Chapter 1

It wasn't until the evening of the seventh day that a team of pack scouts found me in the crevasse.

They rappelled down with ropes. The flashlight beams were so bright I couldn't open my eyes.

Someone shouted in shock.

"My God! She's still alive!"

After they called the Pack Sentinel, the rescue team arrived quickly.

By the time they pulled me up on a stretcher, the sky had turned completely dark.

The bone-chilling wind hit my face, but it felt warmer than inside the crevasse.

Damine Blackwood was the last to arrive.

The blue and red lights of the rescue vehicles flickered, casting dark shadows across his face.

He strode through the rescue scene.

When he saw me wrapped in a blanket sitting in the back of the medical transport, he paused for a moment. His brow immediately furrowed.

"Sera, you're a Vanguard's Crest-winning mountain warrior. How could you get trapped in a small crevasse for seven days?"

I looked up. The frost on my eyelashes melted, blurring my vision.

He walked up to me, looking down from above.

"Did you have to play such trick right when Elara and I were going for her eye examination? Can't you stand having her around?"

"Yes, I've been spending more time with her lately. But don't you know why? I owe her two lives! If she hadn't tried to save me, how could her eyes have ended up like this? How could her body have become so weak she can't even handle a breeze? Sera, can't you be more understanding? Stop being so jealous all the time."

I closed my eyes. I had no strength to argue.

I was in too much pain.

When I found Damien, he was already unconscious beside the crevasse. Without thinking, I pulled him out and pushed him to safety, but I fell into the crevasse and hit my head, knocking myself out.

I didn't expect there were silver mines around the crevasse, and my wolf was completely suppressed and couldn't shift.

This was a mountain range covered in ice and snow year-round.

When the cold woke me up, the thermometer I carried showed minus forty degrees.

The blood on the back of my head had already frozen. The cold and blood loss made me feel dizzy. Without my wolf, I couldn't even heal myself.

But I didn't even dare to cry. I tried everything I could think of to escape.

But it was impossible.

The crevasse was over sixty feet deep.

At first, I kept trying to find a way out.

When I got hungry, I chewed on snow. When I got cold, I just endured it.

But it was so quiet here.

No birds, no human voices. Only the howling wind.

It felt like the whole world had abandoned me.

Damien seemed to notice my unusual silence then. He also noticed I was shivering violently despite being wrapped in a blanket.

His tone softened slightly.

"Why aren't you saying anything?"

Elara gently interrupted, her voice carried by the wind.

"Damien, don't blame Sera. She probably just missed you too much. But isn't this the Frostfall Pack's private training grounds? Sera is so close to Alpha Kaelen. She spent all her childhood summers and winters here. How could she..."

She stopped at just the right moment.

Damine's face instantly darkened.

"So that's why you asked me to meet here to talk. Sera, you're really something!"

"When we drew lots for the Mating Pact, you picked me, but you were looking in Alpha Kaelen's direction! After all these years, you still can't forget him, can you? Fine, Sera, just fine!"

But he didn't know the truth - that I had switched the lots beforehand, ensuring I would draw his name, not Kaelen's.

He had misunderstood everything from that day, thinking I wanted to escape him when I had actually schemed to be with him.

"Since you miss him so much, since you planned all this so carefully that you'd even hurt yourself just to put on a show for him on his territory, then go find him!"

The wind and snow seemed to suddenly stop.

The world became terrifyingly quiet.

The noise from the rescue workers, the clatter of medical equipment, the howling wind - it all disappeared.

Only Damine's voice remained, word by word, hitting my frozen eardrums.

"Sera, as you wish, let’s cancel the engagement."

"Go mate with Alpha Kaelen instead."

I smiled bitterly. Even though I did so much for him, he still only believed Elara's words that I loved Alpha Kaelen.