A Bond of Frost and Fury

Chapter 1

Brielle

“Look what the forest coughed up. Still playing with weeds, Brielle?”

Sasha’s voice is like shattered glass. I don’t look up. My fingers continue their work, carefully separating the petals of a moonpetal flower from its stem. It’s delicate work. The petals are for the tea, the stem is for the poultice. Useless if you mix them up.

“I heard the Haze makes some wolves deaf,” another voice sneers. Mara. Sasha’s shadow. “Maybe it broke her ears before it broke everything else.”

A ripple of cruel laughter follows. There are three of them today. Sometimes there are five. It doesn’t matter. The words are always the same.

My focus remains on the flower in my hand. One petal, two, three. I place them gently into the leather pouch at my hip. My mother taught me this. ‘Respect the gifts of the earth, and they will respect you.’ Her voice is a faint echo in my memory, a whisper of calm in this storm of mockery.

“Leave her alone,” a third voice, Kyla’s, says with a sigh. “It’s like talking to a rock. A cold, useless rock.”

“I’m not leaving her alone,” Sasha snaps, and the crunch of leaves tells me she’s taken a step closer. Her scent, cloying and sweet like overripe berries, fills the air. It makes my nose itch. “The Haze is in three days. Three days until every real she-wolf in this pack honors her nature. And what will you be doing, Ice Maiden? Hiding in that dusty little cottage your strange parents left you? Praying the moon goddess magically makes you whole?”

My fingers still. I have all the moonpetal I need. My gaze lifts from the forest floor, but not to her. I look past her, to the tall, silent pines that mark the edge of our territory. My face is a mask. I’ve practiced this for years. A blank canvas for them to paint their insults on. It gives them nothing to hold onto.

“My nature is my own business, Sasha,” I say, my voice low and even. “Just like your desperation is yours.”

The air goes still. Mara gasps. Even the birds seem to fall silent. I’ve broken my own rule. I never engage. I never talk back. But her mention of my parents, of being whole, it struck a nerve I thought was long dead.

Sasha’s perfect, sculpted face twists into a snarl. “Desperation? I’ll have my pick of the strongest males when the fever hits. I’ll be screaming my mate’s name by the first night. You’ll be what? Meditating? You are a flaw, Brielle. A genetic dead end. An insult to the pack. You’re broken.”

Broken. The word hangs in the air between us. It’s the name they’ve given me, more so than Brielle. The Broken Girl. The Ice Maiden. The only nineteen-year-old virgin in the history of the Silvermoon Pack.

I rise slowly to my feet, brushing dirt from my trousers. I meet her eyes now, her furious amber gaze. I let her see the utter lack of fear in mine. It’s not a lie. I’m not afraid of her. I’m afraid of what she represents. I’m afraid of the mindless frenzy she craves, the loss of self she calls tradition.

“I’d rather be broken than be a slave to instinct,” I say softly, the words meant only for her. I see them land. I see the flicker of confusion in her eyes before the rage smothers it.

She takes a half step forward, her hands clenched into fists. For a second, I think she’ll shift. Her wolf is always just beneath the surface, hot and reckless.

“You just wait,” she hisses, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “When the Haze comes, your principles won’t keep you warm. And no one will be there to save you when your body finally remembers what it is. But by then, no one will want you.”

She turns on her heel and stalks away, her two followers scrambling to keep up. Their laughter floats back, brittle and sharp, but the threat is gone.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. My hands are trembling slightly. Not from fear. From anger. I clench them until my nails bite into my palms, the small sting of pain a welcome anchor. She’s wrong. It’s not about being wanted. It’s about being in control.

I turn my back on the path they took and move deeper into the woods, my true task for the day only half done. The moonpetal was a decoy. What I really need grows in the darker, more secluded parts of the forest.

I find it twenty minutes later, a cluster of dark purple flowers with silvery leaves, growing at the base of an ancient oak. Wolfsbane. Not enough to be lethal, but potent. The core ingredient for the spell. A spell of suppression. A birth control potion so strong it can fight a werewolf’s biology during its most fertile, most frantic peak. My mother’s last and greatest gift to me, the recipe carefully penned in her journal.

I harvest what I need, my movements quick and efficient now. The confrontation with Sasha has stolen too much of my time. The air is already starting to feel different. Thicker. A strange, electric hum thrums just beneath the surface of everything, a prelude to the coming storm. The Haze.

My small cottage is set away from the main den, on the edge of the village. It suits me. I prefer the quiet. Inside, the scent of dried herbs and woodsmoke greets me like an old friend. I don’t pause. I walk straight through the main room to the hearth. The stones are cold now, but one of them, the third from the left, is loose.

I pry it open with my fingertips. Behind it is not stone, but a dark, iron-banded door, no bigger than a cupboard. Faint silver runes are carved into the wood, glowing with a barely perceptible light. My father’s work. He wasn’t a warrior, but he was a master of wards and protections. He understood my fear long before I could name it. He and my mother, they saw the war inside me, the battle between the girl and the wolf. They didn’t call me broken. They called me strong.

I unlatch the heavy door and slip inside. The safe room. It’s small, barely big enough to lie down in. The walls are solid stone, lined with shelves holding jars of preserved food, skins of water, and candles. It’s a tomb. It’s a sanctuary. For the three days of the Haze, it is my whole world.

I place the wolfsbane on a small stone mortar and begin to grind. The rhythmic scrape of pestle against stone is calming. As I work, I mix in the other ingredients from memory. Dried nightshade, a drop of my own blood, and crushed ironwood bark. The Haze isn’t just a biological event. It’s magical. The potion needs to fight on both fronts.

While the mixture steeps, I get to work on the wards. My father taught me how to recharge them. I run my fingers over the silver runes on the door, tracing their ancient shapes and whispering the words of power. They hum under my touch, the faint light growing a little stronger. These wards block scent. They muffle sound. They are my first line of defense.

My second line is the door itself. I check the heavy iron bolts, the thick bar that slides into a bracket drilled deep into the stone frame. It will hold. It has to.

I saw what the Haze can do, once. When I was a child. A she-wolf, new to the pack, hadn’t prepared. Or maybe she thought she wanted it. A male, driven mad by her scent, cornered her. Her screams… I can still hear them sometimes in my nightmares. The old Alpha, Marcus, punished the male afterward, but it was too late. The damage was done. She was never the same. She left the pack a season later, her eyes hollow, her spirit gone.

That will not be me. I will not be a victim of my own body. I will not have my choices stolen from me by a biological imperative I never asked for. This self-imposed isolation isn’t weakness. It’s a declaration of war against the very nature of my species. My willpower is my weapon, and this room is my fortress.

Sasha and the others, they see submission in the frenzy. They see power in attracting the strongest male. I see a cage. A beautiful, primal cage, but a cage nonetheless. I refuse to enter it. I will not be ruled by base instinct.

I finish the ritual, pouring the pungent, dark liquid into a small vial. One sip each morning of the Haze. It will taste like dirt and fury, but it will keep my wolf quiet. It will keep me, me.

As I slide the vial into a secure pouch, a sudden noise from outside shatters the silence. Not a single shout, but a wave of them. A roar of surprise and anger from the center of the village. It’s followed by the deep, urgent toll of the pack alarm bell, a sound reserved for dire emergencies. A rogue attack. A fire.

My heart leaps into my throat. I quickly exit the safe room, replacing the stone in the hearth. Whatever is happening, I can’t be found in here. It would raise too many questions.

I open my cottage door just a crack and peer out. Pack members are running toward the central clearing, their faces a mixture of confusion and fear. The air, already thick with pre-Haze tension, is now electric with alarm. I hesitate for only a moment before pulling my cloak tight around my shoulders and slipping out, melting into the growing crowd that’s converging on the clearing.

Old Beta Theron stands on the Alpha’s rock, his face grim. He holds up his hands for silence, but it takes a full minute for the panicked murmurs to die down. Where is Alpha Marcus?

“Quiet!” Theron’s voice booms, laced with an authority I’ve rarely heard from him. “Quiet, all of you!”

The pack finally falls silent, a sea of anxious faces turned up to him.

“There has been a challenge,” he says, his words dropping like stones into the sudden stillness. A collective gasp ripples through the crowd. A challenge? Now? So close to the Haze? “Alpha Marcus has… stepped down.”

The words don’t make sense. Stepped down? An Alpha doesn’t step down. An Alpha is deposed. Beaten. Killed. But Marcus is old. His wolf has been weakening for years. Maybe it wasn’t a fight to the death. Maybe it was a surrender.

“Who is it?” someone shouts from the back. “Who is the new Alpha?”

Theron’s gaze sweeps over us, and for the first time, I see real fear in the old wolf’s eyes.

“The challenge did not come from within,” he says, his voice heavy with dread. “Our pack’s instability has been noted by our neighbors. An alliance was invoked. A treaty our grandfathers made was called upon.”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. He looks like a man about to announce the end of the world.

“Alpha Marcus has been deposed by order of the council. Silvermoon is now under new leadership. Our new Alpha comes from the Stoneclaw Pack.”

A wave of shock and horror washes through the crowd. Stoneclaw. The name itself is a threat. They are a northern pack, known for their size, their ferocity, their absolute discipline. They are everything we are not. They are hard, unforgiving wolves, carved from the mountain ice and stone they call home.

Before anyone can process the news, before the protests and questions can erupt, Theron raises his voice one last time, his words cutting through the rising panic like a blade.

“He is here. Alpha Grant of Stoneclaw is arriving now.”

Chapter 2

Brielle

The name Stoneclaw lands like an axe blow in the clearing. A wave of raw panic ripples through the pack. Whispers turn to frantic murmurs, shouts of disbelief.

“Stoneclaw? They’re butchers.”

“They follow the old laws. No mercy.”

“Marcus sold us out.”

Theron’s face is pale, his authority crumbling with every passing second. He tries to shout over the noise, but his voice is swallowed by the rising tide of fear.

Then, a scent cuts through the chaos.

It’s not from our pack. It’s wild and clean, sharp as a shard of ice. Pine needles crushed underfoot, the biting cold of the first winter frost, and something else. Something ancient and powerful.

The scent is an order.

The pack falls silent. One by one, the panicked shouts die in their throats. Every head turns toward the northern path.

He stands at the edge of the clearing, as if he materialized from the shadows of the forest. The word ‘large’ is not enough. He is a mountain given the shape of a man. Broad shoulders strain the dark leather of his tunic, and his height makes him tower over even our tallest warriors. His hair is the black of a starless night, pulled back from a face that looks carved from granite.

He is not just an Alpha. He is *the* Alpha. The concept made real.

He walks forward, his heavy boots making no sound on the packed earth. Two other wolves, clearly his Betas, follow a step behind him, their eyes scanning the crowd with cold assessment. But my attention is fixed on him. His presence radiates a raw power that presses down on us, demanding submission. It stills the air, thickens it until I can barely draw a breath.

This is Alpha Grant of Stoneclaw.

He stops at the base of the Alpha’s rock, his gaze sweeping over his new pack. His eyes are the color of a winter sky, a pale, piercing grey that seems to see everything. He looks at our warriors and I see the faintest flicker of disappointment in his expression. He looks at the she-wolves and his face is an unreadable mask of stone.

I try to shrink back, to melt into the bodies around me. I am at the edge of the crowd, my usual place, my cloak pulled tight. I am nothing. A ghost. He will not see me. He cannot see me.

His gaze continues its slow, methodical sweep. It passes over me. For a single, blessed second, it passes right over me. I almost sag with relief.

Then it snaps back.

His eyes lock onto mine across the clearing.

The world doesn’t just stop. It shatters.

A bolt of lightning arcs between us, invisible but devastating. It hits me in the chest, a physical blow that steals the air from my lungs. My heart stutters, then slams against my ribs with a frantic, painful rhythm. My vision narrows until he is the only thing I can see.

In the deepest part of my soul, a sleeping beast awakens. My wolf, the one I keep drugged and chained with herbs and willpower, surges against her bonds with a force I have never felt before. She howls a single, triumphant word into the screaming silence of my mind.

*Mate.*

The word is a brand, seared onto my soul. A claim. A verdict.

He feels it too. I can see it. His stone-like composure cracks. A muscle in his jaw clenches. His pale eyes widen almost imperceptibly, the grey darkening like a gathering storm.

Then his scent hits me again, but this time it is not a general presence in the air. It is a targeted assault. It bypasses the air, my nose, my lungs. It manifests directly inside me, a torrent of pine and winter frost flooding every cell in my body. It’s an invasion. It seeks out my wolf, calling to her, promising her everything she has ever been denied.

Everything I have denied her.

The world rushes back in a dizzying wave of sound and color. My knees feel weak. The pouch of herbs at my hip suddenly feels pathetic, a child’s toy against an earthquake. My safe room feels like a cardboard box. My wards feel like whispers against a hurricane.

Grant’s gaze is still locked on mine. He holds the attention of the entire pack, yet in this moment, there is no one else in the world but the two of us, caught in the invisible, undeniable grip of the bond.

He takes a single, deliberate step in my direction.

Panic, cold and absolute, grips me. I have to get away. I have to run.

I turn, shoving my way blindly through the frozen crowd. Someone murmurs a protest, but I don’t hear them. All I hear is the frantic thudding of my own heart and the triumphant howl of my wolf. All I feel is the magnetic pull of his presence at my back. All I smell is him.

I break free from the crowd and I don’t look back. I run. I run as if the wild hunt itself is at my heels. I run from the clearing, from the pack, from the impossible truth in those winter grey eyes.

But I cannot run from the scent that follows me, that clings to me, that has already soaked into my very being.

The Haze is in three days.

For the first time in my life, I am not certain I will survive it. For the first time, I am not certain I can keep myself locked away.

Because the monster is not at the door anymore.

He is the Alpha. And my own wolf is screaming for him to break it down.

Chapter 3

Grant

The den of the former Alpha smells of dust and decay. Not of filth, but of stagnation. Of a wolf who had grown too old, too comfortable in his power, and let his pack rot from the inside out.

“This is worse than we thought.”

Roric, my Second, runs a hand over a dusty wooden table. His face, usually a mask of calm discipline, is tight with disapproval. He is a wolf of logic and order. This place is an offense to him.

“They are soft,” Finn, my Third, says from the doorway. He is all muscle and coiled aggression. “I watched their warriors in the clearing. No discipline. Their eyes shifted with fear, not respect.”

I say nothing. I walk the perimeter of the room. The furs on the wall are moth eaten. The ceremonial spears are dull. Everything speaks of neglect. Of an Alpha who had lost his fire.

Taking this pack was a political necessity. The Silvermoon territory acts as a buffer to the feral lands in the south. An unstable pack here is a threat to my own. A weakness on my flank. I had expected weakness. I had not expected this level of decay.

“We can forge them into something stronger,” Roric says, his voice a low reassurance. “Stoneclaw wolves are not made, they are forged. We will do the same here.”

“They need to bleed first,” Finn growls. “They need to remember that fear has a purpose.”

I turn from the wall, my gaze silencing them both. “They will learn. But not through fear alone. They will learn through strength. My strength.”

My words sound sure. Solid. But inside, a storm rages. A storm with a single, quiet eye. A girl with defiance in her eyes.

Even now, her scent lingers in my mind. It’s not a perfume. It’s not the scent of a she wolf in heat. It is something cleaner. Wilder. Like crushed clover after a spring rain, and cold, clean stone. It cuts through the dust and stagnation of this den. It cuts through the iron wall of my control.

When my eyes met hers, it was not a choice. It was a collision. The world fractured, and in the space between the shards, a single truth burned itself into my soul.

*Mine.*

The word was not my own. It was the voice of the beast that lives within me. The ancient, primal wolf who has been silent for all my thirty years. It roared to life in that instant, a possessive, undeniable claim that shook me to my core.

I have felt the pull of attraction. I have sated the urges of my wolf during the Haze. But this… this was different. This was not an urge. It was a rewriting of my entire being. Every instinct, every cell, every breath I take now has a new purpose. Her.

“Alpha?” Roric’s voice pulls me back.

I realize I am staring at the wall, my hands clenched into fists at my sides.

“The pack is unsettled,” he continues, his eyes sharp with concern. “Your focus seemed… divided in the clearing.”

Divided. A mild word for it. My focus was captured. Stolen.

“That girl,” Finn says, his tone carefully neutral. “The one you looked at. The pack noticed. There are already whispers.”

My head snaps toward him. “Whispers?”

Finn holds my gaze, unflinching. “They call her the Ice Maiden. Brielle. An outcast. She is the only she wolf in the pack who has never participated in the Haze. They say she’s broken.”

Broken. The word is a shard of glass in my gut. An insult so profound it feels like a physical blow against me.

“She didn’t look broken,” I say, my voice dangerously quiet. “She looked like she was the only one in that entire clearing who wasn’t afraid.”

I remember her eyes. Not wide with terror like the others. They were narrowed with something else. Defiance. Control. A will of iron that stared back at an Alpha and did not shatter.

Ice Maiden. The name intrigues me more than it should. The fools in this pack see a cold, useless rock. I see a fortress. I see a strength of will that fascinates my wolf as much as her scent does. He doesn’t just want to claim her. He wants to see what it takes to make her surrender. And I… I want to know the woman who built such walls around herself.

“Broken or not,” Roric interjects, stepping between me and Finn, a subtle move of de-escalation. “She is a complication. You are the new Alpha. You must be impartial. You must be seen as a leader for the entire pack, not just for one female. Especially not an outcast.”

“I am aware of my duty, Roric,” I bite out, the words sharper than intended.

He is right, of course. My duty is to this pack. To its security. To its strength. I must project an aura of absolute, unbiased authority. I cannot show favoritism. I cannot be seen pursuing a single she wolf days before the Haze is set to begin. It would look like weakness. It would look like I am ruled by my instincts, just like the undisciplined animals I am here to command.

But my instincts are screaming. A primal, protective urge wars with a lifetime of discipline. The thought of her, alone, scorned by her own people… it ignites a fury in me that is terrifying in its intensity.

I want to find her. I want to drag her from whatever hole she hides in and stand her before the pack. I want to mark her, to fill the air with my scent and declare her mine so that no one ever dares to look at her with anything but respect again.

*Claim her,* the wolf howls in my mind. *She is our mate. Protect what is ours.*

“I will handle it,” I say, my voice a low command. I walk to the heavy oak desk, the Alpha’s seat of power. I run a hand over the scarred wood. “Finn, find the pack records. I want a full accounting of our warriors, our stores, our territory patrols. I want to know everything.”

Finn nods, a flicker of relief in his eyes that he is being given a task, and leaves the den.

Roric remains. “Grant. The Haze begins in three days. The bond… it will not make it easy for you.”

“I am the Alpha of the Stoneclaw pack,” I say, meeting his gaze. My control is legendary. It is the foundation of my power. “I am not ruled by instinct.”

It is a lie. Or perhaps, a prayer.

The bond is a fire in my blood. A constant, burning pull in her direction. My wolf paces the cage of my mind, rattling the bars, demanding release. And I know, with a certainty that chills me, that she feels it too. The shock in her eyes was not just recognition. It was fear.

She ran from me.

No one has ever run from me. They bow. They submit. They challenge and they break.

But she ran.

And I, the Alpha who is meant to be a rock of impartiality, wanted nothing more than to chase her. To hunt her down. To corner her and… what?

That is the question that haunts me.

My duty demands I ignore her. My wolf demands I claim her. My mind, the man caught between the two, is fascinated by her.

I look at Roric. “Summon the pack. A formal assembly. At sundown. It is time they understand who is in command.”

He nods, his expression clearing. An assembly is a good strategy. A show of force and order. He thinks it is about the pack.

He is only half right.

It is a move of an Alpha, yes. But it is also the move of a male. A way to see her again. To test the air. To look into those defiant eyes one more time.

This is a war on two fronts. One for the soul of this pack, and one for the woman who has, in a single glance, become the center of my world. And I do not know which one I am more terrified of losing.