(What did Lottie do with the bear's heart again?
Oh, right. She gave it to the Wilderness.)
*
Shauna laughs before she can help it. "Holy shit."
She doesn’t mean to, really. It just happens, rising up from somewhere deep, tangled up in the high of the feast, the singing, the howling, the newfound power. And the sheer, ridiculous absurdity of some poor bastard just stumbling his way into this—into them, just as they’re at their freest.
All of that tension, bursting when Lottie splits his skull with an axe. And so, she laughs.
Lottie looks up, soft eyes, innocent face, with a little smile, like she’s looking for someone to be proud of her. Like she’s set things right.
And Lottie’s batshit, but maybe she has. Maybe she’s right; he doesn’t belong here.
*
Mel’s pissed at her, although she doesn’t say it.
Shauna tries, in her own way. Bigger rations. What’s-her-name and What’s-her-face threatened into nursing duty. A grand fucking spectacle of beating Kodiak bloody. But Mel still chooses Hannah’s company over hers. Won’t even come back to her hut at night.
It makes her want to scream.
Mel told her that she liked that Shauna wasn’t afraid of the bad parts of herself, and Shauna believed her. She let those parts show, she wore them like armor, and now, suddenly, Mel’s decided she doesn’t want them after all.
It feels like the beginning of an unraveling. She gets everything she wants at the expanse of everything she’s gained—always a fucking trade, the latest one being leadership for home. Gaining Lottie’s seal of approval right before she loses her influence.
(Does it matter? They could go home.
But it does. It does.
Shauna wants to go home. Honestly. She just doesn’t think that she can, even if they make it back.)
She thinks of Lottie killing that man. How that was the moment she lost the team, and the moment she won Shauna. Always a fucking trade.
*
"Mel’s upgraded to an older model, huh," Mari quips, like that makes any fucking sense. Fuck Mari. "She even looks like you, but like, better."
Shauna bucks toward her. Mari jerks back hard, eyes wide. Then scurries off, muttering psycho under her breath.
Fucking Mari was sitting at her table like a goddamn disciple just days ago.
Nothing has meaning, here. Shauna knows that. Since when does Mari know it? She was sending Lottie into the snow with no weapon and a high five just a few months back. Now she doesn’t even look at her.
Shauna does, sometimes. She has a lot more time on her hands now that Mel’s figured out she can play hot-and-cold too (they haven’t hung out since the hunt, but they’ve fucked once). Mostly she thinks about how Lottie looks the most herself with blood on her face.
Later, she wishes it could be Hannah’s, who’s useless. She can’t get them home. Shauna goes yay for two reasons; she gets to deal with her, and she gets to stay in charge a little longer.
But when she cocks the rifle, Mel moves between them, a human shield. Like she thinks Shauna won’t shoot through her to get what she wants. That arrow in her shoulder should have taught her—sometimes, more pain is the only way forward.
It should have taught Shauna too. She kills Hannah without hurting Mel (but not without losing her).
Lottie smiles like she’s not alone anymore.
*
Lottie comes to her hut that night.
Shauna’s short with her at first, because she thought that that might have been Mel, which is admittedly a little embarrassing. Worse, because Lottie notices. Picks this moment, of all moments, to be perceptive about human things instead of spiritual bullshit. She gives Shauna a small, apologetic smile.
"It’s just me," Lottie says.
"What do you want?"
She walks further inside, face half-shadowed. The way her eyes catch the faint light makes Shauna’s breath hitch—she tells herself it’s frustration.
"The Wilderness is never wrong," Lottie just says. You weren’t wrong, she means. It feels good to have someone say it, even if it’s Lottie. "We need you."
We need you.
Shauna swallows. Lottie uncrosses her arms, hands going behind her back in a familiar scene.
"What do you want?" she repeats, softer. Maybe she wants Lottie to answer like she’s a girl and not a vessel.
A beat passes. Lottie just looks at her, like she’s taking her in. Like confirmation. "You’re so powerful."
Ironically, Shauna slumps against her like there’s not an ounce of power in her body.
Lottie’s arms wrap around her, and her head dips until Shauna feels her warm breath against her ear.
Shauna’s hands move over Lottie’s back, up and down her spine, then over the curve of her ribs. She buries her face in Lottie’s collarbone, inhales, imagine she can smell blood here. She bites down on her shoulder to make it real.
Lottie makes a small, wounded sound but doesn’t pull away. If anything, she holds on tighter. Shauna kisses over the bite, then up, until their lips meet, smearing blood across Lottie’s mouth. She leans back, looks at her for a beat. Musing briefly on what Lottie sees and thinks when she looks back.
Then she bunches up Lottie’s dress in her hands, hauls her closer, puts her thigh between Lottie’s, pulls Lottie’s leg against her own center, grinding against it. It’s different than it was with Mel. Lottie’s taller, softer, less muscle. Shauna feels like she’s holding them both up.
In the back of her mind, she wonders why she always ends up thinking of someone else during these moments—she did it with Jeff and even Melissa too, a few times. It must say something about her that she’s never quite satisfied with what she has.
But that’s a thought for later, when her hands are holding her journal and instead of Lottie’s waist.
*
(It sort of comes to her that same night.
If she wants Lottie’s choice to matter again, then Lottie has to matter again.
Shauna can scare them, but she can’t do what Lottie does. What Jackie did. She can’t inspire devotion.
She did once with Mel, she thinks, and she ruined it.)
*
She plants the seeds carefully, lets them take root on their own. She’s never been a believer, so she can’t exactly go around the village telling everyone that the Wilderness has been speaking to her and it wants them to eat Kodiak. Even if it were true, it’s not something they’d want to hear yet.
Especially when the last believer, aside from Lottie, is maybe Akilah, who keeps her belief tucked away, hidden behind tight lips and wary eyes. Peer pressure. That used to work in Shauna’s favor.
The girls haven’t given up on going home, and after she killed Hannah, Kodiak is their last hope.
It’s still difficult for him to speak, with what Shauna did to him. He probably wouldn’t anyway. Angry beast.
*
"I thought they understood," Lottie tells her in her hut, face illuminated by moonlight. She’s curled into Shauna like something wounded.
She reminds Shauna of Jackie in this moment; a girl who was everything and then nothing at all.
Shauna’s not sure what to say. Sometimes, Lottie doesn’t talk to people so much as she talks at them.
"There’s a reason why we’re here," Lottie continues.
She still pisses her off, sometimes.
"We’re here because Laura Lee called her piano teacher a cunt."
Lottie exhales through her nose. "OK."
Shauna bites her lip. Seed-planting, seed-planting, seed-planting. "You said that they don’t belong here."
"They don’t. Didn’t. They’re ruining everything."
"But maybe Kodiak’s here for a reason, too," Shauna tries.
"No," she shakes her head, voice soft, resolute. "That’s not what the visions are saying."
Right. Of course.
*
She can’t stay their leader, but she can be their savior. Isn’t that what she’s been since Ben put the knife in her hand?
She proposes torturing Kodiak.
"Yeah, you sorta did that already," Van reminds her, voice flat. "He thinks he’s John Wayne. He won’t talk."
"Let’s just keep doing nothing, then. That’ll get us home." Shauna snaps. "Look, he wants out just as much as we do. He’s not gonna trap himself in the fucking wilderness just to spite us."
"Any longer, you mean," Tai adds.
*
She doesn’t need to torture him, in the end. She puts the knife back in the sheath.
It goes like this: Kodiak says he can transmit a message to rescue. Van and Tai tell him to stop fucking lying because the damn thing is broken. Kodiak says he can fix it.
Van and Tai go to his camp to retrieve his things.
They free him so he can fix the machine, rifle gun trained on him the whole time.
They watch, wait for a miracle.
When he fails, Shauna has the answer to a question she’s been avoiding; she doesn’t want to go home.
They keep Kodiak prisoner.
*
Hopelessness usually helps with Lottie’s mystical shit.
It’ll help Shauna in turn.
*
A strange, electrical sound comes from the animal pen. Lottie, in Shauna’s hut, hears it too—they go to it, silently.
Inside, Kodiak’s managed to free himself of one of his restraints, and he’s fiddling with the transmission machine. It takes Shauna a second to understand, and then—rage. He’s not calling for rescue. He’s calling for help. Against them.
She kicks him in the face.
He’s so fucking strong. He’s a beast. But he’s at a disadvantage; still partly tied, weak from the meager rations they gave him. He puts up a fight, but she puts up a better one.
She kills him eventually.
She’s panting, shaking. Lotties – who was no help – watches her, eyes wide, yet strangely serene, like she knew the outcome.
"You’re so powerful," Lottie tells her again, whispering.
Shauna smiles. She wants to kiss the shit out of her.
Then—
A scuff of movement behind them.
Robin, wide-eyed, breath hitching, watching the scene. Until her gaze shifts to the machine, to the flickering lights, to the buzzing hum of something finally working.
And then she laughs, bright and giddy, like it’s the happiest night of her life.
"Oh my god, he fixed it!" she says.
She drops to her knees in front of it. She starts rambling—her mother, her father, her little sister. Her house phone number.
Shauna looks at Lottie. Lets their eyes do the talking.
Shauna glances between her and Robin. We can’t go home, right?
Lottie shakes her head, not blinking. There’s a reason why we’re here.
And she’s ruining it.
You need to stop her.
Shauna flexes her fingers on the handle of her knife. I’ll handle it.
Lottie shakes her head. Points to Kodiak with her chin.
Shauna understands.
She moves fast, hand around Robin’s throat, slamming her down onto the dirt. Robin gasps, but Shauna doesn’t let her make a sound, tightening her hold. She tries to claw at Shauna’s arms, her face. Lottie catches her wrists, holds them down. No marks. No evidence.
Then something happens—a surge of strenght, some animalistic part of her surfacing. She snaps Robin’s neck before she can finish choking her.
The silence is heavy.
Then they move fast, fixing the scene until it makes sense. Break the machine again. Undo Kodiak’s remaining restraints.)
"Lottie," Shauna says when they’re done. "Scream."
*
("He fucking killed Robin!" Shauna shouts. "Who the fuck tied those knots?"
"She probably just wanted to check on him," Britt sobs. "She’s too nice. Was."
"Akilah, tell them what you saw in the cave the last time." Lottie says.
Akilah sniffs, wiping at her eyes. "A bear with three eyes coming to the village. No one else was there," she answers. Her shoulders shake. "Kodiak is a type of bear."
"He was going to end us," Lottie says. "But Shauna stopped him."
It sounds like the truth, because to Lottie, it is. And Lottie doesn’t lie.)
*
She traces the scars on Lottie’s face, the ones she put there, with her fingertips. Almost like an artist admiring her work. Lottie smiles indulgently.
She’s what Shauna needs—someone who can’t die. Someone she can break and put back together and keep for herself.
She kisses Lottie's eyelids, then the scar on Lottie’s forehead, because she feels like it would mean something to Lottie. Then she kisses the one on Lottie’s cheekbone, and the one above Lottie’s eyebrow, the small one on Lottie’s lower lip, because it means something to her.
*
She brought this on herself. Here, we honor the dead, Lottie says, her own words turned back on her. Shauna butchers Kodiak and Robin. They have another feast. They make their offering to the Wilderness.
Lottie treats it like the honor is all Shauna’s. She killed them, she prepares the feast. Like that’s not her role already.
(She covered Robin's face with a cloth.)
Afterwards, they keep some of Kodiak’s bones. Robin's, they bury. Lottie leads the ceremony.
As they turn back toward camp, Shauna notices Mel still standing by the grave, unmoving. She remembers that they were in JV together, and it pinches at something in her chest.
"Come on," she says. "Let’s head back."
Mel turns, tears brimming in red-rimmed eyes. "You were right. We should have killed them right away."
Yes. God, yes. Shauna was right.
A few feet away, Lottie lingers, watching.
"Come here," she says, lifting a hand to the back of Mel’s head, pulling her close. Mel folds into Shauna like it’s instinct, nose going to the crook of her neck.
Only then does Shauna look up. Meets Lottie’s gaze. Holds it.
Lottie holds it back, just for a moment. Then, she turns away.
Shauna tightens her grip on Mel. Presses her lips to Mel’s hair.
Shauna hopes it hurts her.
*
("You moved on quick," Gen had told her, disgusted, when she walked out of Lottie’s shelter.)
*
"Is Melissa OK?" Lottie asks once they're back at camp, in Shauna’s.
Shauna bristles. "Do you care?"
"Of course I care," she says, like she's hurt that Shauna would even ask.
Lottie always cares about the wrong things. She’s surprised Lottie can even tell the JVs apart. What makes Mel different from Robin, in her eyes?
Shauna decides that she does. Some of her anger leaves her.
"She’s fine."
"OK. Good."
*
("You need to stop, Shauna," Nat had told her, a little while back. Pleaded. "The last thing Lottie or anyone needs is you playing into her fucking bullshit."
"We’ve been playing into her fucking bullshit for a year. But it’s wrong when I do it?"
Nat groaned like she thinks Shauna’s playing victim. She almost agreed.
"It's different when you do it."
Maybe that’s what made Nat a good leader, which she can admit, now that she’s nothing. She and Lottie were opposite forces, but it’s not like Nat completely rejected the Wilderness thing. She let Lottie organize fucking ceremonies. She let Shauna and Mel cut Ben’s achilles.
Lottie struggles to be a person sometimes. But there’s love between her and Nat. Enough to make Shauna feel sick.)
There was always going to be some conflict or other. Why should this relationship be different from any other she’s had?
"I felt the winds turn during the trial," Lottie tells her. "But I wasn’t sure what It was telling me until you killed Hannah. It moved through you, that day."
After she made Shauna queen, is what Shauna fixates on.
"You wanted to save Nat."
Lottie hesitates. "Yes, but that’s not why… I knew what was happening," she explains.
Shauna nods, in a way that doesn't convey conviction.
Familiar resentment curls in her stomach like spoiled meat. She remembers the feeling when Nat was chosen the night she set the fire—slanted, robbed. Shauna brought Lottie down, and Nat reaped the reward.
Why is it never me? she had written in her journal. But the question was backwards. Even on the page, she couldn’t be honest.
She always does this, doesn’t she? She fucked Jeff so she could be Jackie. Made Nat butcher Ben so they could switch places. There was something similar in the way she beat a willing Lottie into the ground—she was Lottie, and Lottie was the bear. Power never feels hers unless she’s taken it from someone else. Unless she’s consumed them.
"I know you don’t believe," Lottie murmurs softly. Shauna figured she might. "But you’re the only one who understands. You don’t need to believe."
She wipes the tear from Lottie’s cheek.
Lottie’s… Lottie. But she doesn’t lie.
Shauna always wants everything, even the things she doesn’t want. But this feels like it could be enough. Mel accepted the bad parts of her. The ones that Jackie would have feared. But Lottie loves those parts. She doesn’t even see them as bad.
She looks at Shauna like she’s something good.
Her own eyes start to sting.
*
Winter comes. They have enough food this time.
It’s not what the Wilderness wants, Lottie says.
Shauna likes blood. The weight of her knife in her hand. The moment when it goes in.
She doesn’t like butchering people, especially not her friends.
But she loves Lottie, and she thinks she loves power.
The hunts resume.