The wind howled through the vertical gaps in the heavy stone masonry, carrying a fresh wave of ice needles that stung Eva’s raw cheeks. She dragged her legs closer to her chest, pulling her knees up until they pressed tightly against her ribcage.

She buried her chin inside the wet, frayed collar of her cotton tunic, trying to capture the last remaining pockets of warmth from her skin. The snowdrift rose steadily around her leather boots, burying her ankles in a heavy layer of white powder.

Her breath came out in thin, ragged white puffs that vanished into the darkness before they could even warm her nose. Her toes had gone completely numb inside her thin soles twenty minutes ago, leaving her feet feeling like solid, unyielding blocks of ice.

Sixteen. She had been exactly sixteen when the mountain frost last bit this hard into her bones.

The memory crept in with the scent of burning cedar smoke drifting from the castle’s high chimneys, a smell that always accompanied the winter solstice. That night, the outer courtyard had looked identical, buried under three feet of unbroken gray ice while the high ranking wolves celebrated inside.

Eva had been kneeling by the frozen southern woodpile, her fingers bleeding from splitting heavy pine logs without any leather gloves. Her breath had been just as shallow then, her small frame shaking so violently that the wooden kindling kept slipping from her frozen grip.

"Hey, orphan, faster with those logs," a low-tier Beta guard had muttered, kicking the side of her wooden basket and scattering her hours of work into the snow. "The kitchen needs the fire roaring before the elders finish their toast."

Eva hadn't answered the guard, her cracked knuckles too stiff to brush the fresh snow off her face as she scrambled on all fours to retrieve the firewood. She had stared at the frozen ground, watching the dark blood from her split skin drip onto the white crust, freezing instantly into tiny crimson beads.

A massive shadow had suddenly fallen over the logs, blocking out the dim, flickering torchlight from the eastern garrison wall.

Killian Vance had stepped into the clearing, his heavy, custom-made tactical boots crunching rhythmically through the thick ice crust. He wasn't the Alpha yet, but his shoulders already carried the broad, heavy frame of a purebred leader who took what he wanted.

He didn't look down at the guards, his dark gold eyes fixed entirely on the main entrance of the pack house where his father’s council waited. The wind ripped at his hair, but he walked as if the freezing gale was nothing more than a summer breeze against his skin.

As his massive frame passed her shivering form, his right hand moved to his shoulder, unbuckling the silver wolf-head clasp of his heavy winter coat.

The thick, black wool garment flew through the air, landing heavily over Eva’s bleeding, uncovered shoulders. The weight of it nearly knocked her over into the snow, the deep heat from his body still radiating from the inner lining.

The fabric smelled strongly of woodsmoke, damp pine earth, and something distinctly wild—the unmistakable, suffocating scent of an dominant Alpha-blood.

"Weakness has no place in Blackwood," Killian’s voice had drifted back to her, flat, low, and completely devoid of any comfort.

He hadn't stopped walking to see her reaction, his boots continuing their steady, unhurried march up the stone steps until the great oak doors swallowed him whole.

Eva pulled her arms tighter around herself in the present, her fingers clawing at her own shoulders as the burning memory settled deep into her chest. The phantom warmth of that old black coat seemed to press against her skin again, acting as a physical anchor against the deadly frost outside the gates.

She shifted her position against the cold granite wall, her shoulder blades rubbing against the rough, frozen stone blocks. The faint outline of the silver Vance family crest embroidered on that old coat seemed to burn strangely into her memory, keeping her heart beating through the pitch-black night.

The gale didn't stop, but the violent shaking in her limbs began to slow down, her body entering a quiet, survival-driven stasis that kept the frost from shutting down her lungs.

She watched her fingers in the dark, watching the pale skin on her knuckles where the glass cuts had been just an hour before. The skin was completely smooth now, the strange, hidden lineage in her blood working silently to repair every tear while the pack slept inside.

"They think I'm an Omega," Eva whispered to the darkness, her voice swallowed instantly by the roaring wind.

She turned the silver token over in her palm, her thumb tracing the smooth, unpolished edges of the metal disc. It was the only object that survived the fire that killed her mother, a secret she kept hidden beneath the floorboards of the servant quarters since she was a child.

The metal felt warm against her skin now, almost hot, vibrating with a low, rhythmic pulse that matched the steady beating of her own heart.

The heavy iron horns blew from the north watchtower, three sharp, metallic blasts that shattered the early morning silence and signaled the changing of the guard. The sound echoed off the frozen cliffs, shaking loose heavy blankets of snow gathering on the pine branches around the perimeter.

Eva opened her eyes, her frost-covered lashes separating with a dull, pulling sting that left a faint trail of moisture on her cheek. The morning sun was beginning to drop over the high northern peaks, casting a pale, cold lavender light across the courtyard gravel.

The heavy iron-studded gates began to groan, the thick steel chains inside the winch room rattling as the mechanism turned.

Eva locked her arms around her frozen knees, her gaze fixed entirely on the widening gap between the doors as the first horsemen of the Alpha's vanguard broke through the white wall of the storm.