Part One — Dustin
The snowfall had eased by morning, but the forest still lay buried beneath a thick, untouched blanket of white. The world felt quieter than it should have been—too quiet, even for winter. Every sound carried. Every silence stretched.
And Dustin hated it.
He hated the way the wrongness sat at the back of his throat like iron. He hated the distance gnawing at his mindlink where Rowan should have been anchored. He hated the fact that the Alpha had been out of reach for far too long.
But most of all, he hated that he couldn’t fix any of it yet.
“We’re close,” he muttered under his breath, crouching beside a set of wolf prints half-filled with snow. He brushed away the top layer with a gloved hand. “Fresh. Less than an hour.”
Maverick—his wolf—huffed in irritation inside
