To Tame a Winter Wolf

1.

The snow never truly melted in Skadi territory. It only changed texture.

Some mornings it was powder—light, glittering like crushed diamonds beneath the pale sun. Other days it hardened into glass, sharp enough to slice skin if you fell wrong. Today it was the heavy kind, wet and clinging, the sort that soaked through wool and made you question every choice that had led you to this moment.

I stabbed the shovel into a drift taller than my hip and glared at it as if it had personally offended me.

“I hate you,” I informed the snow. The snow, like most things in my life, did not care to fight back at me. It never did.

Two years.

Two years since they had dragged me from the smoking ruins of my father’s castle. Two years since the war had ended. Two years since the Mad King—my father—had been cut down and bled out across the grass outside of his own castle. Killed by the only thing he had ever loved, his own magic.

I hadn’t cried a single tear since his death.

I remembered that part clearly. The metallic smell of blood in the air the day the brutal battle had taken place, the way the banners had burned, the way someone had gripped my arm hard enough to bruise while the Alphas argued over my head as though I were livestock.

“She’s his blood.”

“Kill her.”

“No, she’s valuable.”

“Skadi will take her.”

That last voice had ended the debate.

Alpha Jokul.

Ancient.

Cold-eyed.

Silent until he wasn’t.

He hadn’t looked at me like I was a young woman. He hadn’t looked at me like I was a monster either. He had looked at me as if I were… something to be placed carefully. A weapon locked in a chest. Or perhaps a debt collected.

And then he’d claimed me as Skadi’s possession.

Not for a dungeon.

Not for execution.

For this.

I wrenched the shovel free and tossed another mound aside. It collapsed with a dull thud against the growing wall I was building along the cabin’s eastern edge. The cabin itself crouched against the wind like an old animal too stubborn to just lay down and die. Smoke curled from the crooked chimney. The wood was dark with age and weather, reinforced in places with thick beams carved in the Skadi style—angular runes meant to keep storms from ripping the roof clean off.

Inside lived Brynja and Oren.

My wardens.

Though that word felt awfully dramatic.

They were old. Older than most wolves survived to be. Brynja walked with a limp that worsened in the cold, and Oren’s beard was so thick with frost half the time he resembled a sentient snowdrift. They were tasked with watching the eastern border—making sure no one crossed deeper into Skadi lands without permission.

Not that anyone sane would try.

Skadi was winter given teeth.

I sometimes wondered if this was punishment.

Not the cabin. Not the chores.

The survival.

It would have been simpler if they’d thrown me in chains. Simpler if Jokul had just ended my life the day he claimed it. Instead, he’d delivered me here without explanation.

“Live,” he’d said.

That was all.

Live.

As though that were easy.

An entire war had ended because my father had lost it.

Because my father was mad.

The Mad King.

He hadn’t always been mad. Or perhaps he had, and I’d simply been too young to recognize it. I remembered long halls and cold tutors. I remembered my siblings—scattered laughter echoing through stone corridors. I remembered fear most of all.

Not of enemies.

Not of a mother.

Of him.

His temper had been legendary. His punishments inventive. His belief in his own divinity unwavering. He had called it strength. The realm in exchange had called it tyranny. I drove the shovel down harder than necessary.

He had started that war because his pride could not tolerate dissent. Thousands died for that stupid pride. And in the end, so did he.

I didn’t mourn him.

Sometimes I tried to feel guilty about that.

A daughter should grieve her father.

That was what the old songs said, at least.

But when I pictured him, I saw not a father but a man who’d used his children like chess pieces. Promises of marriages to secure alliances. Threats of disownment if we disobeyed. Affection given rarely, and always with conditions. If there were tears in me the day he died, they had frozen before they could fall.

“Eira!”

Oren’s voice carried from the cabin door. I turned, leaning on the shovel. He stood there wrapped in furs, a mug of something steaming in his hand.

“You’re attacking that drift like it insulted the Moon Goddess,” he called.

“It did,” I replied.

“Called her poor.”

He barked a laugh, white breath exploding around his beard.

“Well, don’t let it win.”

“I won’t,” I promised solemnly.

“I intend to devastate its entire bloodline.”

He shook his head and retreated inside, muttering something about dramatic girls and wasted energy. I watched the door close, the faint warmth vanishing with it.

I resumed clearing the path toward the woodpile. Each movement warmed my blood, my breath steady in the cold air. Sometimes I wondered about my siblings. Where had they been sent? To warmer territories? To harsher ones? Were they locked away in keeps? Forced into political marriages? Dead? We had been split deliberately. Scattered like ashes so we could never unite into flame. I shoved that thought away. If I allowed myself to care too much, I would start to hope. And hope was… dangerous.

When Alpha Jokul visited—and he did, though very rarely—he never stayed long. He would speak quietly with Oren and Brynja, his massive frame nearly filling the small cabin, silver hair braided down his back like a war banner.

He would glance at me once.

Assessing.

Measuring.

Never unkind.

Never warm.

I had asked him once, unable to stop myself.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

Brynja had nearly dropped a pot of stew. Jokul had studied me for a long moment.

“Because you are not your father,” The Alpha had said. It was the closest thing to mercy anyone had offered me. Honestly… I wasn’t sure I believed him.

I finished clearing the path and leaned the shovel against the cabin wall. My arms ached pleasantly, muscles taut beneath layers of wool and fur. The eastern horizon stretched wide and empty beyond the sparse treeline. White upon white. A kingdom of silence. And yet we watched. Always watched. Maybe that was my purpose too.

I turned back toward the cabin, toward smoke and warmth and another day of survival.

They had spared my life. Sometimes I still didn’t understand why. But I was here. And I was living. Out of spite, if nothing else.

The moment I stepped inside, the door groaned shut behind me, sealing out the wind with a heavy thud. Warmth wrapped around me like reluctant forgiveness. Hard-earned warmth. Firewood chopped by Oren’s hands. Stew stirred by Brynja’s patience. Heat that existed because someone had worked for it.

The cabin smelled of smoke, iron, and something savory simmering in the pot. Brynja didn’t look up from the hearth when she spoke.

“You’re dripping snow across my floors.”

“I thought you enjoyed the aesthetic,” I said, peeling off my gloves.

“Very ‘frozen wasteland chic.’”

She snorted.

“Bath. Before dinner.”

“Yes, commander.”

I slipped out of my boots and padded down the narrow hallway toward my room, leaving faint damp footprints behind me. My room. It still startled me sometimes that I even had one. It was small—barely large enough for a bed, a wooden chest, a narrow desk shoved beneath the window. The walls were rough timber instead of carved stone. No silk curtains. No gilded mirrors. But there was a door that locked. And a bathing room attached.

I shut the door behind me and leaned against it for a moment, letting the quiet settle. The attached bathroom was simple—a deep iron tub, a bucket system Brynja and I filled from melted snow and heated over the fire. Steam already curled faintly from the surface. Brynja must have prepared it while I’d been outside.

I smiled despite myself.

“Terrifying woman,” I muttered fondly.

I peeled off layers of fur and wool, flexing my fingers as sensation returned in prickling waves. My reflection in the small, slightly warped mirror looked nothing like the princess I used to be. My white hair was longer now, usually braided for practicality. My skin had lost its soft palace sheen; there were faint scars across my knuckles from chopping wood, a thin pale line along my forearm from where I’d misjudged an axe swing last winter. And big brown eyes used to stare back at me whenever I looked into that small mirror.

I sank into the bath with a quiet hiss as heat swallowed me whole. The ache in my muscles loosened almost instantly.

Two years ago, I would have considered this bath beneath me.

Two years ago, I had been a fool.

The memory came unbidden.

The day Alpha Jokul brought me here. The journey north had been relentless. Skadi territory had revealed itself gradually—trees thinning, air sharpening, snow thickening until the world was nothing but white and gray. When we finally stopped, it had been in front of this very cabin.

I had stared at it in disbelief.

This?

This was where the Mad King’s daughter would be kept? Jokul had dismounted without a word and gone inside, ducking beneath the doorframe.

I had been left outside.

The wind that day had been vicious. It clawed through my thin traveling cloak, bit into my skin like starving teeth. I remember trying not to shiver, trying not to show weakness in front of the warriors who would likely report every tremble.

Minutes stretched.

My toes went numb.

I had wondered if this was the execution.

Not by blade.

By winter.

By cold.

It would have been poetic, in a cruel way.

I remember thinking, absurdly, that at least it would be quick.

It was not quick.

It was slow and humiliating and cold.

And then the door had opened.

Jokul had stepped out.

“You may go inside,” he had said. I had blinked at him, certain I’d misheard.

“You will live here,” he continued.

“Until you are twenty-one.”

Twenty-one…

“When you come of age, you will report to the Skadi stronghold with the other young under my protection. You will be educated. Trained. Given purpose.” His eyes had narrowed slightly.

“Every life in my pack contributes. You will be no exception.”

No exception.

Not princess.

Not prisoner.

Then he had stepped aside and gestured toward the cabin. I had hesitated only a second before stumbling inside, desperate for warmth. And just like that, my old life had ended.

The water sloshed softly as I shifted, dragging myself from memory.

Twenty-one.

It loomed closer now.

So… so close.

Two more months.

Two more months of chopping wood and guarding a border no one crossed.

Then I would stand among the other youths of Skadi—wolves raised in snow and ice, loyal to Jokul, hardened by this land.

What would they see when they looked at me?

The Mad King’s daughter?

Or simply me… Eira?

Brynja had never treated me like a threat. Oren had never looked at me with suspicion. They corrected me, scolded me, laughed at me. Hell… they raised me more than my father ever had. They had taught me how to survive here. How to read wind direction by the way frost formed on the eastern beams. How to ration dried meat for blizzards that lasted days.

Brutal lessons.

But kind teachers.

I rose from the bath and wrapped myself in thick linen. The air felt sharper now, but not unbearable. This cabin was nothing like a castle. There were no chandeliers. No courtiers whispering in corners. But there was privacy. There was respect. There was a strange, quiet peace I had never felt before in my life.

“Eira,” Brynja called.

“If you fall asleep in there, I’m eating your portion.”

I stood up and got dried quickly.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

I hurried past her toward the main room the second I was dressed, because I knew very well that she did in fact dare.

The table was already set—three wooden bowls, steam curling from thick stew. Oren sat heavily in his chair, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. I slid into my seat. Outside, the wind howled against the cabin walls, relentless and unforgiving.

Inside, there was warmth.

And for now, that was enough.