Lorna woke to a bright light shining in her eyes. She sat upright, and she blinked until her eyes adjusted to the bright room. The curtains over the window were parted, allowing the bright sun to shine into the small cabin. Alex was laying on the floor.

He was asleep.

Alex had promised to wake her, but he had fallen asleep instead. No one had found them while they were sleeping, so at least they were safe despite his irresponsibility.

At some point in the night, he had put on his shirt and pants, and he curled up under his blanket. Lorna wondered if he had any intention of waking her at all. Her uncle would do that sometimes: promise to wake her at a certain time to do something but letting her sleep instead while completing the task on his own.

Considering all of the time she had spent on her own, it was irritating.

Lorna sighed, and she climbed out of her bed. She went into the bathroom to freshen up before going through their food to decide what to make for breakfast. Her stomach roiled at the thought of eating something after what they had experienced the previous day, but she knew that Alex would try to push her into eating.

She knew that she needed to eat.

There was the unmistakable scream of a deer. Lorna rushed to a window, looking to see what had caused that dreadful sound. She saw nothing out of each window.

Lorna looked at Alex, and the man remained sound asleep. It was no surprise that he was exhausted, but it did surprise her that he had been able to sleep through that terrible sound.

Ean would have expected her to wake him up and let him investigate, but Lorna was perfectly capable of defending herself with a rifle. The idea of there being a Merged creature out there made her heart race in her chest, but she had shot one before when her uncle had been gone to get food for them.

Lorna put on her coat and boots, and she grabbed her rifle before she left the cabin, cradling it to her chest in preparation for anything that went wrong. She scanned the forest around her, keeping her ears open for more deer sounds. There was a faint grunting, and she followed the sound around the cabin.

Lorna spotted the antlers of a large buck in the forest, and she raised her rifle as she approached it. The deer was large, and it grunted at her as it wobbled on its legs. It huddled against a tree, and he watched her through large, wild eyes.

There was a large gash in its leg, but instead of red blood seeping from the wound and matting its fur, there was a black fluid that formed thin tendrils as it slithered up the deer's body.

Lorna's heart clenched as she watched the poor thing becoming a Merged. It had been freshly wounded, and it was likely that there was another creature nearby that it had managed to escape.

Unless the deer had managed to kill it, but considering the streak of bad luck that she and Alex had been having, she doubted that was the case. Besides that, the only way to get rid of the Merged disease was to burn it, even if the deer had killed the creature, the magical parasite would have just crawled away and found a new host.

Lorna aimed her gun to kill the deer, but then she heard the distorted scream of a pig. The deer moved, and she shot the deer in its side as it ran from the terrifying sound.

With her heart hammering in her chest, Lorna looked all around her for the source of the sound, and the moment she spotted something as black as midnight she aimed her rifle. Once her eyes confirmed that a wild boar, massive and with tusks gnarled from the magic, she shot her rifle.

One of its eyes burst in a spray of gore, and it screamed. It continued to charge at her.

Lorna backed away as she pulled the hammer to ready another shot. Strangled noises escaped her throat as she watched it get closer and closer to her while it—

Another thunderous shot rang through the forest, and the boar fell with a distorted scream, sliding in the snow a few inches with its momentum.

"What the hell!"

Lorna recognized Alex's voice, and she turned toward it, lowering her rifle. The man was trudging through the snow toward her, and he looked furious.

"What is wrong with you?" he asked. "You could have gotten yourself killed out here!"

"I can take care of myself," Lorna said.

Alex stopped, and he rolled his eyes.

"I say that shit all the damn time, kid, and I always get myself into trouble. Why did you come out here?"

Lorna shrugged her slight shoulders.

"I heard a deer, and I wanted to make sure that it would be safe for us out here."

Alex shook his head, and he sighed.

"You know, I'm supposed to be the crazy one out of the two of us."

They heard the scream of the deer, and they both turned toward the sound. It was charging toward them, head lowered to pierce them with its antlers. Lorna swung up her rifle to aim at it, but the buck was on her too quickly. She felt a burning pain in her side, and she squeezed the trigger as she felt herself falling backward with the momentum of the deer’s charge.

Lorna’s back collided with a tree, and she cried out at the explosion of pain in her back and side. There was a second thunderous shot, and she felt a hot liquid splash onto her face. The deer grunted a few times, and then it collapsed onto its front. Its antlers landed on the ground at either side of her feet.

“Lorna!” Alex called as he ran to her side. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did it hurt you?”

Lorna had to swallow back saliva once, twice before she could answer him with a shaky voice:

“I’m fine.”

Alex’s eyes roamed over her, and he shook his head.

“Get inside and take care of yourself,” he said, and he added with a wave of his hand, “I need to take care of these.”

Lorna nodded. Alex helped her climb over the dead buck’s body, catching her when tripped. Then she made the trek back to the cabin while Alex worked on setting the dead animals’ bodies on fire.