.
Her eyes burned. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.
For the first time in three years, she let them fall.
And finally, she wept.
Later that night, Raven crawled inside the cave and collapsed on the rocky ground, exhausted and weary, emptied out. Shadow stood over her in the darkness and nuzzled her neck. She held out her hand to him. He flopped down beside her, his flank pressed against her side.
“It’s you and me, now,” she said softly.
He whined, gazing at her with those beautiful, mournful eyes.
“I can’t do this alone, okay? I need you. We need each other.”
She buried her hands in the scruff of his neck. She nestled her cheek against his fur and breathed in his scent—of earth and bark, grass and wind, of all things wild and primal, of fierce creatures prowling through deep, dark woods, of love and pack and family.
44
Raven and Shadow traveled mostly at dawn and dusk, sleeping in the woods by day. Sometimes she set up her tent and sleeping bag, a few times Shadow found them another cave, or a shelf of rock to shelter beneath.
Each night, Shadow howled his sorrow and grief. Each night, Raven wept with him.
As they traveled, she kept roughly parallel to the river, tracking north with her compass and using her Lifestraw to filter the water for drinking. She foraged for food, gathering fallen hazelnuts, hickory nuts, and black walnuts to boil later. In spring and summer, she could forage for highbush blueberries, elderberries and sawtooth blackberries, wild sweet potato and wild ginger roots, cattails and clover, and of course, dandelions. The entire plant—flower, leaves, and roots—was edible, if a bit bitter.
Her father had taken her on numerous camping, hiking, and hunting trips to the cabin. Each visit, he’d make her memorize each edible plant and then find it again on her own the following trip. “You can’t depend on anyone but yourself,” he’d said.
Her heart ached at the memory. In some ways, he had been right. But in other ways, he was wrong.
Because of the things he’d taught her, she could survive. But she didn’t just want to survive. She wanted to live. She understood the difference now.
Isolation wasn’t the answer. It couldn’t be. Not for her, not anymore.
Gradually, the pain in her jaw, ribs, and foot lessened. Her swollen lip healed. The ugly yellowish-green bruises marring her ribs faded. She could walk instead of hobble, but her ankle refused to heal properly. She wasn’t sure if it was broken, fractured, if ligaments were torn, but she kept her boot on at all times to act as a supportive splint for her ankle.
Ryker’s cruelty had left her with a limp and a constant dull ache that radiated from her ankle down to her toes and up her shin.
But she was alive. And he wasn’t.
While Shadow dozed in the afternoons, she set her snares, searching carefully until she found a well-used trail leading to a rabbit burrow. After three days of empty snares, she finally caught dinner.
She skinned and dressed the rabbit, then roasted it. She built a fire the way her father taught her. The first time, she worried that she wouldn’t remember. But she did. She remembered everything with an ache in her chest and grief stinging the back of her throat, so strong it nearly took her breath away.
She crouched over the small ball of tinder she’d gathered, mostly dried moss and pine needles, and struck the flint with the edge of the steel with a glancing motion, gently fanning the sparks into a tiny flame.
Earlier in the day, she’d dug two holes, each eight inches across, a couple of feet deep. She made a tunnel between the two at the base to connect them and filled one with twigs, bark, and small sticks.
The second hole acted as a chimney to suck oxygen down to feed the fire. The fire was nearly smokeless, and the flames couldn’t be seen from afar.
She didn’t doubt there were others like the Headhunters out there. She had to remain vigilant at all times.
While she waited for a snare to catch or a squirrel or rabbit to roast, she whittled, carving little birds, wolves, bears, and a tiger. She’d forgotten how much she loved the feel of the wood beneath her fingers, the shape of something hidden within, just waiting for her to bring it out into the open, fully formed.
She’d let her resentment take something precious from her. Her carvings, and her memories of her mother and father both. But not anymore. She held onto every memory—the good and the bad. They were all she had left.
She left the wooden figures on stumps, in nooks between branches, nestled in the hollow of a tree. Maybe someone would find them. Maybe it would make them smile, give them a tiny sliver of hope. Sometimes that was enough to keep going, to keep trying.
One night, the woods echoed with a series of howls far off in the distance. For a second, she hoped it was Loki or Aspen, but there were too many of them. A few wild wolf packs survived further north in the Chattahoochee National Forest. They wouldn’t normally travel so near humans, but everything had changed.
There were far fewer humans now.
Shadow pricked his ears. She waited to see if he would howl back. Sometimes a pack would announce a vacancy, putting out a call to any lone wolves who wished to fill it. Potential candidates would be challenged by the pack to ensure the chosen one was strong enough, smart enough, capable enough to defend and protect his new family.
Did Shadow feel like a lone wolf? Did he want to find his own kind? He gave her a mournful look, his amber eyes steady as he stared at her.
“Do you want to go?” she asked, her throat tight.
He gave a low yip in the back of his throat. His tail swished once, twice, three times.
“It’s okay.” The words hurt to speak them. But she knew love always gave a choice. “You can go if you want to.”
Shadow stayed.
Another piece of her heart fit back together.
Two days later, just as dawn was breaking, they crested a hill and came upon an outcropping overlooking a small town. The sky glowered a bleary gray, the morning air chilly.
Shadow hung back, wary, but Raven hadn’t seen a town since the pharmacy at Clay Creek. “Five minutes,” she promised. She wanted a paper map to help her get where she needed to go. Also, she was intensely curious.
Shadow whined unhappily, but gave in and loped after her.
A street sign welcomed visitors to Mayfield, home of the state’s best fried okra. There were a few stores, a gas station, a tiny hotel, and several smaller roads lined with clusters of small, hunched houses.
It was eerily quiet. There was no movement, no life.
As she got closer, her stomach knotted in apprehension. This town was worse than empty. It had been ransacked, looted, turned inside out.
Trash, crumpled leaves, broken glass, and scattered papers littered the sidewalks. The roads were pitted and pocked with potholes, the parking lots weed-infested and riddled with cracks.
Hundreds of abandoned, gutted cars blocked the road. Most sported broken windows, their interiors scraped clean of anything but trash. The gas station’s windows were shattered. As was the barber shop and hardware store. Small holes punctured the walls and riddled the driver’s side of a Jeep parked in front of the gas station.
Shards of glass thrust from the frame of the gas station’s broken front door. Inside, deep shadows crouched in every corner. She blinked to adjust to the dim light.
The shelves were mostly picked clean. Several racks were tipped over. The air smelled foul, like rancid milk and foul, rotting meat. Flies buzzed.
There were no paper maps to be found. She didn’t know what she’d expected. Everything was electronic now. She could’ve gotten the information she needed in five seconds on her SmartFlex. But without the net, without electricity, all that knowledge was gone, erased in a few short devastating weeks.
She left the gas station and passed a sagging hotel, a dusty SUV parked in front of the drive. A putrid stench filled her nostrils—something decomposing, rotting. Her hand covering her mouth and nose, she peered through the window.
Two men slumped in the front seats, rust-brown blood staining the masks still over their mouths, blood leaking from their eyes. The bodies were bloated and discolored, their swollen limbs locked in rigid agony.
She stepped back fast, breathing hard. This was how her father had died. How ninety-five percent of the world had died. Probably her mother, too, though she didn’t know for sure.
As for Raven, she hadn’t suffered so much as a cough since Zachariah had splattered infected blood in her face. That was over two weeks ago.
There was only one reason she wasn’t already dead.
Raven was immune.
But the knowledge offered little comfort. Her immunity couldn’t save her father or Zachariah. It hadn’t done a damn thing to save Luna or Vlad or any of the others.
And it wasn’t only the Hydra virus that made this town dangerous. It was the people. All towns were dangerous now. And cities.
From now on, they’d skirt the towns and highways, stick to the safety of the woods. But she needed a plan. She needed a destination.
Raven turned away from the town. “Let’s go,” she said to Shadow.
They left together, the wolf loping at her side.
45
Later in the morning, as they were making their way back through the woods, Raven heard voices. She jumped off her hoverboard and hid behind an oak, rifle tight in her hands.
A child’s voice rang out. Raven stiffened in surprise.
Shadow’s hackles raised. He pressed his muzzle to her side before trotting out of sight, vanishing into the trees.
Raven remained hidden as three figures strode closer, crashing noisily through the underbrush like a herd of elephants. She peeked around the edge of the trunk.
There were two boys and a girl. The oldest boy and girl both looked about Raven’s age. The girl was Filipina, short and plump, maybe seventeen or eighteen, with thick black hair to her shoulders and choppy bangs.
The little boy looked about eight, also Filipino, likely the girl’s brother, with big black-button eyes in his brown face and a thicket of unruly hair that stood up all over his head.
The older boy was African-American and huge, with broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and tree-trunk arms and thighs. He looked intimidating, until he smiled at the little boy, his warm eyes crinkling, his smile both kind and mischievous.
They wore hiking backpacks, a sleek black handgun holstered at the girl’s hip.
The older sister was holding the little boy’s hand, but he was giggling and trying to escape and grab the older boy’s hand instead. “Nice try, Benjie,” she said, exasperated. “You think I’m letting go of you for even a second? You have to stay right with me so I can keep you safe.”
But the little boy—Benjie—pushed between them and grasped the older boy’s hand, which was so large the kid’s entire hand disappeared inside it. He looked up adoringly at the big guy. “I can hold both your hands at the same time, right, Finn?”
“Always the negotiator.” The girl rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “What do you need to remember?”
“Stay together, stay safe,” the little boy repeated, his face solemn.
“Got it,” the girl said.
As they trudged past Raven’s hiding spot, the guy and girl both holding the boy’s hands as they pushed through thickets and trampled dead leaves, the sister smiled down at her brother, love and affection shining in her eyes.
Raven watched them go, straining to hear long after they’d passed out of sight. She remembered her mother’s birthday letter. Find a good group of people you can trust. Don’t be alone, Raven.
It was a risk. People were a risk. Trusting was a risk.
There were plenty of bad people. There were only a few good ones.
She thought of her parents. Zachariah. Damien. Even Shadow.
She knew the truth now. Those few good ones made the difference between isolation and connection, between survival and living, between death and life.
Raven was going to find her mother.
But first, she was going to find out if these were people she could trust.
The End
Thanks for reading No Safe Haven. Want more of Raven and her world? Read the complete Last Sanctuary series, starting with Rising Storm. The entire series is free in Kindle Unlimited.
A deadly plague. A hijacked ship. The world hangs in the balance...
To privileged Amelia, the lavish Grand Voyager is just another gilded cage. For Gabriel, a covert rebel, it's his one chance for vengeance.
But when terrorists storm the ship, Amelia and Gabriel are forced into an uneasy alliance. As the lines between enemies and allies blur, they uncover an even greater threat—and it’s already on the ship.
Now, they're thrust into a battle not just for their survival, but for the fate of humanity itself.
Only one thing is certain: life as they know it is about to end.
Pick up your copy of Rising Storm: The Last Sanctuary Book One H
ERE. Stay tuned for a sneak peak after About the Author! (Note: No Safe Haven takes place chronologically between Rising Storm and Falling Stars.)
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Sneak Peek of Rising Storm
Terror coiled in the pit of eighteen-year-old Amelia Black’s stomach. Sweat beaded her forehead. The fabric of her dress clung damp and chilly against her skin.
The polished marble corridor stretched ahead of her, silent and empty but for the bodies.
In just a matter of minutes, the whole world had fallen to pieces.
It was hard to believe that only a few hours ago, the Grand Voyager was a glittering jewel of crystal and glass, a lavish fulfillment of every wish and desire, a shimmering promise of dreams come true.
But it was all a lie. This wasn’t a dream; it was a nightmare. And with the nightmare came the terror, the shrieking and running, the beautiful bodies falling, limp as dolls.
Now, there was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
Amelia strained for any sound over the crashing thunder of the storm. She crouched behind the counter of a coffee bar along the corridor of Deck Ten of the Grand Voyager luxury liner.
The display cases were all smashed, glass shards littering the marble floor. A humanoid service bot slumped against a bank of storage cabinets, smoke hissing from the bullet hole drilled into its forehead. Above the sink, the broken holoscreen flickered.
