PART 2: THE SECRET HIDDEN INSIDE HER WOUND

“Don’t move,” Julian said.

Aurelia tried to obey, but the pain in her leg made her fingers тιԍнтen around the blanket.

Julian placed the smoking linen aside and examined the injury again. His expression had grown unusually serious.

“There’s something lodged beneath the skin.”

“A piece of the tree?”

“Maybe.”

He carefully cleaned the area, working as gently as possible. Aurelia turned her face toward the wall, concentrating on the sound of the storm rather than the discomfort.

Then Julian stopped.

“What is it?” she asked.

He didn’t answer immediately.

“Julian?”

He reached for a small pair of tweezers and carefully removed a dark metal fragment.

It was no larger than a fingernail.

But it wasn’t wood.

It wasn’t stone, either.

It was a piece of metal with an unusual curved edge.

Julian held it near the fire.

His face went pale.

“Where did you find that?” Aurelia asked.

“Inside your wound.”

“What is it?”

He turned the fragment over.

A tiny symbol had been stamped into its surface.

A circle surrounding the letter B.

Julian stared at it as though he had just recognized the signature of a ghost.

“That’s impossible.”

Aurelia struggled to sit up.

“What’s impossible?”

He closed his fingers around the fragment.

“Nothing you need to worry about tonight.”

“I’m tired of people deciding what I need to know.”

Julian looked at her.

For a long moment, neither spoke.

Then he placed the metal fragment on the table.

“Someone used to mark his equipment with that symbol.”

“Who?”

“Caleb Voss.”

The name meant nothing to Aurelia.

Julian, however, looked as if he wished he had never spoken it.

“Who is Caleb Voss?”

“A man who disappeared three winters ago.”

“Was he a friend?”

“No.”

“An enemy?”

Julian glanced toward the window.

“Something worse.”

Before Aurelia could ask another question, a gust of wind rattled the cabin door.

Julian stood immediately.

He crossed the room, checked the wooden latch, and looked through the narrow window.

“Stay here.”

“Where are you going?”

“Outside.”

“I’m not a child, Julian.”

“I know.”

“Then stop speaking to me as though I am one.”

He turned back.

For the first time, she saw something softer beneath his stern expression.

“Someone may have followed us.”

Aurelia felt her stomach тιԍнтen.

“Because of that metal?”

Julian didn’t answer.

He grabbed his rifle, opened the door, and stepped into the storm.

The cold struck him immediately.

Snow had already covered the tracks leading to the cabin, but Julian knew the mountain well enough to recognize when something was wrong.

The fallen tree had not simply collapsed.

Its trunk showed signs of an old cut.

Someone had weakened it beforehand.

And the rocks scattered across the trail had fallen from a slope where they shouldn’t have fallen naturally.

Julian crouched beside the damaged timber.

There, beneath a layer of fresh snow, he found something else.

A piece of dark leather.

It had been caught beneath a branch.

He turned it over.

A familiar symbol had been burned into the surface.

The same circle.

The same letter B.

Julian’s jaw тιԍнтened.

Caleb Voss was supposed to be gone.

ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, perhaps.

But certainly gone.

And now the man’s mark had appeared inside the wound of the woman Julian had promised to marry.

He returned to the cabin and secured the door.

Aurelia was sitting upright when he entered.

“You found something.”

It wasn’t a question.

Julian placed the leather fragment beside the metal.

“I believe the tree was deliberately weakened.”

Aurelia stared at him.

“You mean someone wanted it to fall on us?”

“Possibly.”

“Why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to understand.”

She looked down at her injured leg.

“Did that metal come from a weapon?”

Julian remained silent for a moment.

“Yes.”

Aurelia’s face changed.

“You think someone was trying to hurt me?”

“I think someone was trying to send a message.”

“To whom?”

His eyes met hers.

“I don’t know yet.”

She studied him carefully.

“Then perhaps we should start with what you haven’t told me.”

Julian looked away.

Aurelia continued.

“Your letters said you lived alone. You told me you wanted a wife because you were tired of an empty cabin. But you never mentioned Caleb Voss, strange symbols, or people who might be waiting on mountain trails.”

“I didn’t expect any of this.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He sat down opposite her.

“Three years ago, I worked with a group of men who surveyed land claims around these mountains. Caleb Voss was one of them. He was clever, ambitious, and willing to do things the rest of us wouldn’t.”

“What kind of things?”

“Changing property records. Making honest men lose their land. Threatening anyone who questioned him.”

Julian paused.

“When I discovered what he was doing, I reported him.”

“And he disappeared?”

“Before the investigation could reach him.”

Aurelia looked at the metal fragment again.

“Then perhaps he hasn’t disappeared at all.”

“No.”

Julian’s voice dropped.

“Perhaps he’s been waiting.”

Later that evening, Julian prepared a simple meal.

Aurelia could barely eat, but she appreciated the effort.

He had placed a folded blanket near the fire and made certain she could reach the water pitcher without standing.

It was a small kindness.

Somehow, it meant more than the promises written in their marriage agreement.

“Why did you agree to marry me?” she asked suddenly.

Julian looked up from his plate.

“What do you mean?”

“You had never seen me. You didn’t know whether I was difficult, stubborn, or impossible to live with.”

“You’re certainly stubborn.”

Aurelia raised an eyebrow.

“And yet you still brought me here.”

He considered her question.

“Your letters.”

“What about them?”

“You never pretended to be someone else.”

She looked down.

“Most people wanted me to be someone smaller.”

Julian’s expression hardened.

“Then most people weren’t worth your time.”

Aurelia didn’t know what to say.

For the first time, she wondered whether the man who wrote those simple letters was even more remarkable than she had imagined.

Then three sharp knocks sounded against the cabin door.

Both froze.

Julian reached for his rifle.

A voice came through the wood.

“Mr. Boone? Open up. I’ve come a long way, and I’ve got news about your bride.”

Aurelia looked at Julian.

His face had gone completely still.

Because the voice belonged to a man he had buried in his memory three years ago.

Caleb Voss.

To be continued in Part 3…