Brand of the Winter Ghost

Chapter 1

Tessa

The ice bites at my bare knees. It seeps through the thin fabric of my tunic, a cold so deep it feels like it’s piercing bone. Two warriors hold my arms, their grips like iron clamps. Before me, the entire Silvermoon pack forms a silent, watching semi-circle. Their breath plumes in the frigid air, a hundred ghostly accusations.

And in the center of it all stands Kael. My Alpha. My mate.

His silver eyes, the color of a winter sky, are just as cold as the ice beneath me. There is none of the warmth I once knew, none of the fire I fell in love with. He holds up a small, dark object for everyone to see. A carved wolf’s head, stained with something that looks like dried blood.

“This was found in her sleeping furs,” Kael’s voice rings out, sharp and clear, cutting through the howling wind. “A token from the Red River hunters. Our sworn enemies.”

A collective gasp ripples through the pack. Fear. Anger. I can feel it rolling off them in waves. My own breath catches in my throat, a knot of pure panic.

“No,” I whisper, my voice raw. “Kael, that’s not true.”

He ignores me, his gaze sweeping over the crowd. He is a master of this, of holding them all in the palm of his hand. His charisma is a weapon, one he is now aiming directly at my heart.

“She met them at the whispering falls,” he continues, his voice laced with a performer’s sorrow. “She sold them our patrol routes. She told them of our weaknesses. All for what? A promise of safety when they come to slaughter us in our beds?”

“I didn’t,” I say, louder this time, struggling against the guards. Their fingers dig deeper into my flesh. “Kael, please. Tell them the truth. You know I would never.”

He finally looks at me. The coldness in his eyes intensifies, and it’s like being plunged into a frozen lake. “The truth? The truth is that I was blind. I took an omega into my heart, and she repaid my trust with treachery.”

My mind spins, desperately trying to make sense of this nightmare. The whispering falls. We went there together a month ago. He told me he was meeting a neutral party to secure a trade for rare herbs, a cure for the lung fever that took so many pups last winter. He said his position as the new Alpha was too precarious, that he couldn't be seen dealing with outsiders. He asked me to wait, to stand watch. I did it because I loved him. Because I trusted him.

“The meeting was yours,” I choke out, the words tearing at my throat. “You made a deal. For a secret trade. You told me so yourself.”

Kael lets out a short, harsh laugh. It’s a sound I’ve never heard from him before. It’s cruel. “She tries to shift the blame. How typical of a traitor. She paints me as the villain to save her own skin.”

I search the faces in the crowd, looking for a single ally, a flicker of doubt. I see Lyra, her hands clutching her stomach. We grew up together, sharing secrets and dreams under the summer moon. She was the first person I told when Kael chose me. Her eyes meet mine for a fraction of a second, filled with pity and terror, before she quickly looks down at her snow covered boots. She will not help me. No one will.

“You are a liar,” I spit, the accusation finally giving me a spark of heat in the overwhelming cold. “You stood on this very spot one moon ago and swore to protect this pack with honor. What honor is there in this, Kael? What honor is there in condemning your own mate with your own lies?”

He stalks towards me, his movements fluid and predatory. He crouches down, bringing his face level with mine. The scent of pine and winter frost that I always found so comforting now feels suffocating. “My honor is in cutting out the poison that threatens to kill us all. And you, Tessa, are the poison.”

His words are a physical blow. The bond between us, that shimmering, invisible thread that connects a mated pair, writhes in my chest. It screams at the falsehood, at the violent rejection from its other half.

“I am your mate,” I whisper, a last, desperate appeal. “The moon goddess herself bound us. You cannot do this.”

“The goddess does not bind traitors to Alphas,” he says, his voice dropping to a low, menacing growl. “She gives us the strength to sever such corruption.”

He stands and turns back to the pack. “As Alpha of the Silvermoon, I find Tessa guilty of treason. Her punishment is rejection and exile.”

Panic, raw and absolute, claws its way up my throat. Rejection. It’s a fate worse than death. The severing of a mate bond is an agony few survive. The pain can drive a wolf mad.

“No,” I plead, tears I didn’t know I had in me finally breaking free, freezing instantly on my cheeks. “Kael, don’t. Please, whatever you think I did, please don’t do this.”

He raises his hands, silencing my pleas. “We will perform the rite. Now.”

One of the warriors yanks me to my feet. The world tilts, my head light with terror. They drag me to the center of the circle, forcing me to face Kael before the ancient Oath Stone. He places his palm on its icy surface.

“I, Kael, Alpha of the Silvermoon, do renounce the bond sworn under the eye of the moon.”

He looks directly at me. “I renounce Tessa. I cast her from my heart. I cast her from my pack. She is no longer my mate. She is nothing.”

The moment he says the word ‘nothing’, the bond snaps. It is not a gentle unraveling. It is a violent, brutal tearing. A scream rips from my lungs as a white hot agony explodes in my chest, as if my very soul is being ripped in two. I collapse, clutching at my heart, the pain so immense I can’t breathe. It feels like a vital part of me has been carved out, leaving a gaping, bleeding void. I can feel the echo of him, the space he used to occupy in my spirit, now just a raw, open wound.

Through a haze of pain, I see him approach. He no longer looks like the man I love. His face is a mask of cold duty, his eyes empty of any emotion. One of the warriors pulls my tunic, exposing the skin of my left shoulder. I see another pack member approaching, his face grim, carrying a long iron rod with a glowing, red hot tip.

The symbol of the pack, a crescent moon, has been twisted. The ends are sharpened into fangs, a perversion of our sigil. The mark of the traitor.

“So that all may know your crime,” Kael says, his voice distant, as if coming from a great height.

I try to struggle, to pull away, but their hands are too strong. I squeeze my eyes shut. I hear the hiss before I feel it. Searing, unimaginable pain lances through my shoulder. The smell of my own burning flesh fills my nostrils, a sickening, acrid scent. The agony of the brand is so sharp, so absolute, it momentarily eclipses the tearing emptiness in my chest. Another scream is torn from me, raw and animalistic.

When it’s over, they release me. I fall to the snow, smoke rising from my shoulder. The wound weeps, a fiery counterpoint to the frozen ground. I am shaking uncontrollably, from shock, from pain, from a cold that has nothing to do with the weather.

I look up at Kael one last time, through a curtain of tangled hair and tears. I want him to see what he has done. I want him to see the ruin he has made of me, of us. But he has already turned his back. He is addressing his pack, his voice strong and commanding, already moving on.

“Go,” a warrior growls, nudging me with his boot. “Get out. You are not welcome here.”

Using the last of my strength, I push myself up. My legs tremble, threatening to give out. Every part of me hurts. The void in my chest is a black hole, sucking all warmth and hope from the world. The brand on my shoulder throbs with a vicious fire. I take one stumbling step, then another, away from the circle of firelight, away from the only home I have ever known.

The pack parts for me, a sea of hostile and fearful faces. No one speaks. No one moves to help. They press back as if my touch might contaminate them. I am an outcast. A thing to be reviled.

I reach the edge of the clearing and don’t look back. There is nothing left for me there. I plunge into the forest, into the heart of the blizzard. The wind whips at me, screaming in my ears, flinging ice and snow into my face. It’s a physical assault, but it’s nothing compared to the storm raging inside me.

He did this. He planned it all. The secret meetings, the false evidence, the public spectacle. He needed a scapegoat to hide his own dealings, a distraction to solidify his power. And he chose me. He used my love, my trust, and he sacrificed me for his ambition.

The snow deepens, stealing the strength from my legs. The cold is a heavy blanket, trying to drag me down into a final, peaceful sleep. Part of me wants to let it. It would be so easy to just lie down and let the world fade away. To let the pain stop.

But as my vision begins to blur, as the world narrows to a tunnel of white, a different feeling stirs in the embers of my shattered soul. A tiny, hard spark of rage. He will not be the end of me. He took my home, my mate, my name. But he will not take my life.

I will survive this. I will live. And one day, I will see the truth branded onto him for all the world to see.

Chapter 2

Tessa

My lungs burn. Each breath is a mouthful of razors. The world is nothing but white. White snow, white sky, white wind that screams and tears at my skin. I can’t feel my fingers or my toes. They are just distant, aching things that might not belong to me anymore.

There are two pains that keep me moving. One is the gaping hole in my chest where my bond with Kael used to be. It’s a cold, dead weight, an anchor of agony pulling me down. The other is the fire on my shoulder. The traitor’s brand. It pulses with a vicious heat, a single point of fire in a universe of ice.

I stumble. My knee hits a rock hidden beneath the snow, and I cry out, the sound swallowed by the storm. I fall forward, my hands sinking into the powder. It’s soft. It would be so easy to just stay here. To let the white take me.

He will not be the end of me.

The thought is a flicker, a stubborn ember refusing to be snuffed out. I push myself up. My body is a machine made of broken parts, but it still obeys. One foot. Then the other. I am walking toward nothing. Toward nowhere.

Then I smell it. Faint, almost lost in the storm. Woodsmoke. And something else. Something musky and alive. Animal.

Hope is a dangerous, fragile thing. It feels like swallowing glass. But I follow the scent. It leads me toward a dark slash in the landscape, a wall of gray rock that rises out of the snow drifts. The scent is stronger here. The air feels a fraction less cold, the wind doesn't cut so deeply.

A cave. It’s a shadow, a maw in the stone. A faint, almost imperceptible warmth breathes out from its depths.

I don’t hesitate. I don’t think. I crawl the last few feet, my body screaming in protest. I drag myself over the threshold, out of the wind’s relentless assault. The relative quiet is deafening. The darkness is a balm after the blinding white. I can see the source of the warmth now. The glowing, red orange heart of a small, controlled fire in the center of the cavern floor.

My strength gives out completely. I collapse onto the stone floor, my last conscious thought one of overwhelming relief. Warmth. I am warm.

I wake to a growl. It’s not the distant sound of a forest creature. It’s low, guttural, and inches from my face. It vibrates through the stone and up into my bones.

My eyes snap open. Two points of amber fire burn in the gloom, staring directly at me. They belong to a wolf. A massive one. Its fur is the color of charcoal and shadow, its body a collection of coiled muscle and predatory power that makes Kael and his warriors look like pups. A line of white teeth is bared, saliva dripping from a black lip. The growl deepens, a promise of violence.

My body is too weak to run, too frozen to fight. All I can do is stare back into those lethal eyes, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

Then something impossible happens. The air around the beast shimmers, distorting like a heat haze. Bones crack and pop, a sound of gruesome transformation that echoes in the enclosed space. The massive wolfish form collapses inward, reforming, stretching. Where the beast was, a man now stands.

He is tall, broader than any wolf shifter I have ever seen. He is naked to the waist, his skin a canvas of old scars that twist and overlap. A particularly jagged one cuts down from his temple, across his left eye, and disappears into a scruff of dark beard. His hair is long, black, and untamed. But his eyes are the same. Amber. Burning with a feral, untamed light. He radiates a raw, immense power that presses down on me, making the very air feel heavy.

“Get out,” he says. His voice is a low rumble, like rocks grinding together. It’s not a request. It’s a command backed by the certainty that it will be obeyed.

I try to push myself up, to obey, but my limbs are numb and unresponsive. A weak, pathetic whimper escapes my lips. “I can’t.”

He takes a step closer, his shadow falling over me. I can feel the heat coming off his body. “This is my lair. My territory. You are trespassing.”

“The storm,” I rasp, my throat raw. “I was… lost.”

“Not my problem,” he says, his face a mask of stone. He reaches down, his hand wrapping around my upper arm. His grip is like iron, and even through the thin fabric of my tunic, his touch is shockingly warm. He starts to haul me to my feet, to drag me back towards the entrance and the blizzard beyond.

I cry out as his hand brushes against my shoulder. The pain of the brand, a fiery, weeping wound, explodes. It’s a sound of pure agony, sharp and piercing in the quiet of the cave.

He stops instantly. His hand freezes on my arm. He looks down, his gaze following the source of my pain. My tunic has been pulled aside, exposing the raw, ugly mark on my shoulder. The perverted crescent moon, blackened and blistered, a symbol of my disgrace.

The man goes utterly still. His amber eyes fix on the brand. I see a muscle jump in his jaw. The feral hostility in his gaze doesn't vanish, but something else joins it. A flicker of… what? Not pity. Something harder. Recognition.

He lets go of my arm as if it has burned him. “Who did that to you?” His voice is different now. The command is gone, replaced by a flat, dangerous edge.

I stare at him, confused by the sudden shift. He is Adrian. The Ghost of the Wastes. A rogue Alpha, whispered about in hushed, frightened tones. A killer who slaughters any who cross his path. He should be throwing me out to die, not asking questions.

“Answer me,” he growls, the impatience returning.

“My Alpha,” I whisper, the words tasting like poison in my mouth. “My… mate.”

A bitter, humorless sound that isn't quite a laugh escapes him. “A mate doesn't do that. An Alpha who does that isn't worthy of the title.”

My breath hitches. No one defended me. No one even questioned it. But this man, this feral rogue, his first reaction is to condemn the act, not the victim.

“He said I was a traitor,” I say, the words tumbling out on a wave of desperation. “He lied. He branded me. He broke our bond and cast me out.”

Adrian looks from the brand to my face, his expression unreadable. He studies the tears freezing on my cheeks, the gauntness of my features, the utter despair in my eyes. His gaze is so intense it feels like he is peeling back my skin to see the soul beneath.

“There is no justice in a brand like that,” he says, his voice low. “Only politics. And fear.” He says the words with the certainty of a man who knows them intimately.

He turns away from me then, stalking back towards the fire. For a terrifying moment, I think he’s going to leave me there on the cold floor.

He picks up a thick fur pelt from a pile against the wall and tosses it at me. It lands over my legs, heavy and smelling of wolf and pine. It’s warmer than anything I’ve felt in what feels like a lifetime.

“The storm will kill you if I throw you out,” he says, his back still to me. “You’ll be another frozen corpse on my doorstep come morning. An inconvenience.”

I pull the fur tighter around me, confusion warring with a sliver of hope. I don’t understand. This isn’t what the stories said.

“What are you saying?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper.

He finally turns to look at me, his arms crossed over his scarred chest. The firelight plays over the hard planes of his face, making the shadows deeper, the scars more pronounced.

“You can stay. Until the blizzard breaks.”

My body sags with relief so profound it’s almost painful.

“But when the storm is gone,” he continues, his voice leaving no room for argument, his amber eyes pinning me in place, “so are you. Understand?”

I look at this savage, dangerous man, this Ghost of the Wastes who has just shown me more mercy than my own mate, my own pack. I am a traitor, an outcast, a thing with no name and no home. I am in the lair of a killer.

And for the first time since Kael pronounced my sentence, I feel a flicker of something other than absolute despair.

“I understand,” I say. And I do. This is not a rescue. It is a temporary truce with death itself.

Chapter 3

Adrian

The word is a primal scream in my skull. A howl so loud it should shake the stones of this cave. It is not my voice. It belongs to the beast that paces the cage of my ribs, the feral thing that has kept me alive in this frozen hell.

Mate.

My hand drops from her arm. The skin of my palm tingles where it touched her, a phantom heat spreading up to my shoulder. My gaze is locked on the weeping, ugly brand on her skin. A mark of pack politics. Of betrayal. Of an Alpha using his power to break someone smaller than himself.

My wolf thrashes against my control. It wants to lunge forward. It wants to lick the wound clean. It wants to tear out the throat of the one who put it there. It wants to cover her with my body, my scent, and claim what the Moon Goddess has just dropped, broken and bleeding, at my feet.

I shove the instinct down with a violence born of old agony.

I take a step back. Then another. My bare feet are silent on the cold stone. I put distance between us. I need distance. The scent of her, woodsmoke and winter and a deep, soul aching sorrow, is wrapping around me, sinking into me. It’s a poison I thought I was immune to.

“You can stay,” I hear myself say, the words like gravel in my throat. “Until the blizzard breaks.”

The lie tastes like ash. I am not letting her stay because of the storm. I am letting her stay because my wolf would tear me apart from the inside out if I tried to force her back into the wind’s teeth.

I turn my back on her. A fatal mistake. It leaves me vulnerable, but facing her is worse. I stalk to the far side of the cave, the part I carved out for myself, and sink onto a bed of furs. My heart is a war drum against my sternum. My hands clench into fists, the knuckles white.

I swore an oath to myself years ago. Over the smoking ruins of my home. Over the cooling bodies of my pack. My first mate. My pups. I swore I would never again be part of a pack. Never again bow to an Alpha or have others bow to me. And I swore I would never, ever take another mate. A mate is a weakness. A heart outside your own body, a target for your enemies to aim at.

I already learned that lesson. It was written in blood.

“Thank you,” she whispers from across the cave. The sound is small, fragile. It cuts through the fog of my rage and my memory like a shard of glass.

I don’t answer. I don’t turn. I stare into the fire, but I don’t see the flames. I see the red of hunter’s cloaks against the snow. I smell burning pine and blood. So much blood. I hear the triumphant shouts of men and the dying screams of my family. A betrayal that ran so deep it poisoned the very ground.

This girl, Tessa, she is a ghost. A reminder of everything I lost. Everything that was stolen from me by the machinations of power hungry Alphas. The Silvermoon pack. Kael, she called him. The son is just like the father, it seems. A snake who wears the skin of a wolf.

My wolf is quieter now, but it is not silent. It watches her through my eyes. She has pulled the fur I gave her tight around her shoulders, a small, shivering bundle near the fire. She hasn’t touched the flames. Hasn’t moved closer to hoard the warmth. An omega’s training. Deferential. Always putting the pack, the Alpha, first. Even when there is no pack left to serve.

Even when the Alpha is a monster who branded her.

The silence stretches, thick and heavy, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the howl of the wind outside. I should sleep. I should rest. But the beast inside me is on watch. It will not rest while she is here. It sees a threat in every shadow, but the true threat is the one she poses to the walls I have built around my heart.

Hours pass. The fire burns low. I watch as she eventually stirs. She moves slowly, every motion stiff with cold and pain. She thinks I am asleep. Her breathing is shallow, punctuated by a soft, hitching sound. She is crying. Silently. Trying not to make a sound that might disturb the beast whose den she has invaded.

She doesn’t huddle and weep. She crawls to the stack of firewood I keep near the entrance. Her hands, raw and red with cold, pick up a small log. She places it on the embers with a care that is almost reverent. She coaxes the flames, her gentle breath a substitute for a bellows. The fire springs back to life, pushing the oppressive shadows back to the cave walls.

She is not just a victim. She is not just a traitor. In the flickering firelight, with tears tracing paths through the grime on her face, I see what she really is.

A survivor.

Just like me.

The thought is unwelcome. It forges a link between us I do not want. I am the Ghost of the Wastes. A feral outcast. A killer. I am not like this soft, broken thing. My wolf growls in my head, a low rumble of disagreement. It sees her strength. It honors it.

I rise to my feet. The sudden movement makes her flinch violently, her head snapping up. Fear flashes in her eyes, wide and luminous in the firelight. She scrambles back, pressing herself against the rock wall, making herself smaller.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say, the words rough. It is a promise my wolf demands I make.

She just watches me, her breath held tight in her chest.

I walk past her to the back of the cave where I keep my supplies. I have a small store of dried meat and a waterskin. I also have a wooden bowl with a salve of crushed herbs and bear fat. For wounds. For burns.

I bring it back and set it on the ground near her, but not too near. I don’t want her to feel cornered.

“What is it?” she asks, her voice hoarse.

“For the brand,” I say, nudging the bowl forward with my foot. “It will stop the festering.”

Her eyes widen. She looks from the bowl to my face, a storm of confusion and disbelief in her gaze. She expected cruelty. Indifference. She did not expect this.

“Why?” The question is barely audible.

Why? Because the sight of that mark makes my wolf want to rage. Because it is an injustice that stinks of the same rot that destroyed my life. Because my instincts are screaming at me to care for her, to heal my mate’s wound. That last reason, I will take to my grave.

“An open wound invites infection,” I say, my tone flat and practical. “Infection brings fever. I don’t want you dying in my cave. It would be an inconvenience.”

The excuse is flimsy. We both know it. But it’s a shield. A way for me to do what my wolf demands without admitting the truth of what is happening inside me. It gives her a reason that makes sense in a world of cruelty.

She reaches out a trembling hand and pulls the bowl closer. “Thank you,” she says again. This time, her voice is a little stronger.

I grunt in response and retreat to my side of the cave. I sit with my back against the wall, a silent sentinel. I watch as she struggles to apply the salve to her own shoulder, her face tight with pain as she twists her arm at an awkward angle.

My fingers twitch. The urge to go to her, to take the bowl from her hands and tend to the wound myself is a physical force, a tide pulling me across the space between us. I fight it down. I chain the beast. Touching her would be a mistake. A first step down a path I swore I would never walk again.

So I watch. I watch her quiet resilience. I watch her tend to her own pain. I watch the omega who was cast out by her pack for a crime she didn’t commit.

The blizzard rages outside, a wall of white and fury. But it is nothing compared to the storm she has brought into the hollowed out wreck of my soul. She is a weakness I cannot afford. She is a complication I do not want. She is a reminder of a life that was burned to ash.

And she is my mate.

The storm will pass. That is a certainty. And when it does, she will leave. I will make her leave. It is the only way. The only way to protect what little is left of me. The only way to protect her from the ghosts that hunt me.

I have to believe that. Because the alternative is too terrifying to even consider.