Somehow, two weeks had passed in a blur. I didn’t want to think about why the time had gone so quickly, but the ridiculous pounding of my heart and the way my bones melted beneath my flesh every time Ares was near pointed it out whether I liked it or not. Even now, sat in the banquet hall, pale sunlight sending colours from the stained glass scattering across the dented wooden table, I could feel his presence more keenly than I could feel the bite of the cold air that swept through the room every time the door was opened. I picked at a stale hunk of bread, tearing off a small chunk and balancing a thin slice of cheese on top of it. The meagre portion of bread, cheese, and berries we were given every morning for breakfast was something I was slowly getting used to, but my stomach ached for cinnamon buns and jam-filled pasties and fresh squeezed orange juice.  With no suitable farmland in their territory, the Winterpaw Warrior Pack relied solely on the goods they

Our dinner had long since gone cold on the table.  I’d forgotten about it, swept up in the excitement of seeing a new part of Ares’s territory. More than that, I’d wanted to go somewhere that meant something to him. I wrinkled my nose at the idea now, my face hidden by shadow as he lit a fire in the hearth. My heart was a frostbitten thing. The fire took, crackling and sending heat spilling into the room, but even it could not thaw my heart.  He lit the torches hanging from the walls in silence. I’d started to think of our altercation as an argument, but it had been nothing of the sort. It was worse: a dreadful acceptance of the fact that, no matter the mate bond holding us together, we could never work as a couple. The hope I’d felt earlier dissolved into ash, suffocating my heart even as the mate bond gripped it tighter, pressing me to apologise when I had done nothing wrong. We were from different worlds, and there was no way to bridge th

The snow, which rose in mounds around the training grounds, glittered in the morning sun. It was splashed in hues of brilliant, resplendent red, dark as blood upon the pallid landscape. It had been the same all week: every fragment of beauty I saw became a portrait of horrors. Even the novelty of seeing in colour could not bring my thoughts from the dark mire they had tumbled headfirst into. I pulled back, sliding my booted foot across a patch of ice and feeling the bite of dawn air slicing at my midriff. I shivered, losing focus for half a second and giving my opponent an opening to swipe at me. The brown wolf lunged, baring its teeth at me; I skidded on the ice and slipped, managing to catch myself at the last second due to luck alone.  The wolf – a woman called Valeria that I often ended up practicing against, simply because she was one of the few Winterpaw werewolves amicable enough towards me to fight me without biting my head off, literally – drop

I pressed my paws into the snow, feeling its sharp bite even through my thick brown fur. Snowflakes swirled through the air, dusting my coat with white and sending shivers rolling through me.I was envious of the Warrior Wolves behind us – they were pressed so tightly together, holding the line that marked the edge of Winterpaw’s territory, that they must have been warm from the flush of body heat. I’d been forced to the front with Cendres and Nazte. The one small saving grace was that Hanna and Hans Pewer were marching around the Warrior Wolves, ensuring they were in the correct formation, so I was saved from their torturous company at least.I wrinkled my nose, flicking my gaze over to Nazte’s huge white wolf form. One of his paws looked like it had been dunked in chocolate and sprinkled with icing sugar from the snow. He stood completely still, his icy blue eyes fixed on the horizon as we awaited the arrival of the Bloodpelt Prowler Pack. The

If I opened my eyes, I would wake up. Some subconscious part of me already knew that – and it held my eyelids closed, keeping me hostage in the dark. I considered fighting it, but traces of pain and blood and betrayal broke through my memories and forced their way into my present mind.  I winced against the onslaught, against the feel of having bones and flesh that throbbed and ached, against the abject horror of knowing I was doomed, and that was enough to throw me back into my body.  I didn’t know how I was alive, but I forced my eyes open to face whatever awaited me. I expected to awake to more pain, to the bite of snow beneath me and a blizzard in the air, to be utterly unable to escape the numbing cold and the red-hot agony –  But there was nothing. Just silence, broken only by the pops and cracks of the fire in the hearth. I frowned at it: a large, stone monstrosity set into the wall at the foot of the bed. I did not recognise this room,