The voices grew closer, weaving through the skeletal trees like smoke through winter air. Reign pressed her back against the frozen bark of an ancient pine, forcing her breathing to slow, her heartbeat to steady. The taste of raw deer meat still lingered on her tongue, and blood had dried to dark flakes beneath her fingernails.
But she wasn't running this time.
Something had shifted during the kill. The desperate, clumsy girl who had stumbled into exile was gone, replaced by something harder and infinitely more dangerous. The frost-mark on her wrist pulsed with quiet power, and she could feel the direwolf's presence in the shadows behind her—watching, waiting, testing.
Branches snapped under heavy boots. Three hunters emerged from between the trees, their forms wrapped in thick furs tha
