The path beyond was dark, empty and still. She saw nothing, yet she kept staring, not daring to break the silence. Then Alaric spoke with a command that had no relationship to the state of his body.
"Run." His eyes remained on the gap. "Both of you. Run. Now."
Mira seized her hand and sprinted.
She carried both the kit and the food pack though Iphe hadn't seen her snatch them up. Her feet barely touched the earth, her body moving through the dark like she belonged to it. Iphe had never seen her like this, but more surprising was how easily she matched Mira's stride without thoughts.
She looked back.
Alaric had forced himself upright. His entire body trembling with the effort before he steadied. He reached for the food they'd left and hurled it into the trees in one sweeping arc. Then turned and urinated onto the earth where they and the food had been.
Mira pulled her harder, dragging her toward the storage shed, leaving no room for questions.
They ran into one of the smaller sheds and closed the door behind them. She could hear her heart pounding against her ribs as they both struggled to catch their breath.
Mira pressed a finger to her lips and she nodded.
The silence outside held for three long seconds.
Then Iphe noticed the hole in the wall. Small, inconspicuous and just wide enough to peer through. She moved to it without hesitation and looked through.
The training ground held three of them.
That was the first thing her mind could grasp.
Three monstrous, enormous wolves. The kind of size that made her brain resist what her eyes were telling it. Each beast was taller than a man even on all fours. Their black fur blended into the night, revealed only where the moonlight carved their edges.
Two circled Alaric with drool spilling from their jaws. The third lowered its muzzle to the earth, sniffing, tracing.
And then it struck her.
Alaric had, with his urine, masked their scent, and drowned out the food they had brought. He hid them in the most primal way possible.
Mira pressed in beside her, and she gave her room to see.
"Night Guards," her body went still.
"What?"
She pulled back from the hole and turned to Iphe, her voice reduced to almost nothing. "We have to leave. Right now." She glanced toward the far wall of the shed. "There's a path from the back exit of the training grounds, through the pines, to the staff quarters. My place. From there we can get to the parking lot."
"How do we get there?" Iphe kept her voice at the same register.
"We leave the shed." Mira's jaw tightened. "And we cross open ground to reach the path. Which is—"
"Next to impossible."
Mira didn't answer. She didn't need to.
Iphe turned back to the hole.
One of the wolves had Alaric by the wrist, his arm caught between its jaws, and it flung him toward the gap in the pines. The sound of it reached her a half second later. He hit the ground and lay still for a moment. Then the three wolves turned toward him, moving slowly, with the patience of a predator toying with its prey.
He lay on the ground where they'd thrown him, and the wolves circled close, and for a moment nothing happened. Then he got up. Still trembling, like he was about to fall back down.
From where she stood, the dark patches spreading through the fabric of his shirt, the wounds from earlier reopened and new ones added to them.
His eyes found the shed, and it felt as though he had always known exactly where she was. Then he looked up at the wolves around him. Said something in a language she didn't recognize. Three short words that carried through the clearing.
Mira gasped. The wolves snarled. And one let out a short howl.
Then he started running, away from the training ground and farther down the path, and the wolves chased after him.
The clearing went empty.
"Now is our chance. He won't get far before he's caught." Mira had her by the wrist before the words left her mouth.
They came out of the shed at a run. The back exit was a narrow break in the fence line, half-hidden behind a storage rack, and Mira went through it without slowing. Beyond it was the path. Barely a path — two feet wide between the pines, the ground soft with needles, the trees pressing in close enough that branches caught at Iphe's sleeves as she ran.
The dark was different here, thicker and directionless, but she kept her eyes on the pale shape of Mira ahead of her and ran.
The staff quarters emerged from the tree line like a held breath finally released.
But Mira didn't stop running.
"You can't stay here tonight," she looked back at Iphe as she kept running along the path that led to the staff quarters. Except she wasn't running to it, but away from it.
"What about you?"
"Don't worry about me. I'll be good. But you have to be out of here right now."
Iphe nodded and kept up with her.
She sighted the parking lot ahead. Her car waited exactly where she had left it under a lamppost, looking like a beacon of hope. She exhaled.
They reached it at a walk, the last of the run finally leaving their legs. Iphe unlocked it and turned to Mira.
"Be careful." She held her gaze. "Please."
Mira's smile was small and didn't quite reach her eyes. "I will. Get in."
Iphe turned toward the car.
"Now, what could possibly be chasing the estate's coordinator this late at night?"
They stilled. The voice came from the dark beyond the lamppost's reach, unhurried and pleasant, the way all of Ronan's words were pleasant.
He stepped into the light.