The Extraction Table

The medical wing of the Citadel was a nightmare of rusted surgical tools and stained ceramic tiles. The air smelled of strong bleach and old blood.

Silas had been stripped to his waist. He was strapped face-down onto a freezing metal table. Heavy leather restraints locked his wrists, ankles, and neck into place. He couldn't move an inch.

A harsh, blinding surgical light was positioned directly over his back.

"Try not to struggle, Doctor," a voice said from the shadows. A man in a blood-stained apron stepped into the light, holding a heavy, motorized surgical saw. "The anesthetics ran out three years ago. If you move, I might sever the graft, and Malacor will skin me alive. You're going to feel this. A lot."

Silas closed his eyes. The cold metal of the table bit into his bare chest.

He wasn't afraid of the pain. The pain of the drill was nothing compared to the agony in his heart.

He had held onto hope. Through the long journey, through the freezing whiteout, he had believed that Kaelen was still there. That the man who had shielded him from the storm wouldn't truly let him die. But Kaelen had walked away. He had taken his thirty pieces of silver and bought his warmth, leaving Silas to be butchered in the dark.

The whine of the motorized saw filled the room.

Silas squeezed his eyes shut, a single tear escaping and freezing on his cheek.

* I deserved this,* Silas thought, the immense, crushing weight of his guilt finally breaking him. *I left him in the cold. Now, I die in it.*

The surgeon stepped closer. The whirring blade lowered toward the base of Silas’s neck. Silas felt the displacement of air. He braced every muscle in his body, waiting for the agony.

A deafening explosion rocked the medical wing.

The heavy reinforced doors at the end of the hall blew inward with catastrophic force, ripped off their hinges in a cloud of smoke and fire.

The surgeon jumped back, dropping the saw.

Through the thick, acrid smoke of the breached doorway stepped Kaelen.

He was a vision of absolute violence. He wielded an assault rifle in one hand and his serrated combat knife in the other. His pale gray eyes burned with a terrifying, lethal fury. He wasn't the cold, calculating scavenger anymore. He was the Winter Wolf unleashed, and he was hunting.

Two Citadel guards rushed the doorway. Kaelen didn't even break his stride. He fired a controlled burst, dropping both guards instantly.

The surgeon scrambled backward, raising his hands in terror. "Wait! Wait! I'm just following orders!"

Kaelen closed the distance in three long strides. He grabbed the surgeon by the throat, lifted him off the floor, and slammed him brutally against the tiled wall, knocking him unconscious before dropping him like garbage.

Kaelen dropped his rifle and practically threw himself at the surgical table. His hands were shaking violently as he drew his knife and slashed through the heavy leather restraints binding Silas’s wrists and neck.

Silas gasped, pushing himself up, his muscles screaming in protest. He turned, looking at Kaelen in sheer disbelief.

"You came back," Silas whispered, his voice cracking.

Kaelen didn't say a word. He grabbed his own heavy, fur-lined coat—the one he had bought with his blood money—and wrapped it tightly around Silas’s bare, shivering torso. He pulled Silas off the table, his strong hands gripping Silas’s shoulders with a desperate, crushing intensity.

"I couldn't do it," Kaelen rasped, his voice thick with emotion, the cold, dead facade completely shattered. He pulled Silas against his chest, burying his face in Silas's hair for one brief, agonizing second of sheer relief. "God, Silas. I sat in that room, looking at the fire, and I realized... surviving means nothing. If you die, there's no warmth left in the world anyway. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Silas threw his arms around Kaelen’s neck, a sob tearing from his throat. The ice was broken. The man he loved was back.

"We have to go," Kaelen said, pulling back, his eyes darting to the hallway. Alarms were blaring throughout the Citadel. "Malacor's entire army is going to be on us in ninety seconds."

Kaelen shoved a scavenged pistol into Silas’s hand. "Can you run?"

"Lead the way," Silas said, his hand gripping the weapon tightly.