Winter Howl

Chapter Four – Names in the Frost

The wolf hit the ground hard, steam curling from its mouth in a final, ragged growl before the light faded from its eyes. Calian stayed crouched over it a moment longer, breath steady, his hands slick with the frost that clung unnaturally to its fur.

Elysia couldn’t look away. He moved like the fight had cost him nothing, though the snow around him was churned and scarred with claw marks. When he finally stood, the dead wolf’s body looked… wrong. The blue in its eyes had been the same as the light in the shard she’d touched, only twisted, sickened somehow.

“What was that?” she asked, her voice quieter than she meant it to be.

Calian’s gaze shifted to her, cool and assessing. “Corrupted. Not of my pack. Not anymore.”

She swallowed, her fingers tightening around the edge of her cloak. “It came for me.”

“It came for the magic,” he said. “Yours.”

The word felt like a stone dropped into her chest. “Mine?”

He stepped toward her then, slow, unhurried, but with the kind of inevitability that made her feet want to move back. She didn’t. Not when the snow under him barely made a sound, and not when his eyes locked on hers as though he could see what was waking inside her.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“…Elysia.”

Something flickered across his expression. Recognition, maybe. Or calculation. “Calian Belmont. Alpha of the Frostbane.”

The title landed heavy between them. She’d heard it before, in warnings whispered over tavern tables and in her father’s voice when he spoke of the forest’s dangers. The Frostbane were not to be crossed.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he said. “Not anymore.”

She almost laughed. “You think you can tell me where I can go?”

A hint of a smile touched his mouth, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m telling you the forest isn’t yours to wander now. Not with the kind of light you just woke up.”

He moved past her, brushing close enough that the heat of him contrasted sharply with the cold air. “Go home, Snowweaver. While you still can.”

And then he was gone, the snow swallowing his steps as though he’d never been there.

Elysia stood in the clearing alone, the ice shard still glowing faintly at her back, and realised two things:

Whatever had happened tonight had put her in danger.

And Calian Belmont had no intention of letting her walk away from it.