Where The Ice Gives Way (Charlotte and Blake) novel Chapter 256

11:47 Sat, Aug 1

Where The Ice Gives Way

Chapter 256 When The World Got Too Loud

Jessica

Something is wrong with my skin.

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It feels like my whole body is a jumper that has shrunk in the wash, pulled too tight across my shoulders, my ribs, my arms, my legs.

Every part of me feels stretched and restless and too aware of itself. The soft cotton of Charlie’s hoodie scratches against my stomach.

The blanket over my knees is too heavy.

Then Charlie’s shoulder shifts under my cheek, and I remember where I am and what’s happening.

“What is it?” he asks, voice low.

I try to answer.

I really do.

But the room is pressing in around me. It’s all too much, too loud.

The wind taps snow against the window in tiny, sharp clicks that stab straight into my ears. Somewhere downstairs, the house settles with a long wooden groan. I can hear the pipes ticking inside the walls, and a clock moving in the hallway, each second landing like a fingernail against glass. Charlie’s heartbeat is loud too, steady and fast beside me, and beneath that I can hear my own, stumbling all over

itself like it has forgotten the rhythm.

I press both hands to my ears, but that only makes the sounds inside me louder.

“I can hear everything,” I say, and it comes out too thin. “Why can I hear everything?”

“Okay,” Charlie says softly. “Alright. Look at me, Jess.”

I shake my head because looking at anything feels impossible.

The lamp is too bright, even though it is barely on. The shadows in the corners of the room keep shifting when they are definitely not moving. The wood grain in the floorboards looks too sharp. Every colour has edges. Every smell has layers.

Charlie.

Snow.

Clean sheets.

Washing powder.

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Chapter 256 When The World Got Too Loud

Smoke from the fire pits still clinging faintly to his hair.

Coffee on my own breath.

I suck in a breath, and my stomach rolls.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

Charlie moves, then stops himself before he jostles me. “Do you want the bin?”

“I don’t know.”

“Water?”

“I don’t know, just don’t go,” I whisper.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

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Charlie shifts carefully, easing himself out from beneath me. The loss of his touch makes panic flare hot in my chest, and my hand shoots

out before I can stop it.

“No,” I gasp.

“I’m here,” he says immediately. “I’m right here.”

He turns toward me on the bed, kneeling beside me. His hands lift slowly then, and his palms settle against my cheeks, warm and steady.

“Jess,” he says softly. “Look at me.”

I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut because the lamp is too bright and the shadows are too sharp and everything keeps moving

when nothing should be moving.

“Look at me,” he says again, not louder, just steadier. “Only me.”

I force my eyes open, and Charlie is right there.

I can see the faint flicker of Titan behind his eyes, and his breath brushes my face in slow, even waves.

“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Listen to me breathing.”

“I can hear everything.”

“I know. But don’t listen to everything. Just me.”

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Chapter 256 When The World Got Too Loud

His thumbs rest lightly beneath my cheekbones, holding me there with him.

“In,” he says, breathing in slowly.

I try to follow, but my lungs catch halfway.

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“Good,” he says anyway. “Again.”

He breathes out, and I copy him shakily, with my hands curled in the front of his hoodie and my heart battering itself against my ribs.

“In.”

I drag in another breath.

“Out.”

I let it go.

The clock is still ticking. The pipes are still groaning. The snow is still tapping against the window, and the whole world is still too sharp

around the edges.

But Charlie’s breath is closer, and I follow it through the noise. Little by little, the room stops attacking me all at once.

It is still loud. Way too loud. But it starts to separate.

The clock is the clock. The pipes are the pipes. The snow is the snow. Charlie is Charlie.

I cling to that one most of all.

Charlie breathes in again, slow and deliberate, and I follow him. I keep my whole attention focused on the boy kneeling on the bed in

front of me with a wolf looking out through his eyes.

“Titan can feel her,” Charlie says quietly.

I swallow, placing my hands over his on my cheeks. “I can feel him.”

Charlie stills. “You can?”

“I think so.” My voice shakes. “Or I’m officially losing it.”

“You’re not losing it.”

No.

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Chapter 256 When The World Got Too Loud

I’m not.

I know that now.

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For a while there, I wasn’t sure. For a while, I thought maybe my mind had finally snapped under the weight of all of this, wolves and mates and spells and sounds and smells and colours. I thought maybe this was what breaking felt like.

But it isn’t.

I can feel the truth inside me now.

I can feel my wolf.

She’s there, tucked somewhere deep beneath my ribs, pressed into the dark place where she has been kept for too long. She feels small. Weak. Scared. Not dangerous, or scary, or some wild thing trying to tear me open and crawl out through my skin.

She feels scared.

It is such a hard thing to describe, something that has been locked inside you, something you never even knew existed. I’m not sure there are words good enough for it. How do you explain discovering another heartbeat inside your own? Another breath waiting underneath yours? Another piece of yourself that has been there the whole time, silent and alone, while you carried on believing you were only one

person?

But I can feel her.

An essence. A being. An internal image made from instinct and warmth and fear.

I can see her without seeing her.

Feel her without touching her.

And then, beneath the clock and the pipes and the snow tapping against the window, I hear something that does not belong to the room

at all.

I’m here.

I hear it.

Yes.

I can hear her.

My eyes fill with tears, and my hands tremble over Charlie’s as I look into his eyes.

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Chapter 256 When The World Got Too Loud

He takes in a sharp breath because he sees her.

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I know it with a certainty that settles deeper than thought, deeper than fear, deeper than every impossible thing. I don’t have to ask or

wonder. I know my wolf is watching him.

Through my eyes, and the fragile little crack she has managed to make in the dark, she is looking at the boy who kept breathing for us

when the whole world got too loud.

And Titan is watching her back.

The room goes strangely quiet then, and all I can hear is Charlie’s breathing, my own broken little inhale, and the soft, frightened presence beneath my ribs pressing closer because she knows him.

She knows them.

Charlie’s thumbs brush carefully beneath my cheekbones. “Jess,” he whispers, and my name sounds different in his mouth now. It’s so

much softer, reverent. Like he is not only speaking to me.

My chest pulls tight, and the wolf inside me answers with one trembling push.

Safe.

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R Visitor

Beautifully written

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Where The Ice Gives Way

Chapter 257 The Shift We Should Have Had

Charlotte

Charlie’s voice tears through my sleep.

Lotty.

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I jerk upright before my eyes are fully open, heart already sprinting, breath catching hard in my throat. For one wild second, I am back in the old house, waiting for the crash of Dad’s feet on the stairs or the slam of a door downstairs.

Then Blake’s room comes into focus.

The soft grey shadows. The warm blankets twisted around my legs. Blake beside me, already stirring because my fear has dragged him awake through the bond.

Lotty, Charlie says again, and this time I hear the panic beneath his voice, barely contained. I think it’s happening.

I’m moving before the sentence finishes.

Blake sits up fast, his hand catching my wrist as I swing my legs out of bed. “What is it?”

“Jess,” I breathe, already reaching for the clothes folded over the chair. “Charlie thinks she’s shifting.”

Blake is out of bed instantly.

There is no sleepy confusion, no questions that waste time. He pulls on track pants and a jumper while I shove my legs into leggings with

shaking hands. I grab the nearest jumper, yank it over my head, and stumble for the door.

Blake is right behind me.

The hallway is dim and cold, lit only by the small lamp Mara leaves on near the stairs. I make it three steps before movement erupts at

the other end of the hall. Gareth comes out of his room barefoot and already fully awake, Mara right beside him with a dressing gown

belted tight around her waist and her hair falling loose over one shoulder,

Jess cries out from Charlie’s room, and my eyes connect with Mara’s for a split second.

Then she crosses the hallway quickly, Gareth right behind her, while Blake’s hand finds the small of my back as we hurry after them.

Her hair is st