Chapter Eighteen — Wolves in the Snow
1026 Words
Kael’s POV
The wind had teeth.
By the fourth day on the northern road, the snow had thickened into a wall of white that swallowed sound and distance. The world felt smaller up here—narrower, harsher. Even the horses moved more cautiously, hooves crunching through ice as if afraid the ground might vanish beneath them.
Jarek rode ahead, scanning the tree line. “We should have seen the outpost by now,” he said, his voice muffled under his fur-lined hood.
“We passed the marker an hour ago,” I said. “Either the storm buried it—or someone buried the outpost.”
He turned in the saddle. “You think—?”
“I don’t think. I know.”
The wind howled around us, carrying faint sounds that weren’t the wind. The kind of sound soldiers learned to recognize—the crack of a branch, the brief silence before something went wrong.
I raised a hand, signaling the men to stop. The line halted instantly, tension thick enough to taste.
“Shields up,” I ordered quietly.
No one questioned me. They trusted instincts more than orders out here, and mine had kept us alive before.
The snow fell harder, turning the forest into a blur of gray and white. I strained my senses, catching a faint metallic scent—iron. Fresh.
Blood.
Jarek dismounted, crouching near the drift. His glove brushed something dark half-buried beneath the snow. When he lifted it, a strip of cloth came free—a soldier’s armband, soaked through with frozen crimson.
“Ravaryn crest,” he muttered. “The outpost guards.”
I clenched my jaw. “How many?”
He brushed aside more snow. “Too many.”
The snow beneath us wasn’t clean anymore. It was hiding bodies.
I exhaled slowly, forcing calm. “We’re not alone out here.”
---
By dusk, we had found the outpost—or what was left of it.
The small watchtower stood half-burned, its upper level collapsed under the weight of snow. The stench of char and iron lingered heavy in the air. The fire had been deliberate, the kind meant to erase evidence.
Jarek kicked at a shattered crate. “Supplies gone. Whoever did this wasn’t scavenging. They were cleaning up.”
I crouched beside the ruins of a table, running my fingers across the ash-blackened surface. Someone had carved something into the wood before it burned—three lines, one long and two short. A hunter’s mark.
Not a rival pack.
Mercenaries.
Hired blades.
My father’s blades.
I stood, cold crawling deeper than the snow could reach.
He’d never sent me to inspect the border. He’d sent me here to vanish in it.
“Jarek,” I said.
He straightened instantly. “Orders?”
“We leave at dawn. No fires, no signals.”
“Back to the fortress?”
I hesitated. The thought of walking back into Malrik’s trap, of seeing Selene still under his roof—it twisted something deep in my gut.
If I went back openly, he’d finish what he started. But if I disappeared entirely, Selene would be alone with him.
The bond pulsed faintly again, soft but insistent, as if it had heard my thoughts.
“Not back,” I said finally. “Not yet. We’ll circle east, cut through the frostwood and follow the river down. If the storm holds, we can reach the lower valleys in five days.”
Jarek frowned. “That’s not home territory.”
“I’m not heading home,” I said. “I’m heading around it.”
“Then where?”
“To the one place my father won’t think to look—through his enemies.”
Jarek’s expression turned grim. “You’re planning something.”
“I’m surviving something,” I said. “The rest can come later.”
He studied me for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll have the men ready.”
When he turned away, I looked once more at the burned tower, the snow filling the spaces where fire had eaten wood.
Malrik thought he could bury me under frost and distance. He’d forgotten one thing:
I’d learned from him.
---
That night, I stood watch while the men slept, the storm easing into a ghostly quiet. The trees loomed like sentinels, their branches heavy with snow.
I pulled Selene’s letter from my cloak—the one I hadn’t opened, because she hadn’t written it. It was blank parchment wrapped around my own words, sealed in wax before I left.
I broke it open now, staring at what I’d written before dawn that day:
If he moves against me, he’ll move against you next. Trust no one. Not even those who bow the deepest.
I folded it again, sliding it back into my coat.
The cold bit harder now, the kind that crept through armor and into bone. But it wasn’t just cold. It was anger. It was clarity.
He wanted me gone.
He wanted her isolated.
He wanted control.
And he’d get none of it.
The wind shifted then—carrying a faint scent through the air. Smoke. Not from our camp. Farther off.
I drew my sword silently, signaling Jarek awake. “We’re not alone,” I murmured.
He followed my gaze eastward, toward the flicker of distant light between the trees.
“What now?” he whispered.
I tightened my grip on the hilt, eyes narrowing.
“Now,” I said, “we find out who else my father sent to clean his mess.”
---
Meanwhile…
Far to the south, beneath the fortress roofs, a candle guttered in the Luna’s chamber.
Selene sat awake, staring at Kael’s sealed parchment by her bedside, the bond between them thrumming faintly against the wind.
Something in her heart twisted—not pain, not fear. A warning.
She rose and went to the window, her breath fogging the glass. The snow outside glittered like shards of bone.
“Hold on,” she whispered to the night. “Just hold on.”
And somewhere in the northern dark, Kael lifted his head as if he’d heard her.
---
- Writer
