Chapter 2 - The Hollow
We stumbled through the blizzard for what felt like hours, though it could have been mere minutes.
Every step sent flares of agony through my damaged spine.
The helicopter crash in Syria had broken my body, but Julian’s betrayal was actively trying to kill my soul.
Just as my knees gave out, Titan barked—a sharp, single sound.
He dragged me toward a massive, upended root system of a fallen cedar.
Beneath it was a natural snow cave, shielded from the wind and insulated by packed earth and ice.
I crawled inside, curling into a tight fetal position.
Titan followed, squeezing his large body into the narrow gap, wedging himself against my chest and stomach.
He was a furnace.
I buried my face in his thick, faded coat, sobbing tearlessly as the violent shivering overtook me.
As the hours bled away in the dark, a terrifying clarity washed over me.
My sudden fever back in Anchorage.
The plummeting oxygen.
The mysterious decline that baffled the doctors.
Julian had been bringing me coffee every morning.
Peppermint and stale smoke.
May you like
The smell on his breath as he tied me to the tree.
He hadn't just left me to die—he had been slowly poisoning me for months to ensure my body would give out, making his "compassionate" act of taking me home look like a mercy mission.
