Reborn at the Last Howl

Cryssara's POV

Ice climbs my legs at the shelter gate.

I cannot move as the cold bites through my thin coat and sinks into my bone. My breath comes out foggy and dragged. Around me, tears of people were heard, as they cried and begged. The guard holds up one hand.

"One place left for just one wolf," he announces, and the crowd surges like a single desperate animal.

Dorian stands in front of me, snow coats his dark hair. Seraphina clings to his arm like she belongs there. He does not look at me when he speaks, as though looking might guilt trap him, one I'm sure he doesn't want to be associated with.

"The Moon Goddess can't curse me twice," he says, like a verdict. "First it's the apocalypse, and now it's you."

He pushes Seraphina forward. The guard lets her through. The gate clangs shut, which was a sound that splits the world in two.

I am outside, and I'll continue to be outside for as long as he wants.

The ice keeps climbing past my knees, past my hips. My fingers goes stiff. My wolf, if I ever had one, stays silent. The cold turns everything solid. I could hear my own heart slow down. Then darkness swallowed my vision from the side till I lost it all.

***

I opened my eyes. The sunlight hits the small storeroom bed. The warmth sits on my skin like a blanket. I sat up too fast. The thin blanket falls away. I touched my face, but there was no ice, no frost, just smooth warm skin.

My heart slams against my ribs.

This room is the same, with the cracked wall, wooden shelf with the chipped mug, the smell of dust and old soap. I am in the Ashfang pack house, in the room they gave the omega with no wolf.

I whispered it because saying it aloud feels dangerous, it feels like tempting fate to snatch this back.

"The Moon Goddess pitied me and gave me a second chance."

I look at the calendar on the wall. The date is clear. It was exactly sixty days before the Freeze.

I remembered it in pieces that still hurt. The air turned strange one morning. Then the rivers stopped moving. Wolves shifted and the fur did nothing. The cold went deeper than any winter, that has ever been experienced since the beginning, turning people to ice in minutes. I saw it happen. I felt it start on my own legs.

I remembered the rest too, and the memory burns worse than the cold did.

I am an omega. No wolf ever answered me. The pack treated me like trash that still had to work. Seven years ago I lived in the orphanage, where Lyanna became my best friend. We shared the same thin mattress, the same stolen bread. Then the Vales came and adopted me for free labor, with endless chores, errands, silence whenever they demanded it.

During the Freeze I worked until my hands cracked. When the shelters filled and there was no room left, they threw me out. Alpha Dorian stood there and chose Seraphina, my adoptive sister. He chose her without a second's hesitation, without one backward glance at me.

Today is the exact day the lawyer would come.

In the life that already happened, the lawyer came this morning and told me about my mother's inheritance, about money I never knew existed, family I never knew I had. Back then, I gave every coin to Dorian because he said the pack needed it urgently. He spent it on the pack and on Seraphina, and I thanked him for taking it.

But now I know what exactly will happen, I won't let history repeat itself.

My hands were shaking on the blanket. The warmth frightens me more than the cold ever did.

Then footsteps slams down the hallway. A fist pounds the door. "Cryssara. Get up. Now."

My adoptive mother's voice, interrupted my daydream. She demands submissivenss at every hour on the clock.

I stayed on the bed.

Then she bangs again, harder, the wood rattling in its frame. "You have chores to do. Then after, you get ready for the mate ceremony tonight. Don't embarrass us."

I stood more firmly than ever before. "No."

Silence answered from the other side of the door. Then the knob turned, and she stormed in. Her hair was pulled tight, and her eyes already blazing. "What did you say?"

"I said no."

She stares as if I had grown a second head. "You do not say no to me. You'll clean the kitchen, and scrub the floors. And you'll put on the dress I laid out."

"I will not."

She lifts her hand, with the urge to strike. But I do not flinch.

Dorian stands at the doorway behind her. He stopped short at the sight of me standing instead of already working, and he was surprised, but he quickly buried it. "What is this?" He demands an answer.

My mother rounds on him, fury spilling into her voice. "She is refusing to work."

He studies me like a problem demanding a solution, like I am a broken tool he has not yet decided whether to fix or discard. "Cryssara. Stop being dramatic. We have a schedule. You will do as you are told."

"I am not being dramatic." I explained.

He steps closer, and the room shrinks, the air gone thin. "You are an omega. You have no wolf. You'll live under this roof because we allow it. Tonight you'll stand beside me as my mate. That is the end of it."

I met his eyes. The same eyes that left me at the gate, the same eyes that watched the guard slammed it shut.

"You left me outside."

He blinks, and for a moment doubt cracked through his certainty. "What are you talking about?"

"You'll choose her," I said. "You said the Moon Goddess could not curse you twice. Then you shut the gate on me."

My mother's face hardens into something uglier. "Enough of this nonsense. Get dressed, and get ready."

Dorian's voice drops like a warning wrapped around a threat. "You are confused. Or you are testing me. Either way, it stops now. You will do the chores. You will attend the ceremony. You will smile when they ask it of you."

I do not look away. I will not look away again. "I reject you as my mate."