Chapter 2

Jaxon stepped down one step, crossing his arms, looking down at Freya with an ugly, mocking grin. "Don't freeze too quickly, sweet thing. When the old stray dies in your bed, you're always welcome to crawl back and sweep the grease off my hearth."

Freya did not grant him a backward glance.

She tightened her fingers briefly around Bowen’s massive, calloused hand, then stepped to his right side, offering her shoulder should he need a brace.

"Can you walk the path?" she asked him softly.

Bowen looked down at her. Up close, his face had the severe, sculpted geometry of an old statue that had survived an empire's fall. His jaw was set like a vice.

"I can walk," he said. His voice was rough, like gravel ground in a mill, unused for months—perhaps years—yet beneath the rasp lay a deep, dark resonance that vibrated in her chest.

Without another word to the wolves who had discarded them, the pair turned toward the heavy double doors of the hall and walked out into the freezing dark.

***

The gale struck them the moment they cleared the palisade gates.

The northern scree of the Eldenridge territory was an inhospitable wasteland of jagged slate, dead pines, and howling wind that drove sleet horizontal against their skin. The settlement lay in the sheltered valley below, its warm yellow lanterns glowing like smug, unreachable stars. Up here, there was only the black wall of the mountain and the white teeth of the gathering blizzard.

The cabin was three miles up the slope. By pack standards, an able-bodied wolf could jog the distance in twenty minutes. For a cripple dragging an iron-braced leg through eight inches of crusted snow, it was a death march.

Yet Bowen never groaned.

Freya carried her canvas pack—containing two flint-stones, a battered copper pot, half a sack of dried barley, and her mother’s bone-handled skinning knife—slung across her back. She walked beside Bowen, matching his slow, deliberate pace. Every time his right boot dragged through the snow, the breath hitched in his throat, a sharp hiss of air through clenched teeth, but he never slowed down.

"Lean on me," she offered when they reached the halfway marker, a dead pine split by lightning. The wind whipped her dark curls around her face, stinging her cheeks scarlet. "The snow is deeper here."

Bowen stopped for a single breath, his massive chest heaving against the cold. Frost had gathered on his dark lashes and the scruff along his square jaw. He looked at her small, straight frame, then down at his own ruined limb.

"You are small," he rasped, the wind tearing at his words. "You will slip."

"I am small, but my bones aren't made of chalk," she countered, stepping firmly into his space and slipping her shoulder under his broad left arm. "Take it, Bowen. Pride won't keep the wolves away if we drop before the treeline."

A strange flicker crossed his good eye—surprise, quickly replaced by a dark, guarded respect. He did not throw his full weight on her, carefully measuring out only what was necessary to steady his balance, but the contact was solid. He was like an oak post, dense and surprisingly warm despite the icy squall.

Together, step by deliberate step, they fought their way up the ridge until the silhouette of the abandoned cabin materialized through the veil of white.

It was worse than she remembered.

The eastern eaves had caved under an old snowslide, leaving a gaping wound that had been crudely boarded over with warped pine planks. The door hung by a single leather strap, banging rhythmically against the stone sill in the wind. Inside, the floor was covered in a drift of dry snow, and the stone hearth was choked with black ash and bird nests.

Bowen let go of her and leaned heavily against the doorway frame, his knuckles white around his staff. His face was gray with exhaustion, the pale scars across his cheek standing out like welts.

Freya did not waste a second. She kicked the door shut, using a heavy log from the corner to wedge it against the gale.

"Sit on the bench," she ordered gently, dropping her pack. "Don't move until I have the hearth lit."

She knelt before the firebox. Clearing the sodden nests and rotted twigs with her bare hands, she dug down to the dry soot of the stone. She shaved pine curls from the underside of a dry bench with her skinning knife, struck the flint with steady, practiced rhythm, and blew softly into the glowing tinder.

Within five minutes, an orange tongue of flame caught the dry birch bark. Within ten, a steady, roaring fire pushed the freezing gloom back into the corners of the room.

The cabin was small—barely twelve paces across—containing a rickety table, one solid bench, and a sleeping platform in the corner filled with dried, ancient bracken. But the walls of split logs were thick, and once the stone chimney warmed, the room began to shed its tomb-like chill.

Freya melted a pot of snow over the flames, dropping a pinch of dried mint and yarrow from her pouch into the water. She turned to the corner where Bowen sat.

He had removed his soaked woolen rags from his shoulders. Now, bare-chested in the flickering firelight, the true extent of his ruin was laid bare.

Freya caught her breath, though she forced her face to remain utterly calm.

His upper torso was broad, sculpted with the thick, functional musculature of a high-tier predator, but it was butchered. Deep, pitted silver burns scored his collarbones and shoulders—marks left not by battlefield clashes, but by torture chains forged from high-purity imperial silver. Across his ribs were the faded, violent impressions of suppressive runes, burned directly into the skin to permanently choke a shifter’s natural healing.

And over his heart sat the darkest mark of all: a blackened brand shaped like a cracked sun, surrounded by concentric rings of scar tissue that seemed to throb with a dull, sickly gray light.

He was watching her, waiting for the disgust, the pity, or the terror that usually followed.

Freya simply carried the steaming pot, a strip of clean linen, and a small jar of goose grease over to the bench. She set them on the floor and knelt between his knees.

"This is going to sting," she said quietly.

Bowen’s jaw clenched. "You should save the clean linen for yourself. I have lived with these burns for three winters. They don't heal."

"They don't heal because the silver is still weeping in the core of the tissue," Freya replied, her fingers dipping into the warm water. She wrung out the cloth and brought it toward his shoulder. "Hold still."

The moment the warm cloth touched the jagged silver burn beneath his collarbone, Bowen’s entire body went rigid. A low, involuntary growl rumbled in his chest, vibrating against her knuckles. The veins along his neck bulged, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the edge of the wooden bench.

Yet, he didn't pull away.

Freya worked with methodical, gentle precision. She cleaned the blackened edges of the old wounds, washing away the caked sweat and grime of the march. Her touch was remarkably light, surprisingly devoid of hesitation.

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