Winter in the northern mountains did not arrive gently. It came like a blade, sharp and absolute, stripping the trees of their last leaves and turning the ground hard beneath Lyra Reddington’s boots. She had been with the fractured clan for three months when the first true snow buried the ridges. Three months of proving herself in small, brutal ways. Three months of sleeping lightly with a knife within reach. Three months of feeling the mate bond pulse low and unwanted between her legs every time the wind carried a scent that reminded her of pine and steel.

The clan called themselves the Ashen Ridge. They were smaller than Blackthorn, leaner, harder, held together more by necessity than loyalty. Their previous Alpha had died in a border skirmish two years earlier, leaving a power vacuum that no one had fully filled. A temporary leader named Garrick held the center for now, a broad-shouldered beta with more ambition than strength. He watched Lyra the way a man watches something he intends to own. She watched him back without blinking.