The snow did not just fall in the Northern Peaks.
It judged.
Elara Vance stood at the edge of the Iron Border, her breath fogging the air as it tore from her lungs. The cold bit deep, sharp enough to hurt, but it was nothing compared to the ache carved into her chest. Behind her, the twenty-four survivors of the Silver Moon Pack huddled together beneath the looming shadow of the black stone gates. Children with hollow eyes. Elders leaning on cracked spears. Warriors who still smelled of smoke and blood.
They were all she had left.
Her home was a charred skeleton buried beneath ash. Her father lay beneath the ruins of the Great Hall, his body never properly mourned. The title she had been born to inherit now felt less like a crown and more like a wound that refused to close.
“The King is coming,” her Beta, Silas, whispered.
His voice was rough, permanently damaged by the fire that had swallowed their lands. He no longer sounded like the warrior who had once trained her. He sounded like a ghost that refused to move on.
“I know,” Elara said.
The words rumbled low in her chest, heavy with Alpha authority. She straightened her spine, refusing to bow to the cold or the grief pressing against her ribs. She would not let her people see her falter.
She was the payment.
Ten years ago, her father had signed a blood pact with the Thorne lineage. Protection in exchange for a binding of blood. When the Ravager Pack breached their borders and turned Silver Moon territory into a slaughterhouse, the Northern King had answered the call. His armies had ended the massacre.
Salvation always came with a price.
The forest went unnaturally still.
Then the trees parted. Not from wind, but from power.
A line of riders emerged from the mist, black-clad and silent, their horses moving with disciplined precision. The sound of hooves striking permafrost echoed like the slow, deliberate heartbeat of something massive and awake. At their center rode a man who looked less like a king and more like a predator carved from the mountain itself.
King Kaelen Thorne.
He sat astride a massive black stallion, dark furs dusted with frost. He did not look at the refugees. He did not acknowledge the burned land or the dead it had claimed. His golden eyes lifted and locked onto Elara’s.
The world inside her tilted.
Heat slammed through her veins, violent and electric, chasing away the cold in an instant. Her breath caught painfully in her throat as her wolf surged forward, screaming recognition with a force that nearly dropped her to her knees.
Mate.
The word tore through her like a verdict.
Kaelen’s horse stamped and reared slightly, unsettled by the sudden surge of its master’s energy. Kaelen’s grip tightened on the reins, his knuckles whitening as his pupils expanded until his eyes darkened almost completely. The air between them thickened, charged, heavy with something dangerous and ancient.
For one heartbeat, the King of the North looked human.
Stunned. Exposed. Barely holding himself together.
Then the mask returned.
Cold. Controlled. Obsidian.
He dismounted with effortless grace and crossed the snow toward her. Each step was measured, deliberate, as if the ground itself knew better than to resist him. He stopped only inches away. His scent flooded her senses: cedarwood, ancient stone, and something metallic beneath it, sharp and violent like an approaching storm.
Her wolf whimpered. She hated that it did.
“Elara Vance,” Kaelen said.
His voice was deep, resonant, carrying authority that pressed down on her bones.
“Your Majesty,” she replied.
She did not bow. She could not. If she bowed, she would shatter.
Kaelen reached into his coat and withdrew a scroll of blackened parchment. The Blood Debt. The air around it felt heavy, old, and watching.
“Your father’s mark is here,” he said. “The remaining members of the Silver Moon Pack are now wards of the Northern Crown. They will be fed. Housed. Protected.”
“And the cost?” Elara asked.
Her voice did not waver, though her pulse thundered beneath her skin.
Kaelen’s gaze flicked to her throat. He stepped closer and leaned in, his voice lowering to something meant only for her. Beneath the restraint, a growl strained for release.
“The cost is you, Alpha.”
Her breath hitched.
“You will come to the Citadel. You will stand beside the throne. You will serve as its anchor until the debt is satisfied.”
He did not name the bond. He did not acknowledge the fire tearing through both of them. To him, she was an obligation. A transaction written in blood.
“I am an Alpha,” Elara said, silver flashing in her eyes. “I do not follow. I lead.”
Kaelen’s hand closed around her forearm.
The contact was a brand.
The mate bond flared with blinding intensity, ripping a gasp from her chest. He pulled her closer, just enough to remind her of how easily he could break her resistance. His golden eyes burned with something dark and barely restrained.
“In the North,” he murmured, his breath hot against her cheek, “there is only one Alpha.”
His grip tightened for a heartbeat longer.
“And you belong to him now. Do not force me to demonstrate the cost of defiance.”
He released her abruptly and turned away.
“Prepare a carriage,” he ordered his guard. “The debt is collected. We leave for the Citadel.”
Elara looked back at her people.
Silas met her gaze, his expression torn between relief and grief. Northern guards were already distributing blankets and food. Her sacrifice was working.
She had saved them.
But as the Iron Gates opened and the path north swallowed her whole, the truth settled like ice in her veins.
She was a fated mate to a man who saw her as property.
A warrior bound by blood and law.
A queen-shaped debt.
The carriage door closed with a heavy metallic click, final and absolute.
Inside the darkness, Elara pressed a trembling hand to her chest and whispered to the wolf still screaming for the man outside.
“He can have my blood.
He can have my title.
But he will never have my soul.”
