Darkness down here was a crushing, physical weight.
Tons of glacial ice and packed snow sealed me beneath the mountain, cutting off the sky and trapping my lungs in a freezing vise. The cold reached into my bones, so intense it turned my breath to frost before it could leave my lips. Above me, the roaring avalanche settled into a suffocating, absolute silence.
Gideon...
I reached out through our mate bond, but the sheer density of the frozen earth dampened the connection, reducing his roaring presence to a faint, agonizing pulse deep within my chest. My royal white wolf magic flickered weakly, smothering beneath the weight of the dark ice.
You are not dying here, daughter of
Blackwood.
The voice didn't come from my mind. It resonated directly from the deep bedrock beneath my back, t
