There’s something wrong with his eyes, for one thing. They’re open but not open, like he’s blind or something. They’re a weird kind of not color, so he doesn’t look entirely like Alex anymore.

Plus, his face is messed up.

It looks like somebody kicked the shit out of him. He’s got bruises and cuts and swelling everywhere. Dawn surmises this must be what happens when you plummet six hundred feet to your death.

(She’s thankful, for once, that they’re high in the mountains and that summer is over. No way could she handle it if there were, like, bugs on the body.)

Dawn lets herself look away from the body. She looks up the cliff face and it’s jagged and black and sharp as far as she can see. She can easily imagine he picked up the bruises and cuts on the way down, when he fell. If anything kicked the shit out of him, it was probably nature.

But that still leaves the question:

Who in the Bear Pack stabbed him?

Author’s Note

OH YEAH. SORRY.

Aside from the bruises and the minor cuts and scrapes that Dawn can see and infer must have come from the fall, well…

There’s a big jagged

bloody

wound

in Alex’s chest.

It’s not the kind of thing that just happens when you fall.

Chapter 65

ALEX IS LYING FACEUP. His eyes are open. He would have died seeing the sky, seeing the snow fall.

Did he know it would bury him?

Did he wonder if anyone would ever find him?

I found you, Dawn thinks. But how did you get here?

And who did this to you?

The counselors had a knife. And bear spray. But Christian didn’t stab Alex, and neither did Amber.

That means it was someone in the Pack.

Dawn stares down at Alex and his bloody, jagged wound, and she sure as hell has her suspicions who did it, but—before she can really explore them—someone sneaks up behind her.

“What are you doing?”

A hand grabs Dawn’s shoulder, rough, and Dawn screams before she can stop herself, turns around, flailing, to find Brandon standing over her, his hands up to defend himself. “Whoa,” he says, stepping back. “Holy shit, Dawn. Just relax.”

Slowly, Dawn stands, the sound of her scream echoing up the wall of the cliff and along the bottom of the trench. She can hear alarmed voices through the forest; the rest of the Pack, coming to investigate.

They’re coming, Dawn thinks, and now we’ll get some answers.

Brandon doesn’t try to touch her again. He stands in front of her, just a little too close, watching her and not saying anything.