The Yellowjackets knew this forest was fucked. Like, seriously fucked. The dead guy’s cabin. The symbols carved into trees like some backwoods cult shit.

Lottie.

It was all fucked—had been for a while—but winter made everything worse.

Jackie died. They were starving. And yeah, they’d already done that just to survive.

But this? This was a whole new level of fucked.

“No one… move…” Natalie whispered, her voice barely audible, breath fogging in front of her lips. She wasn’t even sure anyone heard her.

“What the fuck—” Mari breathed, eyes wide, pressed up against the fogged cabin window.

Out in the snow stood something. A deer child.

Not a fawn. Not a deer. Not a human. Something in-between. Wrong.

It walked upright, clumsy and light-footed, wearing nothing but scraps of cloth barely hanging off its small, frostbitten frame, and yet it didn’t seem bothered. Its feet were bare—blue—and the girls exchanged glances, silently asking how the hell it wasn’t already dead from the cold.

Stubby, growing antlers jutted out from its tangled hair. Soft, furred ears twitched where human ears should’ve been. And a little twitching tail—like an afterthought—flicked at the base of its spine.

“This can’t be real… can it?” Akilah mumbled, but even she didn’t sound certain.

Lottie stared over the girls crowded at one window, inhaling softly. “Maybes it’s a gift from—“

“Not now, Lottie.” Taissa snapped from where she was by the other window. “This isn’t time for your ritualistic feelings.”

Was this the breaking point?

Were they really losing it? Starving to the point of hallucinating?

And was Travis—seriously—loading the gun right now?