Blood In the Snow

Chapter 19

Blood in the Snow

 POV: Adelina McKenna

The mountain never sleeps.

Not really.

Even in winter, even when the wind howls and the stars hide, something stirs in the roots. In the dark. Beneath the frost.

The morning after I left three Silver Fang enforcers bleeding in the snow, the mountain stirred again.

And it brought me a message.

I found it just before dawn.

Folded in wax-sealed parchment. Hidden beneath the broken hoof of a dying deer near the southern edge of the valley. It had been planted deliberately ritualistically beneath spilled blood.

Not left.

Offered.

I approached slowly, crouched low, and inhaled.

The deer hadn’t died from a hunt.

Its throat was slit.

Not clawed.

Knife work.

Human precision. Wolf ruthlessness.

Someone wanted me to find this.

The scent on the parchment was faint. But I knew it instantly.

Caleb.

I waited until I was back in the den before I opened it.

Oya watched from across the fire as I peeled away the wax, revealing parchment inked in sharp, hurried script.

Not a full letter.

Just a message.

> "The bond was severed, but not broken."

"He hunts his own now."

"They’ve turned on him."

"Lux is in danger if you remain hidden too long."

"The Hollow Moon bloodline stirs. If you want allies, move soon."

 C.V.

I read it twice.

Then a third time.

Each word was a blade.

The bond was severed… but not broken.

It didn’t make sense. I felt it snap. I felt the agony. The hollowness.

I remembered the rejection.

Dax’s voice.

The way it cleaved me in half.

But now Caleb was saying something different.

That Daxon hadn’t just turned away.

That maybe… he was trying to protect me?

No.

I shook the thought from my head.

I couldn’t afford to hope again.

But I could read between the lines.

The Council had turned on Dax.

Good.

Let them devour each other.

I passed the letter to Oya, who read it in silence.

When she looked up, her expression was unreadable.

“Well,” she said, “they finally smelled the fire.”

“You think it’s a trap?”

“I think it doesn’t matter,” she said.

I frowned. “How does it not matter?”

“Because whether he regrets it or not, whether the bond is broken or not, you’re not his anymore.”

I nodded slowly.

“But Lux,” I whispered. “If they’re hunting me, it’s only a matter of time before they learn she exists.”

Oya’s fingers tightened around the letter.

“Then it’s time you stop running,” she said. “And start building.”

“Building what?”

She looked toward the fire.

“A pack.”

I hadn’t thought about it.

Not really.

A pack?

Me?

I wasn’t born into one. I hadn’t been accepted by Silver Fang. I had no crest, no claim, no rite of title.

But I had something they didn’t.

Survival.

Bloodline.

Flame.

And the scars to prove it.

Oya read my silence.

“The Hollow Moon survivors are scattered,” she said. “Rogues. Lone wolves. Those cast out or broken by the Trial Purges.”

She walked to the far wall and unrolled another map older than the others.

Dozens of marks.

Some red.

Some black.

Three circled in gold.

“The Hollow remnants went into hiding after your father fell. Caleb knows the locations of the old havens. But they only answer to one thing now.”

“What?”

She looked at me.

“Power.”

I spent the next few hours in silence.

The letter sat beside my blade.

Dax’s name haunted the edges of my mind.

I didn’t want it to.

I didn’t want him to.

He had severed the bond.

Whatever Caleb meant, whatever strange half-truth flickered between the lines, I had buried that part of me in the snow.

But there was still a part of me that remembered the way our eyes locked the night of the Gathering.

The bond hadn’t lied.

He had.

That afternoon, I went outside alone.

The frost was thinner now. Spring threatened at the edges of winter’s rule.

I walked barefoot across the clearing, letting my skin remember the earth.

And then I shifted.

Not to run.

Not to fight.

To feel.

My wolf rose with ease now. She no longer snarled or shivered. She no longer whimpered in confusion. She moved like smoke, like lightning.

She knew who she was.

And so did I.

I ran for hours through pine and ash, through streams still half-frozen, across stones as old as time. My paws barely made a sound.

And in that silence, I listened.

I heard the whisper of old bloodlines.

Felt the pulse of wolves scattered and lost.

I howled once.

High and bright.

A call.

Not of surrender.

But of gathering.

By the time I returned to the den, the sun had set.

Oya waited with a satchel of supplies.

“You’re going,” she said.

It wasn’t a question.

I nodded.

“Northwest ridge,” she said. “There’s a moon marker there old Matron glyph. If you follow it, it’ll take you to the first Hollow refuge.”

“Will they trust me?”

“No,” she said. “They’ll test you. Maybe even try to kill you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Great.”

“But when they see your mark, when they feel your blood…” She smiled. “They’ll remember what was taken.

I left before midnight.

No fanfare.

No vows.

Just the blade, the map, and the fire burning beneath my ribs.

The hunters wouldn’t stop.

Dax’s war with the Council would spread.

But none of that mattered unless I built something they couldn

’t tear down.

A future.

For me.

For Lux.

And for every wolf who had been told she was too wild, too broken, too much to lead.

Let the snow drink my blood.

Let the trees carry my name.

I wasn’t prey anymore.

I was Matron.

And I was ready to rise.