Not Alone
1205 Words
(Winter’s POV)
The pack house carried a different kind of quiet with Dion gone.
Not empty—never that—but restrained, as though the walls themselves were aware something was missing. Conversations stayed low, movements more deliberate, the usual pulse of the pack softened without its Alpha at the center of it.
Winter moved through it without pause.
Heads dipped as she passed, respect instinctive, but she didn’t acknowledge it. Her attention remained fixed ahead, her steps even, controlled, measured in a way that had nothing to do with routine and everything to do with maintaining order—within the pack, within herself.
Her room was as she had left it. Clean. Sparse. Functional. Nothing unnecessary, nothing out of place. She closed the door behind her and stood there for a moment, letting the silence settle fully around her.
Frost stirred immediately.
He was not alone.
“I know.” The words came quietly, without hesitation.
Winter crossed the room and stopped near the window, her gaze settling on the forest stretching beyond the pack house. Darkness had begun to claim it, shadows thickening between the trees, swallowing detail until only shapes remained. Somewhere out there, beyond sight, beyond control—him.
Her mate.
Her Alpha.
Her fingers curled once at her side before she reached for her phone. The device felt oddly foreign in her hand, a modern intrusion into a world still ruled by instinct and blood, but it served its purpose.
She dialed. The call connected quickly.
“Winter.”
His voice was steady. Familiar. Unchanged. As if nothing had shifted. “When will you return?” she asked. No accusation. No edge. Just a question, clean and direct. A brief pause followed, subtle but present.
“Tomorrow,” Dion answered. “The meeting with Alpha Zulan ran longer than expected. I’ll go over everything with you then, along with the rest of the leadership.”
Winter inclined her head slightly, though he couldn’t see it. “Understood.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The silence wasn’t empty—it was filled with something else. Something closer. Something that didn’t belong to her. Frost’s reaction was immediate, a low, sharp growl rising beneath her skin. Winter stilled.
There—faint, almost lost beneath the distance of the call—a second voice.
Female.
Close enough to carry.
Gone just as quickly as it appeared.
Winter didn’t react. Didn’t question it. Didn’t acknowledge it.
Dion didn’t either.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.
The line went dead.
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
Frost’s growl deepened, more certain now. She is there.
Winter lowered the phone slowly, setting it aside with precise care. “…Yes.”
There was no uncertainty left.
Layla. His Beta. Not distant. Not an unknown. Not some passing mistake.
Someone close. Someone trusted. Someone who had stood at his side within the pack—and now stood in a place that was not hers to take. Winter’s hands rested lightly at her sides, her posture unchanged, her breathing steady. Outwardly, nothing shifted. Inside, her thoughts moved with sharp clarity.
The Royal Council was an option. The highest authority beyond the pack. The only body that could intervene in something like this, if she chose to bring it before them. If she chose to expose it.
Frost stirred, uneasy.
They would judge him.
“They would,” Winter said quietly.
But they would not stop there.
They would judge her as well. A Luna bound to a fractured bond. A pack led by an Alpha who failed in something so fundamental. It would not remain contained—it would spread, carried by word and assumption, turning into something larger than truth.
Weakness.
And weakness did not go unnoticed.
Not by other packs.
Not by rogues.
Not by anyone waiting for an opportunity to strike.
Winter’s gaze returned to the forest beyond the glass, the darkness now fully settled between the trees.
The Council existed. But the King...
No one knew where he was.
No one knew who he was.
The last King had ensured that.
He had hidden his family, his line, his identity—protected them in a way few understood. And still, it hadn’t been enough.
Winter’s thoughts shifted, the memory surfacing with a clarity that never truly faded. The road had been quiet that day. The reports had said as much. A routine journey between packs. Nothing out of place.
Until it wasn’t.
Rogues had struck without warning.
By the time help arrived, it was already over.
The King. His Luna Queen. Their entire Royal Guard.
Dead.
No survivors.
No explanation.
Only aftermath.
Her parents had been among them. Winter’s expression didn’t change, but something in her focus softened—not weakness, not distraction, but the weight of something long carried. She had been fifteen and was training when word came. Too young, by most standards, to be there. Too young, by any measure, to understand what would follow. She remembered the rhythm of the drills, the impact of wood against wood, the steady focus that had always come easily to her.
Then the interruption.
A runner, breathless and unsteady. The Alpha at the time had gone still as the message was delivered, the shift in him immediate, undeniable. There had been no way to soften them.
Dead.
The King was dead.
The Queen was dead.
The guard—gone.
Her parents.
Gone.
Winter remembered the way her body reacted before her mind could catch up. Not sharp pain, not precise—but overwhelming. Everything collapsing inward at once, leaving nothing steady to hold onto.
And Frost—Frost had come then.
Not through training. Not through control.
Through grief.
Her first shift had been violent, uncontrolled, tearing through her without warning. White fur against the ground as she ran with no direction, no awareness, no restraint. She didn’t remember all of it. Only fragments.
Cold air.
The sound of her own rage.
The emptiness that followed.
And then—hands.
Voices.
The pack pulling her back. Holding her together when she could not do it herself. When she had finally returned to herself, the Alpha had stood before her, steady in a way she had needed more than anything else.
“This pack is still your home.”
“You will not be left alone.”
And she hadn’t been. They had kept that promise. They had given her structure when everything else had been taken. Given her purpose. Given her control. Winter’s gaze sharpened slightly as her thoughts returned to the present. Dion had started noticing her after that. After the shift.
After Frost.
Because no one else had a Lycan like hers.
White.
Rare enough to draw attention whether she wanted it or not. What had started as curiosity had become something else over time. Something closer. Something deeper. Something permanent. Or so she had believed.
Frost stirred again, low and unsettled.He chose her.
Winter stood in silence for a moment, her eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the window. “Yes,” she said at last.
No anger.
No break.
Only certainty.
“And now,” she added quietly, “I decide what that means.”
- Writer
