Chapter 7
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 that couldn't quite hide the predatory grace of their movements. These weren't the elite guards from before—they were trackers, wolves who specialized in following prey across impossible terrain.
The tallest sneered as his eyes found her crouched figure. "Well, well. The little omega survived her first night." His voice dripped with the casual contempt of someone who had never known real hardship. "Did you think you could last out here, girl? Did you think the wild would welcome you with open arms?"
Reign didn't answer immediately. Her eyes tracked the snow at their feet, noting the uneven drift she had deliberately disturbed during her approach to the deer. The trap was crude but effective—a pit carved into the frozen ground and covered with a thin layer of ice and snow, sharpened stakes waiting at the bottom.
"You talk too much," she said finally, her voice carrying a coldness that made the nearest hunter's smile falter.
They laughed, but the sound was forced. Something about her stillness unnerved them—the way she crouched like a predator instead of cowering like prey.
"Pathetic," one of them muttered, stepping forward with the casual arrogance of someone who had never faced real opposition. "Let's finish this and—"
The ice cracked beneath his boots.
His scream split the forest air as he plunged through the false surface into the pit below. The sound of sharpened wood meeting flesh was wet and final, followed by a choking gurgle that cut off abruptly. Blood spattered against the pristine snow, steaming in the frigid air.
The second hunter roared in fury and shock, his form beginning the partial shift that marked experienced warriors. Claws burst from his fingertips as bone cracked and reformed, his canine teeth elongating into fangs. The scent of wolf musk filled the air as his humanity gave way to predatory instinct.
Reign was already moving. She yanked free the jagged branch she had wedged into the ice—thick as her arm and sharp as a spear where she had worked it against the stones. As the hunter charged, she met him halfway, swinging with all the desperate strength of someone who had nothing left to lose.
The improvised weapon drove deep into his chest, splintering ribs and punching through lung tissue. His howl of rage became a wet gasp as blood frothed from his lips. He clawed at the branch protruding from his torso, eyes wide with the shock of prey that had suddenly become predator.
He toppled backward into the snow and lay still.
Two down. One to go.
The last hunter had stopped laughing. His eyes darted between his fallen companions and the blood-spattered girl who stood over them, and for the first time, real fear flickered across his features.
"Impossible," he breathed. "You're just an omega. You're nothing."
Reign straightened slowly, the frost-mark on her wrist beginning to pulse with increasing intensity. "I was never nothing. You just never bothered to look."
The hunter's form began to shift fully, bones cracking and reforming as he gave himself over to the wolf. This one was older, more experienced—his transformation was smoother, more controlled than his companion's had been. When it was complete, a massive gray wolf stood where the man had been, lips pulled back to reveal fangs designed for killing.
He lunged without warning, faster than anything human should have been able to react to. Claws flashed toward her throat, aimed to open her jugular in a single swipe.
Reign twisted desperately, but she was still learning to move with her enhanced reflexes. The claws caught her across the shoulder, sending her staggering backward as fire raced down her arm. The hunter's weight crashed into her, driving the breath from her lungs as they both went down in a tangle of limbs.
Cold teeth grazed her throat as jaws snapped shut inches from her carotid artery. She could smell his breath, hot and rank with the scent of old kills.
And then it happened.
Heat exploded in her chest—not the warmth of fire or the burn of exertion, but something far deeper and more primal. Power surged through her veins like liquid starlight, and the frost-mark on her wrist blazed with silver-blue radiance that seemed to pierce straight through her flesh.
The hunter's eyes widened in shock as the glow intensified, reflecting off his dilated pupils. For a moment, predator and prey were frozen in perfect tableau—wolf and girl locked together in the snow, one bathed in supernatural light.
Then the light pulsed once, like a heartbeat made visible, and everything changed.
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