The Coldest Winter Ever 2 Novels & Stories

Skye I crash into my condo with a crack that echoes through the space, rattling the potted plants along the window where the skyline is nothing but starlight, and the ever-present aurora dancing almost as if to mock me. Tonight, it’s crimson, just like the red glare of the alarm still painting my condo in red light, but thankfully, the sound of the alarm is off, or maybe I’ve tuned it out. I gasp several breaths. Icy pain jets up and down my spine. I’m depleted, for sure. It’s been decades since I’ve felt this kind of cold, and I live in the coldest place in our world.

I crouched down and pressed my hand flat against the ground. The first winter after the end of the world was the coldest one I could remember. Later, Elliot told me that Rhett had sat at that same intersection all night. They found him there the next morning, frozen, his arms curved in the shape of someone carrying a child. I laughed at that, a short, humorless sound, and said nothing. When I looked up at Elliot, the snow was coming down harder. It covered everything quickly, blanketing the ground in white, burying the past the way snow always does.

I called out. He lowered the leaded glass window, shouting back over the wind, "Get inside! It’s freezing!" I pulled my thick wolf-fur coat tightly around my neck and hurried back through the massive wooden doors of the packhouse. By the twentieth of December, the dark winter had settled deep into Ironvale City. The mountain winds howled like dying wolves outside the stone walls, bringing heavy blizzards that buried the roads under feet of white snow. Late that night, the quiet of the lower quarters shattered.

Right before I died, I still fantasized that Dad might come to save me. Uncle Arnold's wife, Ethel Gallagher, shrank her neck and glanced at the howling snowstorm outside the window. "Trevor, this snow looks serious. The news has already issued a yellow alert. Has Julian dressed warmly enough?" Dad swallowed a piece of steak, then raised his glass and took a satisfied sip. "I gave him a windbreaker, and he's got thermal underwear underneath. That's more than enough. A man's gotta be able to handle the cold.

The Northern Mountains rose like jagged teeth against the gray sky, their peaks swallowed by clouds heavy with snow. Samuel’s pack trudged through the frozen wasteland, breath steaming in the bitter wind, each step sinking into the crusted ice. The city below had been left behind, burning in chaos and revolt, but the danger had followed them. The humans had not forgotten, nor forgiven, and now they wielded their most lethal weapon yet—a "Nuclear Winter" device designed to turn their world into a tomb of frost.

Then they went back to Snow and pricked his tiny finger; he whined instead of crying from pain. The blood from all three of us mixed together in the bowl, and the most amazing thing happened because the bowl actually changed color, shifting from silver to gold and glowing softly. A smile bloomed across the faces of the elders, and I saw Marcus and Elena both smiling too. The elders raised Snow up high above their heads so that everyone in the entire arena could see him clearly. "His name shall be Zane Snow Winter," the head elder announced in a voice that carried across the entire arena, "the son of Jude Winter and Rosie Elsa Winter, the fifty-fourth young alpha of Winter's pack!"

And as the planet tilted away from its primary star, the temperature didn't just drop; it plummeted. "The thermal battery is at five percent," Rhys reported, his breath blooming in a thick cloud of white. He was wrapped in three layers of heavy wool and sheepskin. "We burned the reserve to get you to the moon and back. Now, the atmosphere is cooling faster than the ground can hold onto the heat. We are entering the first 'Long Cold'." The Reality of the Freeze In the simulations, winter was a visual skin—white textures over the ground and a bit of friction-reduction on the ice. In the True Real, winter was a Predator.

“What should I do?” The assistant was caught off guard. It was the first time Nick had ever asked him for advice. He stood up quickly, speaking carefully. “Sir, you might not like what I’m about to say, but I’ve been by your side for eight years. I’ve seen everything you and Ms. Winters have gone through.” He paused to study Nick’s face. When he saw no sign of anger, he went on. “You two once loved each other deeply. You survived countless storms together, but you couldn’t survive the quiet. Ms. Winters won’t come back once she’s gone.

Marissa was about to flare up, but I pointed at Kyle's neck and said coldly, "Marissa Langley, what right did you have to give Nora's protection pendant to someone else?" Marissa's expression changed, and the words stuck in her throat. That pendant had been made from a family heirloom of mine. My daughter had worn it since birth, for fifteen full years. "It's just an object," Marissa said coldly. "Kyle kept catching little colds around that time, so I gave it to him for protection. "Owen Duncan, why do you always have to fixate on these tiny things?" I slowly lowered my hand. Little colds. Tiny things.

January 2005 It was a cold January night. The winter wind was blowing throughout the valley village of Ravenna. The nine-year-old Rowan was lying in her bed in her family’s cottage. The window by her bed was closed tight, but she could still feel the freezing wind creeping in and gnawing at her beneath her blankets. This hardly bothered her, however, as she had lived through many winters just like this one in her young life. In fact, Rowan often found the cold to be rather soothing, as it helped her to drift off to sleep, but she was having trouble closing her eyes tonight.