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Chapter 64 - Chapter 64 – Among Wolves

The forest did not welcome him. It tolerated him the way it tolerated all wounded animals, waiting, patient, for weakness to finish its work.

 Christian stumbled through snow crusted hard as glass, his breath clouding in the brittle air. Every step burned. The boots he wore, stolen months ago, were split at the seams. His coat hung loose, torn from fire and flight. The cold ate at him in increments: fingers first, then toes, then the hollow beneath his ribs.

 The wreck of the train lay far behind, swallowed by distance and smoke. He had not stopped since he fled into the trees. His mind replayed the executions, the sight of men dropping in heaps under Russian rifles. That could have been him. It should have been him. But fate, or some cruel mockery of it, had carried him into this frozen wilderness instead.

 By the third day, he knew he would die if he didn't find food. He scavenged among the wreckage scattered across the woods. Here and there he found what the blast had hurled: a strip of cloth, a bent mess tin, once even a half-frozen potato rolling in the snow like a gift from the gods. He devoured it raw, choking on the bitter earth still clinging to its skin.

 Then, he stumbled upon the bodies.

 The snow kept them, stiff and pale, like grotesque statues. Some in Russian gray. Some in German field coats, thrown together by the blast. Christian approached them with hesitation at first. But the cold stripped him of shame.

 He pulled boots from a dead man's feet, ignoring the brittle crack of frozen flesh. From another he stole a scarf, still damp with blood. Once he found a crust of bread in a stiff hand and took it, forcing his eyes away from the face that had once chewed it.

 Every theft felt like a confession. He had become carrion, circling what death left behind.

 That night, the wolves came. He heard them first. A long, low howl that rose from the deep woods, followed by the answering chorus. It rolled over the snow like a tide, raising the hairs on his neck. He crouched low, pressing his back to a tree, clutching the knife he had scavenged. His breath came quick and shallow.

 Shadows moved between the trees. Eyes gleamed in the dark, green and merciless. The pack circled, their paws soundless in the snow. Christian's heart hammered. He was one of them, starving, desperate, teeth bared against the cold world. But unlike them, he had no pack, no blood-tied family to close ranks around him.

 He was alone. One wolf crept closer, ribs jutting like branches under its fur. Its muzzle lifted, nostrils flaring at his scent, the scent of a man, sweat and fear. Christian raised his knife, though his hand shook. For a moment, their eyes locked, predator to predator, both gaunt with hunger.

The wolf snarled, but then another howl rose, further off, and the pack shifted. They circled him once more, then slipped back into the forest, shadows dissolving into the dark.

 Christian collapsed into the snow, trembling. He realized he had not prayed in weeks, but a hoarse whisper left his lips: "Danke." The next morning, he was awoken by a sound but it was not the howl of wolves.

 He heard the drone before he saw it, a German plane, high and distant, its silhouette a black cross against the gray clouds. His chest seized. For an instant, he thought it might fire on him, mistaking him for a Soviet soldier. Instead, the plane dipped and something tumbled from its belly.

 Leaflets.

 They scattered over the forest like oversized snowflakes, pages catching the wind, fluttering down through the bare branches. Christian stumbled forward, chasing them, his boots crunching. He caught one as it landed, the paper crisp and cold against his fingers.

 The words leapt at him in Gothic script:

"Deutsche Soldaten! Stand fast. The Fatherland remembers you. Victory is near."

 His throat tightened. A photograph filled the page, smiling boys in uniform, rifles slung across proud shoulders, a flag rising behind them. Their faces were clean, their coats pressed, their eyes bright with certainty.

 Christian sank into the snow, clutching the leaflet as if it might warm him. For weeks he had been nameless, faceless, only a shadow fleeing death. Now the paper screamed his identity back at him: German. Always German.

 The wolves' howls carried again in the distance, a reminder that the forest still hunted him. But he sat there in the cold, staring at the leaflet, torn between the promise it carried and the truth of what he had seen the executions, the corpses and the ruin.

 Victory is near. The words rang hollow. But still, they called. Christian folded the leaflet carefully, tucking it into his coat over his heart. Then he rose, stiff and slow, and began to walk. Not toward Germany, not yet he didn't even know the direction. But forward. Always forward.

 The wolves howled again, and he answered them, not with voice, but with the crunch of his boots in the snow, a lone predator surviving one more day.

 Then, as he trudged deeper into the trees, he froze. Voices. Human voices.

They carried faintly through the brittle air, low, muttering, broken by coughs and laughter. Russian. At least three, maybe more. Christian's chest tightened. His first instinct was to run, but his legs quivered with exhaustion, his breath already burning from cold.

He dropped to his knees, pressing himself into the snow, listening. The voices were closer now, accompanied by the snap of branches and the jingle of metal, rifles, canteens, the sound of soldiers at ease.

 Hope and terror clashed inside him. They could be peasants, partisans, soldiers. They could mean food, or they could mean a bullet.

 Christian lowered his head into the snow, every nerve screaming. The leaflet crinkled against his chest, a reminder of the world he still belonged to and the wolves answered once more, somewhere beyond the voices, howling into the night.

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