Winter Characters Novels & Stories

In the third year of our marriage, I couldn't stand the sexless relationship anymore, so I slipped some drugs into my wife’s soup. Cindy's cheeks became flushed, her eyes became hazy, and she gave me a seductive look. This was the first time she had behaved like this around me... However, when she realized that it was me, she grabbed my throat, furious. "I told you, my career is my top priority right now. Romance should be set aside first. How could you drug my soup? Do you only think with your lower body?!" I tried to explain, but she tossed me into the cold swimming pool despite the fact that I was still recovering from surgery. "Soak in the pool water to clean your filthy mind!" I pleaded desperately, but she completely ignored me and even had people keep watch to prevent me from getting out. It wasn't until I was shivering and turning blue from the cold winter night that she finally showed mercy. I stumbled back to our room, only to hear her suppressed moans. And the guy on top of her was none other than her brother-in-law! This was what she meant by putting her career first? I wiped away my tears, went downstairs, and called my father-in-law. "Stanley, I agree to let Cindy be a surrogate, but you have to promise me one thing."

"They called me a defect from the day I was born. No wolf, no scent, no future." That was the lie the Crescent Moon pack fed me my entire life. I was the dirt beneath their paws. The pack’s punching bag, an empty vessel, kept around only to scrub their floors. All I ever wanted was to survive my eighteenth birthday and vanish into the human world. But the Moon Goddess has a sick, twisted sense of humor. At the brutal Alpha Summit, the kind that happens once every decade, the scent hit me. It wasn't just one intoxicating wave of mate-pull. It was two. One smelled of pine and dark magic. The other smelled of blood and winter fire. Kael, Alpha of the Bloodhound Pack; ruthless, heavily scarred, and the most feared executioner on the continent. Ryker, Alpha of the Silvermane Pack; arrogant, indomitably powerful, and Kael’s sworn, centuries-old blood enemy. When both men roared "MINE" across the summit hall, the fragile peace treaty didn’t just break. It shattered. They don't want to share. They want to conquer. Now, the invisible nobody is the ultimate prize in a territorial war that will tear the shifter world apart. I am physically bound to two men who would rather burn the world to ash than let the other touch me. If I reject one, the mate-bond will kill him. If I choose both, the packs will riot. I just wanted to survive. But to stay alive, I might have to become the most dangerous Luna of them all.

Rachel Mercer had been unwanted her whole life. After bouncing between sixteen foster families, with no real name or sense of home, all she had left was a quiet hope that turning eighteen would bring freedom from a system that detested her. But everything changed the night she was attacked. She was thrust into Astrae Lykaon Academy, a secret institution for werewolves, where students believed she was a girl who simply returned from winter break. They don't know the truth. Only the academy's inner circle is aware that the girl she's replacing vanished without a trace. But if pretending to be her keeps her safe, she's willing to play along. Until she meets them. Five fated mates, each powerful, unpredictable, and drawn to her in ways she doesn't understand. The bond is wild and dangerous, awakening something ancient in her blood. And at the centre of it all is him: the young professor who once saved her life and now watches her like he already knows the truth. She was hunted by something ancient that should not exist Her bloodline is rare Her enemies are older than legends And Rachel stayed at Astrae Lykaon Academy under a false identity, hoping to survive. But as secrets unraveled, bloodlines awakened, one terrifying thought began to take root; What if she was never meant to survive that night? And what if she's not the impostor after all?

My husband, David Wright, brought me and my three-month-old son, Leo Wright, to his parents' for the holidays. But while Leo was asleep, my niece, Lana Wright, and her classmates carried him upstairs and threw him down. My baby died right in front of me. I lost my mind. I scooped him up and tried to rush him to the hospital, but it was already too late. He was gone before we ever made it there. Because Lana was still a minor, she barely faced any consequences. The court ordered her family to pay eight hundred thousand dollars in compensation, but my sister-in-law, Ariel Whittaker, wailed and screamed, accusing me of trying to drive them to their deaths. I cried until I felt like my heart had been torn apart. All I wanted was justice. But David and my mother-in-law, Nancy Wright, only scolded me. “Lana is just a child too! Are you really going to destroy her life just because your son died?” I never got my revenge. In the end, grief and hatred hollowed me out. That winter, I died of a heart attack. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of the holiday gathering. This time, I immediately called my parents and asked them to take my son away. But even then, my niece still threw a baby from upstairs.

In the blood-soaked mountain town of Black Hollow, every full moon ends with a body and a lie. Elara Ashwood has lived her life by one rule: never trust a man who knows your scent. Raised by her grandmother after her mother vanished into the forest and her father died in a “hunting accident,” Elara knows the forest is dangerous, and the wolves hiding in plain sight are deadlier. But when strangers arrive during the winter eclipse, the forest screams with fury and people begin to disappear. Among them is Kael Draven, a cold, dangerous Alpha with silver eyes that linger too long on her skin, as if he already owns her. The night he bites her is no accident. Elara soon discovers she is not only Kael’s fated mate but also the one prophesied to destroy his bloodline. Rejected and marked, she flees into the forest, awakening a darker force within herself—an ancient wolf that feeds on fear, desire, and vengeance. The more she resists her nature, the harder it becomes to control. As enemies close in and the moon turns red, Kael hunts her—not to kill her, but because his body, his wolf, and his soul answer only to her. Every encounter is charged with hunger: claws brushing skin, breath against necks, restraint breaking slowly, painfully. Their love becomes dangerous, their desire a weapon. In Black Hollow, the true horror is not the beasts in the forest—it is the one you crave in the dark. And sometimes, giving in to that hunger is the only way to survive.

That winter, the Silver Moon Pack holds its annual ski hunt. An avalanche strikes without warning, and the three of us are trapped in a lift pod. There's only one thermal suit left. My mate, Ryan Mercer, gives the thermal suit to me. I survive, but his childhood sweetheart, Eve Hurst, is buried forever beneath the endless white of the mountain. No body is ever found. However, he gazes at me with devotion and says, "Celine Bartlett, you are the love of my life." I soak in those words, believing them. But I have no idea this is the beginning of my nightmare. For the next five years, he speaks to me only with cruelty. "You killed Eve. You're a murderer!" He locks me in the basement and whips me with lashes soaked in wolfsbane. Then, he pretends to show pity and feeds me with a silver fork. When I refuse, he stabs me with silver nails across my legs, carving deep red lines into my skin. "This is what you owe her, and you will repay it!" When I ask for a reject, he stabs a silver dagger into my chest, dragging me into death with him. When I open my eyes, I find myself back on the day of the avalanche. This time, I hand the survival gear to Eve without hesitation. This time, I owe her nothing. And now, I want to see whether they will get their happy ending without me around.

Eric Winter controls everything around him with obsessive precision: businesses, contracts, people… and most of all, his own emotions. To him, relationships have always been simple. Desire. Clear rules. No room for attachment. That’s exactly why the contracts exist. Stevan, on the other hand, has spent most of his life surviving. By day, he endures an abusive boss inside the multinational company where he works. At night, he takes jobs he never imagined he’d accept just to keep paying for his sick mother’s treatment. Quiet, insecure, and far too used to swallowing humiliation in silence, Stevan has never believed he was the kind of man someone would truly choose. But everything changes the night Eric finds him in a VIP room. What should have been just another proposition quickly turns into something dangerous. Because Stevan doesn’t respond to Eric the way other men do. And for the first time in years, Eric loses control of himself. Between lingering stares, restrained desire, and rules breaking one by one, the two of them become trapped in a relationship that was never supposed to go beyond the limits of a contract. The problem is, some feelings don’t obey clauses. And Eric realizes far too late that maybe he doesn’t just want Stevan’s body. Maybe he wants all of him.

After the SAT, I come across a post online. Someone posts, "If you could make a choice all over again, which major would you choose this time?" The comments are filled with people wishing they had chosen a different major. They all have their own regrets. One response stands out from the rest. "I would choose literature. That way, he and I wouldn't have missed out on the four years we should have spent together because of that unwanted baggage." I chuckle and am about to scroll past when I suddenly notice the profile picture and username. They are identical to those of my childhood sweetheart, Winter Andersen. I click into the profile. Everything matches her current account exactly, except that the age is ten years older. My heart sinks to my stomach. This has to be her ten years in the future. No wonder I am the only one celebrating when we are admitted to the same major. No wonder she zones out for so long after seeing my best friend, Simon Brown, receive his acceptance letter from the literature department. It turns out I am the unwanted baggage responsible for so many of her regrets and disappointments. Since that is the case, I quietly press "Accept" on the admission offer written entirely in a foreign language. I shall end this mistake ten years ahead of schedule.

For five years, Gideon—my brother's Beta—and I had a secret. We were supposed to announce our mating at the pack's Winter Solstice festival. Instead, he breathed hot against my ear. "Babe, we've been sleeping together for five years. I'm bored with you. Find someone else for the marking ceremony, alright?" I didn't cry. I just gave a calm, simple nod. "Alright." Only because in my last life, I had begged him through tears to complete the bond. After he finally marked me, he grew cold. He never again woke me by rubbing his stubbled chin against my forehead. Even when we made love, he kept his eyes shut, as if he were with someone else, just using my body. When I was in agony giving birth to our pup, fighting for my life, he left me. He was going to comfort his savior, Aveline. The old wound she suffered saving him had relapsed, sending her into a mental spiral. In that moment, I finally understood. A mark I had to beg for was nothing but a curse, a wound that would never heal. This time, I pulled away with a smile, removing his hand from my waist. "You're right. I'm tired of it, too. We're done."

They called me wolf less. Weak. Worthless. In the Bloodstone Pack, that’s as good as a death sentence—except mine has been slow, drawn out in whispers, cold stares, and the sharp edges of my family’s contempt. My mate, the one the Moon Goddess chose for me, humiliated me in front of the entire pack before turning his back. So I did what no one expected. I left. One reckless night in a bar far from home, I met a stranger with eyes like winter storms. I should have walked away, but pain has a way of making you reckless—and desire has a way of making you forget. By morning, I was gone, certain I’d never see him again. But fate is cruel and relentless. The stranger was no ordinary wolf—he was the Lycan King, and I was his mate. Now he’s hunting me, not just for the bond that ties us, but for something more… because something woke inside me that night. My wolf. My power. And possibly, our child. The world I ran from is nothing compared to the enemies closing in now—family who’d rather see me broken, a sister who thrives on my misery, and a rival king who would burn kingdoms to claim what’s his. The closer Jake gets, the more I wonder if the greatest danger I face isn’t the people hunting me… but the darkness I’ve carried all along.