The scream rang out, crisp and clear. Without stopping to think I hauled on Ares’s hand and yanked him towards the sound. It was not hard to find the source of the noise. A group of Omegas were clustered around an open door, their hands clapped over their mouths to hold back their cries.“There was no wood for her fire last night,” sobbed a young woman from just inside the room. “I told her to stay with me, but she told me to stop fussing. Stars–”“What’s going on here?” Ares’s voice lanced through the noise and silenced it immediately, save for the wet, sticking breaths of the Omegas.“She died!” wailed the woman, digging her nails into her palms. “My grandmother. From the cold…” she dissolved into sobs. Ares and I pushed past her. The room was much like the hovel I had been put in when I’d first arrived at Winterpaw. It was windowless, with a single bed, complete with a lumpy mattress, one thin blanket, and one thin pillow, and a decaying dresser at the foot of the bed. There was

“Me?” I arched an eyebrow at her, forcing my face to remain otherwise cool and expressionless. Her bared teeth were making me uneasy, but I held her cold stare nonetheless. I would bow to no-one – least of all a woman who would be dead if not for me.She sat up straighter, a grunt of effort straining from her throat. The grimace on her lips faded, her mouth drooping down slowly as she searched my eyes for – something. I narrowed them back at her, and a tiny, hardened part of me wondered if I should’ve left her in the snow.Things had been okay. For months, I’d had only to deal with the problems that Winterpaw had always faced. There had been no attacks, no murderous plots, no nothing. I had the horrible feeling that that was all about to change with whatever came out of her mouth next.She pushed back thin, blonde hair that had stuck to the sides of her pallid face. “Yes. I am here for you.”“How convenient,” drawled Ares. I could feel the tension radiating from his frame from where I

“No,” Ares said flatly. He crossed his arms over his chest, and I was sure he did it just to distract me with his muscles. It wouldn’t work this time, though.“But why not?” I jutted my chin out, aware that I looked – and sounded – like a child, but unable to stop the petulance wheedling into my tone. “It makes sense, Ares.” I fixed my gaze on the fireplace behind him, letting the embers of it fuel my own fire.“Do you have no sense of self preservation?” He laughed, but it was cold and unamused. “Aliana has literally said that Greyhide Canyon are out to kill you. Whether we can trust her or not, that is too much of a risk to take. So no, Haile – you can’t run home to Blue Moon and gather up an army.”I huffed, annoyed at being spoken down to. “I understand the risk.”“I can’t lose you!” he roared, crowding into my space, but his touch was gentle, so gentle, as he cupped my cheeks with his large, warm hands. His bottom lip quivered and his chin dimpled, and he swallowed hard before sp

It was hard to keep my voice from shaking as I asked, “How are you, Nazte?”He smiled, and the slow stretch of the skin around his mouth made me shudder. I stepped inside, and every inch of me ached to step right back out again. There was nothing wrong with his room – in fact, it looked almost identical to Ares’s room, with its distant window, gnarled wooden dining table, and its crooked double bed – though its sheets were neat, primly tucked and pristine, whereas Ares’s were rumpled more often than not. Maybe that was it – the neatness of the space was putting me on edge. Even though I now knew he shared this room with Cendres, who was one of the messiest people I’d ever met, everything was organised. Yeah, that was what it was. It absolutely had nothing to do with the six-foot-four man stood in front of me, his bright blue eyes gleaming in the pale light of the cavernous room, his smile set in such a way that it looked forced. I tensed my muscles, holding back a shudder.Nazte bru

Blind panic consumed me. I barely felt the bite of the cold as I ran, my body nothing more than muscle and sinew and tendon, each working with the next as I coiled and sprung, coiled and sprung, slipped and skidded across the Winterpaw Warrior Pack’s frozen territory.My wounds closed up as I ran, but there was a rush of dizziness from the blood loss that slowed my pace every few hundred yards or so. I did not dare look back for fear that Nazte would be at my tail, his teeth gleaming with my blood.There was one thought, one name, at the heart of my pounding blood and straining muscles. Thinking it made the panic flare brighter, so I tried to think of nothing as I ran. I pictured him instead, the wolf I had first seen in my dream, all those long months ago. Black, with a white crescent on his forehead. The smell of cedar and woodsmoke, earthy and warm amidst the barren landscape of snow and ice and rock. His voice – that low, warm growl, the one that made my insides heat and squirm. G