Winter Woods Book Novels & Stories

“Zayn MacQuoid, you can’t be this selfish! I’m working hard right now. I can’t have kids!” I compromised to quell her anger. I valued her career, but she resigned so that she could take care of Charles and Caleb better. Besides, she used the money I had saved for retirement for Caleb’s wedding. My leg hurt terribly during that winter, but I was too poor to see a doctor. Moreover, the temperature at home was freezing. It made me shiver. I tried calling Layla for money, but she hung up on me repeatedly. I could not hold on since I was old. In the end, I froze to death.

It didn’t need to be fashionable, just practical. It had started snowing lightly since I had returned home, and it seemed to drift lightly in the breeze rather than fall. My parents had always instructed me to stick to the path, but I was done letting them make my decisions for me. I headed into the thickest part of the woods, twirling around in the drifting snowflakes as I went. I stopped in my tracks as I saw movement up ahead. “Someone is a little too far from the beaten path.” I smiled to myself at the sound of his voice.

It wasn’t just snowing—it was snowing, as if the sky itself had decided to bury the land under layers of thick, unrelenting white. We drove away from the airport, the tires crunching through the snow, heading deeper into the wilds of Alaska. As we moved farther from the town, I noticed how the landscape grew even more desolate. The trees were sparse, leafless and skeletal, their branches clawing at the sky. The forest was thick, but there was a barrenness to it that made me feel small and insignificant. The wilderness here didn’t welcome you—it seemed to watch you, cold and indifferent, as though waiting for you to leave.

POV: Amira Cross The cold cut deeper than any blade. It chewed through the flesh on my feet, gnawed at the bones in my fingers, and sank into my lungs like a death sentence. Snow whispered around me like ghosts laughing, while blood—mine—streaked the white beneath me in crimson trails. I didn’t know how many days I had been walking rather did I know where I was going. I just knew I couldn’t stop. Not until I collapsed or disappeared.

Chapter 1: The Howl in the Forest The ancient woods whispered secrets as I pushed through the underbrush, my boots sinking into the damp earth beneath a canopy of towering pines. Moonlight filtered through the leaves in silvery shafts, casting an ethereal glow that made the night feel alive, pulsing with hidden energy. I had come to this remote mountain town for solitude after the betrayal in the city—my ex-fiancé’s lies still stinging like fresh wounds. As a wildlife photographer, I told myself this assignment was perfect: capturing rare nocturnal creatures for a prestigious magazine. But deep down, I knew I was running from the emptiness that had settled in my chest, the longing for someth

The ridge stood above it all, and the pines moved in the light wind, and the sky was still that exceptional winter blue, holding everything underneath it with the simple authority of something very large and very steady. She breathed. "Yes," she said. "That's all I'm saying." "That's enough," Ivory said. Delia smiled — the full one, both eyes, the twenty-years one. And they stood in the winter garden while the afternoon light moved across the bare beds that were being planned for spring, and the pack talked around them, and somewhere on the east road a wolf was going home to a lodge with its light already on. Waiting for nothing. Already there. End of Chapter Twelve.

The wood crackled and then finally caught. Heat began to bloom in a slow and weak manner but it was something. I sat back on my heels, staring into the small flames like they were my lord and personal saviour. The wind hit again. Harder this time. The cabin creaked. Something outside thudded, like a branch slamming into the side. My heart jumped. I stood and moved to the window. I gasped when I did so The world had turned completely white. Snow came down in thick sheets now, blown in wild angles. The trees moved like they were wrestling something bigger than them.

Grabbed it, slung it over my shoulders, and walked back to the group. Mark Anderson just so happened to be really good at stripping and draining game. I took the doe to his built up shop and watched as he strung her up by her hind legs. I watched as he slit her side to side to ensure all the blood drained. I turned and walked away. I made sure that my timing was perfect, Maria, would be finishing up her book. That woman could burn through a book in 4 hours, if left unbothered. “Welcome back honey! How was hunting?”

Three Weeks Later Warm, real sunlight streamed through the windows of the small, hidden cabin. It wasn’t the ranger station, nor the Crossroads. This was somewhere Winters had taken them—a long-abandoned forestry outpost tucked into a golden, sunlit valley far from the scorched battleground. Undiscoverable. Still.

I needed assistance and I wasn’t sure I was going to get one while I was out here. Lauren, my mom didn’t even know that I was here. I had left the house silently in order to get some breathing space. We had just arrived from Washington out of hope that we could put our past behind us. Lauren had assured me that WinstonVille would be the perfect place to restart our lives. WinstonVille was a quiet town in West Virginia. Nothing happened over here which made it a great choice for my mother. I had wandered into the woods with the hope that I would find the solitude that I had seemed so much. It had been so quiet and I had loved the way my feet crushed the dry leaves. They made a crunching sound