All Chapters of The Frozen Heart: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Rowan  The air froze around me. Not because of the winter cold, but because of the crushing, suffocating aura that rolled toward me from the edge of the clearing. Silas Blackthorn did not walk. He claimed the space with every step. Even though he had not been Alpha for years, his posture still declared that he was the bloodiest predator on the mountain. I stood on the porch, my hands still shaking from restrained adrenaline and self loathing. I could feel the sticky dryness of Caroline’s blood on my palms. It was the worst possible moment to show weakness, yet every nerve in my body was pulled backward, toward the closed door behind me. I heard Myra’s quiet movements inside, and Caroline’s painful but living pulse through the bond. Silas stopped at the bottom of the steps. He was in human form, wearing a heavy, worn fur coat, his graying hair plastered wetly to his skull. His eyes, those cold steel gray eyes in which I had never once seen love, swept ove

Caroline  The silence in the room was heavy, like a gravestone. After Rowan left, the air cleared a little of that suffocating dominance, but nothing remained in its place except aching loneliness and the pounding in my head. Myra sat beside my bed on a low chair, her hands resting calmly in her lap, but worry radiated from her eyes. I flinched at every small sound. If the wind rattled the window, I saw Rowan in front of me. That icy, unfamiliar look in his eyes in the clearing. The same hand that had caressed me that morning, then in a single motion shoved me into the dark. “Drink a little, Caroline,” Myra said softly, holding out a cup of herbal brew. “It will help with the shock.” I took the cup. My hand was still shaking. The liquid was warm and bitter, but as it slid down my throat, I felt the strange force inside me, the wolf, greedily absorb the help. “Myra…” I began, my voice still unsteady. “You… you understand healing. You know our

Caroline Dusk had already settled into the corners of the room, but I did not turn on a lamp. I sat on the edge of the bed like someone waiting for judgment. I heard shouting outside, angry voices carried on the wind, and I flinched at every cry. Rowan’s voice thundered, Silas’s cut sharp and cruel, but there was a third voice too, one that vibrated differently in the air. Then suddenly everything went quiet. That silence was more frightening than the shouting. I heard footsteps in the hallway. They were heavy and rushed, not Rowan’s familiar, confident stride. Someone was almost charging up the stairs. My heart slammed into my throat. Was it Rowan? Or was that cruel old man coming to finish what his son had started? The door did not open. It burst open. I froze in fear, pulling the blanket up to my throat. Jace stood in the doorway. The man who had looked at me like trash from the first moment. His face was twisted now too, but not with hatred. He

Rowan  Even before the door burst open, I felt the darkness in the air. Silas was no longer a father. He was a rabid beast, cornered by his own downfall. The crash of the heavy oak door slamming into the wall drowned out Caroline’s quiet breathing. “Enough of this pathetic performance!” Silas roared. His eyes were no longer gray but black with madness and rage. “I don’t care about Myra’s chants or blood tests. Pure blood or not, this mongrel has stained my pack just by existing!” With a single savage motion, Silas drew his dagger. Laws meant nothing to him. The untouchable status of pure blood meant nothing. Only power drove him now, and Caroline was living proof that his era was over. Jace moved in a flash, throwing himself in front of Caroline. His claws extended, his body tense like a drawn bow as he shielded his sister. “Over my dead body, Silas!” Jace snarled, his voice deeper than ever before. But I was already there. I rose from

Caroline  Time blurred together in the heavy, pine scented room. I no longer counted days, only the burned down stubs of candles on the small bedside table. Rowan’s room, where we had moved him at Myra’s request, was spacious and somber, filled with deep shadows that seemed to mirror the struggle inside him. Rowan lay motionless in the center of the massive bed. His face, once marked by strength and sometimes frightening wildness, was now hollow and pale. His wounds, though Myra treated them daily with healing balms, closed only slowly. He did not wake. It was as if his soul wandered somewhere far away among the snowy peaks, unable to find its way back to the body that had caused so much pain. Jace came in often. Sometimes he only stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, silently watching the man he had once called his Alpha and his friend. Suspicion and tension still lingered in his gaze, but when he looked at me, his eyes softened. “You should