Chapter 2

The transport truck lurched to a halt at the edge of the woods, the driver’s face twisted with a mixture of fear and impatience.

He flung the rear doors open, and the biting wind howled inside, instantly stealing the warmth from our skin.

“This is as far as I go,” he spat. “The main road to the transit station is the only path cleared by the patrol. You chose to be dropped here. Your funeral.”

He didn't wait for a reply. He shoved an oxygen cylinder out onto the snow, slammed the doors, and roared away, leaving us in a swirling white hell.

Silence returned, heavier than before.

I looked back at the fading lights of Snowridge, and for a moment, I remembered another winter.

Five years ago, Rowan stood outside the Alpha chamber with blood on his collar and half the elders demanding his removal.

They called him too young. Too weak. They said Snowridge would fall under his rule.

I was the one who stood beside him.

I rebuilt the medical system. I organized the food stores. I convinced the families who doubted him to stay.

When the pack finally bowed to him, they called him a great Alpha.

No one remembered the woman who kept his territory alive until he became one.

And now, that same man had locked iron around my wrist and sent me into the storm.

Mrs. Bell wheezed, her breath rattling like dry leaves.

The two mothers clutched their children, their eyes hollow.

They weren't looking at me; they were looking for a savior who hadn't come.

“We aren't dying tonight,” I said. My voice was low, but it had the weight of a command.

I pointed toward the dark treeline, where the jagged skeleton of St.

Jude’s Academy clawed at the storm-battered sky.

“Move. The school has structure. It has walls. It is the only thing standing between us and the frost.”

The trek was a brutal crawl through the storm.

When we reached the rusted gates, I found the weakest point and forced the chain open with the help of Kael.

The lobby of St. Jude’s was a tomb of dust and frozen shadows.

The air inside was stiller, protected from the gale, but the temperature remained lethal.

“Everyone into the south corridor,” I ordered. My tone left no room for hesitation. “Use the third classroom. Cover the windows with the desks. If it's not bolted to the floor, it’s firewood.”

The mothers, startled by the sudden shift in my demeanor, scrambled to obey.

No one asked me who gave me the right to lead. The cold was a cruel master, and I was the only one who seemed to have a map for the darkness.

Then, Mrs. Bell collapsed.

The oxygen cylinder hissed, a dying, pathetic sound.

The needle plummeted into the red. Panic flared in the room—raw, visceral, and contagious.

“How long?” Mara, one of the mothers, choked out.

“Minutes.”

I didn't run to hold Mrs. Bell’s hand. I ran downstairs.

The generator was dead, and the oxygen machine was failing.

There was no doctor. No Alpha coming to save us.

So I fixed it myself.

Minutes later, the lights flickered back on.

Mrs. Bell took her first steady breath.

The people around me looked at me differently.

Not as the woman Snowridge had abandoned.

As the person who kept them alive.

For the first time, they saw me as more than an exile.

I picked up a heavy wrench, my hand still dripping blood from the valve.

“The generator has power,” I announced, the adrenaline fading into a chilling, absolute resolve. “But it won't hold the heat for long. I’m going back down to jump-start the boiler.”

I stopped for a second, catching my reflection in a shard of broken glass. I looked like a ghost.

I looked like an exile. But for the first time in my life, I wasn't waiting for a man to come and rescue me.

I realized then that the promise Rowan and I had made as children—to always call him when everything collapsed—was a lie.

The person I was waiting for would never come. And that was the best thing that had ever happened to me.