WINTER FROST

CHAPTER 2: THE WAKE ( PART II)

RAVEN POV

“Raven?” Skye’s voice pulled me back. “You okay? You kind of zoned out there.”

“Just tired.” The lie came easily. I’d been telling it for seven years. “I should probably get settled in. Is my old room…?”

“Exactly how you left it.” Skye’s eyes flickered for a moment. “Mom wouldn’t let anyone touch it. Said you’d come back eventually.”

That made it worse. They’d kept my room like a shrine to the daughter who’d walked away. Like they’d been waiting all this time for me to remember where I belonged.

“I’ll help you with your stuff.” Skye said, grabbing my suitcase before I could argue.

We headed for the stairs, and I tried not to look at the back door. I tried not to wonder if Colton was still out there. I tried not to imagine what I’d say if we ended up alone together.

But as we reached the landing, I heard the back door open. His voice carried deeper than I remembered, rougher talking quietly to someone. My mother answered, words I couldn’t make out.

And then, as clear as day, I heard him say. “I’m leaving. Tell the elders I’ll be back tomorrow for the funeral planning meeting.”

“Colton, you don’t have to—”

“I do.” His voice was flat. Final. “I can’t be here right now. Not with her here.”

The words shouldn’t have hurt. I had no right to let them. But they did.

I heard his footsteps crossing the living room, the front door open and close, the truck started outside.

He’d rather leave his own pack gathering than be in the same house as me. Seven years, and I could still clear a room just by existing.

“Raven…” Skye started.

“Don’t.” I kept climbing the stairs, putting one foot in front of the other. “Just show me my room. Please.”

She did, because Skye had always known when to push and when to let me run. And right now, I was definitely running even if it was just up a staircase in my childhood home.

My room was exactly as I’d left it. Twin bed with the purple comforter I’d picked at sixteen. Posters of wild places Patagonia, the Serengeti, the Arctic on the walls. My old camera on the desk, waiting for me. Books on the shelves. Track trophies. A corkboard covered in photos of me and Skye, me and Mom and Dad… and me and—

I yanked down the photo before I could linger on it. The one of me and Colton at seventeen, laughing, arm around my shoulders. Back when everything was simple. Back when I thought love was enough.

“I’ll let you rest." Skye said from the doorway. “Dinner’s at six if you want to come down. No pressure.”

“Skye?” I caught her before she left. “Thank you. For everything. For keeping things together while I’ve been…”

“Gallivanting around the world, successful and award-winning?” She smiled, though it was tinged with sadness. “Someone had to stay. Might as well be me.”

Guilt gnawed at me.

After she left, I sat on my bed and pulled out my phone. Seventy-three unread emails. Fifteen missed calls. My editor is asking about the Borneo piece. A potential assignment in Madagascar. A magazine interview request. My whole life, right there in my inbox. The life I’d fought for.

It felt impossibly far away.

I set the phone aside and lay back on my bed, staring at the glow in the dark stars I’d stuck up when I was twelve. Colton had helped me. He’d climbed on my desk chair, we’d almost broken it and pressed each star into place while I directed him.

“One day." He’d said. "We’re going to see the real stars. Every night sky in the world. I’ll take you everywhere you want to go.”

“Promise?” I asked.

“Promise.”

He’d kept that promise, in a way. I’d seen every night sky. The Southern Cross in Australia, the aurora in Iceland, the Milky Way over the Sahara.

I’d just seen them alone.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number, but I recognized the area code. Local.

The funeral is Friday at 2 p.m. Traditional pack ceremony. Your presence is expected but not required.

– Alpha Ironfang

So formal. So cold. Like I was just another name on some list, not someone who used to know every scar on his skin and every hope he once whispered to me.

I typed back. I’ll be there.

Three dots popped up right away, like he was going to say something else. They stayed there for a long moment… then disappeared.

No reply.

I set my phone aside and closed my eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. All I could see was his face downstairs. The way he looked at me with nothing in his eyes at all. No anger, no surprise just empty. Like I was a stranger. Like seven years had wiped out everything we ever were.

Maybe that was better. Maybe it really was easier if he hated me. Easier than if he still- No. I wasn’t going there.

That ship had sailed seven years ago, and I was the one who set it on fire and shoved it out to sea.

Outside my window, wolves howled. The evening patrol. A sound I used to fall asleep to every night… until I traded it for hotel rooms, airport gates, and whatever country felt far enough from here.

My wolf perked up right away, wanting to answer, wanting to run with them, wanting, God help me to go find him.

I pushed her down and pulled the pillow over my head.

Three days. I just had to get through three days until the funeral. Then Skye’s wedding in three months. Then I could leave again. I could go back to the life I built. The one that had rules and distance and no history waiting in every corner.

The one where I didn’t have to face what I’d broken.

The one where I could pretend I wasn’t dying a little every day from a mate bond I’d rejected but never truly escaped.

Because here’s the truth they never tell you about rejecting a mate.

It doesn’t cut the bond.

It just leaves you in pain for the rest of your life.

And I’ve been hurting for seven years. I just refused to admit it until now.

I didn’t go down for dinner.

Instead, I unpacked my camera and scrolled through my shots from Borneo, trying to lose myself in the usual way. The orangutan peering at my lens. The soft light through the canopy. All the wild colors and noise of the jungle.

Beautiful. So alive.

But every time I blinked, all I saw were ice blue eyes in a face I used to know by heart.

And all I felt was the empty space where he should have been.

Welcome home, right?