Alpha Thorne Rhygar stood over her limp body, snow dusting his boots and clinging to the folds of his coat. The wind still howled through the trees outside, but inside his chest, everything was quiet. His jaw was set like stone, unmoving, as though sculpted by battle itself. A long, healed scar cut across his face from temple to jawline, brutal and unhidden. His eyes—icy and steel—looked down on the broken she-wolf before him with no sign of sympathy.
She didn’t stir. Mira lay in the snow like someone who had already accepted the ending. Her limbs were twisted beneath her, and her skin pale beneath the smears of dirt and frostbite. Whatever pride she once had, it had long since bled away into the snow.
Thorne crouched. His motion was animalistic: controlled, sharp. He leaned in, sniffed once like the predator he was, and recoiled slightly.
“Northcrest,” he muttered, voice sharp with contempt. The name alone seemed to sour the air. The scent was undeniable, clinging to her very skin.
He could’ve left her there. Should’ve. But instead, he hooked his arms beneath her, lifted her with ease, and turned toward the trees. The storm had no mercy, battering him with snow and wind, but he didn’t slow. His grip stayed firm, his steps sure.
The cabin rose ahead through the storm like a shadow. It was built of thick logs, aged and weather-bitten. The roof sagged, the windows fogged with frost, but it stood strong. He reached the door and kicked it open with one sharp motion.
Inside, it was warmer but no less hostile. Smoke clung to the air like breath held too long. The iron tang of blood from old wounds still lingered in the wood. Thorne crossed the room in three long strides and dropped Mira onto the cot with no gentleness. The frame creaked beneath her weight.
She groaned faintly, a sound more instinct than awareness. Her eyes cracked open, glazed and half-blind. Her skin looked waxy under the flicker of firelight.
“Who are you?” Thorne barked, his voice cutting across the room like a whip.
Her lips moved, trembling as though even speaking burned. “Nobody,” she rasped.
He narrowed his eyes. A lie, maybe. But one he recognized. One he’d told himself, once.
He stood over her a moment longer, judging, measuring.
She shouldn’t have been able to find him. No one should have. His hut lay beyond the last trace of trail, buried in a fold of the mountains where wind spoke louder than men. Yet here she was—soaked, shivering, too pale, too silent.
Did someone send her? Did she come alone? The questions clawed at him, but her half-conscious form had silenced them, for now.
Then he turned back and went to get a healer from a local village. A woman followed him without hesitation.
A beat of silence passed. Then, flatly, without ceremony: “She’s pregnant.”
Thorne’s head turned sharply. His curse was quiet but full of venom.
“Not my problem,” he snapped. His boots scraped the floor as he backed away like she might erupt.
He didn’t leave though. His hands didn’t reach for the door. His jaw flexed. His gaze cut to the healer, then back to the she-wolf under his care.
Mira drifted into unconsciousness again, dragged under by pain and exhaustion. Hours passed. The fire kept burning. The world narrowed to darkness and the ache deep in her bones.
When she woke again, the fever hadn’t left her. Her mouth was dry. Her limbs ached. She barely moved, her muscles too heavy with cold.
The fire in the hearth was the only light now, low and steady. Its warmth licked the air but couldn’t reach the shadows gathering in the corners. She turned her head slightly.
Thorne sat in a chair a few feet away, his posture straight, his expression unchanged. In his hands, a long knife caught glimmers of firelight as he moved it slowly across a whetstone. The sound—metal against stone—was methodical, unhurried. It echoed through the cabin like a heartbeat.
He didn’t speak. His eyes, those cutting, unreadable eyes, never left her.
Mira stared back. She didn’t dare speak. Her hands trembled as she tucked the blanket tighter around her, more armor than comfort. Her breath rasped in and out of her chest. Everything about him radiated danger—not the loud, snapping kind, but the quiet certainty of a blade just before it falls. Then his voice finally came, soft and sharp as steel drawn from a sheath.
“If you lie to me once,” he said, “I will kill you. I don’t care if you are carrying a child.”