Chapter 5: The Edge of the Ice

At dusk the next day I walked down to the shore alone.

Lars's cabin sat on a low bluff above the north shore of Solstice Lake.

A path of packed snow ran down through the pines to the ice.

I wore his spare parka, which hung to my knees, and my new splint was tucked inside the front of it.

I had spent the whole day looking at the mitten in my head.

Eli's, in my fist, when I was ten.

I needed to know what my own body knew.

At the bottom of the path the trees stopped, and the lake began.

It was white and flat and enormous, and it ran away to the far shore, where a smear of lights marked the Holmberg lodge.

Almost two miles off, close under the Holmberg shore, the Moon Hole sat open and black, with a ring of yellow rope around it.

I took one step out.

My boot came down on the ice with a dull, solid sound.

It held.

I took a second step, and then my left palm began to burn.

The scar lit up, from the heel of my hand to the base of my thumb, and the cold came up my arm to the shoulder.

I was suddenly very small, and very wet.

There was a gray sky above me, and a sound of someone screaming a name, and a hand in mine, small and slippery, sliding out of my grip.

I could not hold it, and I could not hold it, and I could not hold it.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Too Late, Alpha: I Died Carrying Your Heir from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.