Violet

I woke up in a very strange place.

The wolf that had accompanied Kael was Voya, the Supreme Alpha of Frostheim, and I had been unconscious throughout the time it took for them to bring me here.

The first week passed in fragments.

I slept more than I was awake, my body dragging me under for hours at a time without warning. I would surface briefly, drink whatever broth or tea the healers placed in my hands, and then sink back into a dreamless dark that swallowed me whole.

Zephyr rested too. I could feel her deep inside me, curled around whatever shared core we had formed, healing in her own quiet way. Some mornings I would reach for her just to make sure she was still there, and the faint pulse of her presence would ease the tightness in my chest enough to let me breathe.

This territory was unlike anywhere I had ever been.

The cold was constant. It wasn’t violent or punishing, but persistent. Its quiet chill would occasionally seep into the earth, straw and stone walls, but it was strangely comfortable.

The structures were beautiful and strange, with thick walls serving as insulation against the weather.

Outside, the frost was beginning to melt, but it was still a lot. The pale landscape I had seen from my window on the first day remained unchanged no matter the hour. The blue-green grass glittered beneath its crystalline coat, and the distant mountains stayed wrapped in their low clouds.

It was beautiful. It was also isolating.

Or maybe it was because I was mostly inside.

The wolves here were quieter, more reserved, their conversations shorter and their gestures smaller. Whether that was the culture or the cold, I couldn’t tell. But there was a sharpness to them beneath the restraint. Alert eyes, quick movements, and an efficiency that wasted nothing.

The toxin was the real problem during those early days.

Voya’s healers had been working on me since I arrived, and by the third day of my being conscious, they had identified the substance well enough to begin extracting it. The process was agonising.

They used a combination of herbal compounds and controlled energy manipulation to draw the toxin out through my blood, and each session left me shaking and drenched in sweat, curled on my side while the healers worked in grim silence.

But it was working, and it was at a far faster pace than me having to do it myself.

Everyone had been disturbed by the toxin’s potency. I remembered the head healer telling me plainly during one session that the substance in my system should have killed any wolf within seconds of entering the bloodstream.

It had filled me with a sense of dread. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Had Palisa been that obsessed with capturing and killing me, or had she known the toxin would not have immediately killed me.

Still, this detail for some reason transformed their fascination over me being a lycan to admiration and respect.

The fact that I had not only survived the toxin but had continued fighting Palisa while it coursed through me was something none of them could explain. They attributed it to my Lycan constitution, though I could tell even that answer felt incomplete to them. Whatever Palisa had been carrying in her fangs had been designed to end things quickly and permanently.

Even for a Lycan.

The extraction sessions continued every other day, and with each one, I felt my syzygy returning in steadier threads. Some of my wounds hadn’t fully healed and I had been told they would scar. Though it would be faint.

These usually happened when a wolf didn’t heal fast enough. Fast meaning days, especially if a wound had been stagnant for a while.

I guessed Lycans weren’t exempt from that either.

The sun barely showed its face, but my connection to the moon whenever it appeared at night helped. I was able to drain energy from it, though faintly at first. Then my sensory range began to expand again, slowly pushing outward from the immediate room to the corridor beyond, then the floor below, then the grounds outside.

It was like learning to see after going blind.

By the third week, I could draw energy from what little sunlight made it through Frostheim’s heavy clouds, and even that small warmth settling into my bones felt like reuniting with something precious.

Whenever the healers, Voya, or her elder officials weren’t checking on me, I spent most of my waking hours alone.

I had asked for solitude after the first day, and both Kael and Rowan had respected it. I knew they were nearby. They always lingered around, with Rowan especially hovering near my door at timed.

Even if they were afar, I could still feel them through the bonds, two constant presences hovering at the edges of my awareness. Kael’s bond burned steady and fierce, a low heat that never wavered. Rowan’s was gentler, a quiet ache that pulsed with something I recognised as worry.

Voya had relayed their apologies to me, especially Kael for causing that outburst.

I still hadn’t understood why he had done that but I had a vague feeling it had been because of me.

But that had been a terrible moment.

The guilt toward Rowan was harder to sit with.

I had left him with nothing but a letter, and slipped away. Now, I wasn’t entirely surprised he had actually come after me, but seeing Kael had still been a bit of a shock.

However, with how I had left Rowan, I was still now shutting him out again from behind a closed door. And I knew the distance was gnawing at him.

But I needed to sit with my thoughts, especially with what was going to come next.

I was barely recovering when I had told Voya I wanted to address the other Supreme Alphas, preferably during a summit.

I was tired of this.

It had surprised her, but the political situation was as complicated as I had expected.

She and her elder wolves had not softened their assessments for my benefit.

Regardless of what I wanted, I had still killed a Supreme Alpha.