Page 14

Andros

The knock on my door came just after dawn, sharp and urgent. I was already awake. I hadn’t slept. Not with her voice still clawing at the edges of my mind like a lullaby gone wrong.

Garrick entered without waiting for permission. He didn’t need it. I could tell by the look in his eyes that something was wrong—real wrong.

“Village to the east,” he said grimly. “Attacked in the night. Three dead. Two missing. Smoke spotted at the tree line.”

I didn’t ask who. I already knew.

“Crescent Moon?” I asked anyway.

He nodded. “Loyalists. Survivors, most likely. Or the ones too cowardly to die with the rest.”

My jaw clenched. The bastards were supposed to be dead. Broken. Gone. I'd gutted their Alpha and spilled the blood of his sons on snow-covered soil. The last heir fell by my hand, and still the ghosts of that rotted pack refused to lie down.

I stood, already strapping on my armor.

“Ready five men,” I ordered. “We leave in ten.”

Garrick nodded and vanished, efficient as ever.

The keep stirred behind me as I made my way to the stables.

Wolves moved out of my path without a word, sensing the weight of the storm in my steps.

The sky outside was a sheet of white, snow falling thick and steady.

The wind was cutting, feral. This wasn’t a gentle snowfall—it was a blizzard with teeth.

The kind that ate bone and buried the weak.

Perfect hunting weather.

By the time we rode out, the sun was nothing more than a smudge behind grey clouds. Visibility was shit. Wind howled through the trees like a mourning chorus, biting through our cloaks and icing our beards. But none of us slowed.

We followed the path east, past the frost-choked rivers and dead fields, until even the horses began to falter. Then we left them behind, moving on foot through knee-deep drifts, senses sharp.

No one complained. This wasn’t the kind of pack that needed comfort to kill.

We moved like shadows—silent, cold, focused.

The blizzard covered most of the tracks, but not all.

A bootprint here, a snapped branch there.

Wolves learned to read the quiet between movements, the broken silences in the snow.

By nightfall, we found blood. Frozen into the snow. Fresh enough to make my wolf lift its head and snarl. We were close. Close enough to taste vengeance on the wind.

The storm worsened as night swallowed the last traces of trail. Snow came down in thick sheets now, blinding and relentless, coating the world in silence and white death. The wind howled through the cliffs like a cursed thing, threatening to knock us off our feet if we pushed any farther.

We’d tracked them as far as the lower pass, but in these conditions, we’d lose more than time if we kept going—we’d lose men.

So we made camp.

The fire took time. Wind stole every spark we tried to strike, but we knew the tricks. Dry bark tucked inside cloaks. A hollow carved into the drift. Garrick got it burning while the others pitched the canvas shelter. It wasn’t comfort—it was survival. And we knew the difference.

The six of us huddled around the flames, steam rising from our breath, the silence heavy but not unpleasant. We were tired. Hungry. But close. The blood trail wouldn’t hold through another snowfall, but the scent lingered. Faint. Stale. But there.

We’d find them come dawn.

As the others dozed, weapons close, I sat beside Garrick, nursing the heat with gloved hands, jaw tight against the cold. He passed me a flask. I took a swig and didn’t ask what it was. It burned like hell going down.

After a long silence, I finally spoke.

“You ever… think I’m handling this all wrong?” I didn’t look at him, just watched the fire curl around a blackened log. “Lexa, I mean.”

Garrick didn’t answer right away. I could feel him watching me.

“She’s not like the others,” he said at last.

That made me snort. “No shit.”

“No,” he said, firmer now. “I mean really not. She’s not playacting. She’s not simpering for your attention or grooming herself to become Luna. She’s not afraid of you. She’s not even trying to survive. She’s just... existing. Fierce as she is wounded.”

I turned toward him, narrowing my eyes.

“You almost sound like you admire her.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I do.”

I watched him for a beat. The flames crackled between us.

“You’ve never liked any of them,” I said. “Not the Omegas. Not the Betas. Not even the ones the Elders picked. After all the partners I’ve had, all the women that came and went… you’ve hated them all.” I leaned back. “So why her ?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just stared into the fire, jaw tense.

“Because she doesn’t want you.”

That caught me off guard.

“She’s not playing the game. She’s not angling for a title. She’s not climbing some invisible ladder to the Alpha’s bed. She doesn’t care what you are.” He glanced over, expression unreadable. “And for once, I get to see you off balance.”

“That what this is about? You enjoying watching me crawl?”

“No,” he said, and this time his voice was quiet. Honest. “It’s about seeing someone call you out. No fear. No seduction. Just truth.”

I didn’t respond. Because he was right. And that truth was the one thing I didn’t know what the fuck to do with.

Sleep took me like a fist to the chest—sudden, heavy, unwanted. I didn’t remember closing my eyes. One moment I was staring at the flames, the next I was deep in the dark.

But it wasn’t the storm I dreamt of. It was her. Lexa. That first moment, burned into me like a brand. Her standing in that windswept, salt-stained village. Snow tangled in her hair. Her eyes green fire in a world of frost.

She didn’t cower. Not when my wolves circled her. Not when I touched her. Not even when I pressed her against her own wall and demanded to know what pack she served. She lied to my face with her teeth bared like a blade.

And I’d wanted her.Even then.

I woke just before dawn, heart pounding, hands clenched, the scent of smoke and steel heavy around me. The fire had died down, but the storm had passed. The snow had eased into silence, and above us, the sky was a deep bruised grey, clear enough for tracking.

We broke camp fast. None of us were in the mood to speak. The trail was cold, but the air was crisp—still enough wind to carry scent if you knew how to catch it. We picked it up again just past the ridge: blood, smoke, piss.

Human.

“Could be the Crescent cowards,” Garrick muttered beside me, his breath fogging in the morning chill. “Moving light. Hiding like rats.”

We pushed forward, winding through the pass—frost-slicked ledges and jagged rocks where a single misstep could snap bone. I took the lead with Garrick beside me, but just behind us, I could hear the steady steps of him.

Roran.

An Alpha from the Eastern wilds. Sharp-eyed.

Sharper tongue. Dressed in that same deep crimson and black, his coat trimmed in dark fur and lined with silver thread—just flashy enough to remind everyone he was born rich and wanted more.

Always more. But what set him apart wasn’t his clothes, or the smugness in his smirk—it was the thin silver ring pierced through his right eyebrow.

A ridiculous thing to wear in battle, but I’d seen him use it to distract his prey more than once.

That glint caught in torchlight always came just before blood hit the snow.

I didn’t like him. Never had. But he was a hell of a tracker—and that’s always the curse with Alphas: they’re useful until they start looking at your throne like it’s owed to them.

Roran hadn’t crossed the line. Yet. But I’d seen the look in his eyes more than once. Challenge.

We followed the scent to a clearing—half-buried in snow, ringed with broken stones and blackened roots. There were signs of a small camp: dying embers under a half-burnt log, bones stripped of meat, piss frozen in the dirt.

Then we found them. Six of them. Dirty. Starving. Huddled behind makeshift barricades of rotting timber and bent steel. Not wolves. Humans.

They froze when they saw us, wild-eyed and pale. One broke immediately, turned to run. Another—a boy, barely a man—pulled a rusted dagger and lunged like he had something to prove.

Garrick caught him mid-charge.

Dragged him by the throat and slammed him against a rock with a wet crack. The others didn’t even resist after that. My wolves bound them in seconds. This wasn’t a fight. It was a clean-up.

I stepped toward the boy Garrick had pinned, watching blood run from his nose, down his chin.

“Where are your wolves?” I asked.

He just whimpered. No more than twenty. Skin stretched too tight over cheekbones. Filthy. Bones like twigs under his torn shirt. He smelled like fear and rot and false promises.

“We—we don’t…” he gasped. “We were told to wait. We were just doing what they said. And attack on the night of the new moon... we.. did..as they said.”

Garrick slammed a fist into his ribs. Bone gave with a wet crunch. The boy shrieked, legs buckling.

“Who said?” Garrick growled, already cocking his arm for another hit.

“The wolves. They said if we helped them…” the boy sobbed, clutching his side, “if we spied, gave them routes, maps, anything… they’d turn us. Said they’d make us pack.”

Roran snorted behind me. “And you believed them?”

The boy blinked through tears. “They said the Crescent Moon were gods. Said the change was coming. That they’d take the north, and we’d be the first new wolves.”

I stepped forward slowly, crouched just enough to meet his eyes.

“You thought betraying your kind would earn you a place in ours?”

He didn’t answer. I stood, and in the silence that followed, Roran spoke again—amused, lazy.

“Cute,” he said, voice like poison-dipped silk. “They thought they could buy the bond with lies and scraps.”

Garrick turned to me, jaw clenched, waiting for the command.

“Crescent Moon used humans,” I muttered, disgust tightening like a coil in my gut. “To infiltrate. To hide. To bleed us from the inside while they died in the shadows.”

The boy nodded frantically, coughing through blood and panic. “They—they told us to stay out here. Keep quiet. Said more were coming. We didn’t know… they never came back—we didn’t know they were all dead—”

“They’re not coming back,” I said flatly. “You were bait. Fed lies by wolves who already knew their graves were waiting.”

Garrick stepped back from the boy, his jaw clenched, breath fogging the air.

“Fucking pathetic.”

“Please,” the boy choked out, collapsing to his knees, hands shaking. “We didn’t know what we were doing. We just—we just wanted to belong.”

“And for that,” Roran cut in, his voice like a blade, “you think mercy is earned?”

He stepped forward, boots crunching over ice and bones, the silver ring on his brow catching the morning light. “This is weakness, Andros. You want justice? Burn the villages that sheltered them. Scorch the memory of them from this land.”

I turned to face him, jaw tight.

He raised an eyebrow, the smirk twitching at the corner of his mouth. “So we let them crawl away? Tuck their tails and disappear like rats?”

“No,” I said again, voice low and dangerous now. “These humans will pay. These ones. But I won’t start purging entire villages because you’re too rabid to tell fear from treason.”

Roran sneered, but didn’t argue. He knew better—for now.

I looked down at the boy, trembling on his knees. I smelled no conviction in him. No strength. Just cowardice, the same as the others—thin, dirty, empty-eyed things, huddled behind false promises and the hope of power they were never worthy of.

“You sold your kind for fangs,” I said coldly. “You’ll die with nothing.”

I turned slightly. “Garrick.”

He didn’t hesitate. One nod, one sharp movement—and his blade flashed. The boy barely had time to scream. The others fell just as quickly. Throats opened in the snow, blood steaming as it soaked into the frozen dirt. Their bodies crumpled where they stood, no struggle. No glory.

Just silence. Cold. Clean. Final.

I stood there for a moment, watching the last of the blood soak into the white.

“They wanted to be wolves,” I muttered. “Let the earth bury them like beasts.”