Chapter 3 - Dani
The mountains rose like old ghosts.
Dani pressed her forehead against the cold window as the coven’s van rattled around another bend, the road narrowing, the pines thickening, the distant ridgelines sharpening into jagged teeth.
Frost webbed across the edges of the glass.
The air tasted colder already, sharp enough that she swore she could feel it even through the sealed vehicle.
She swallowed hard.
Her stomach rolled for the tenth time in as many minutes.
Aurelia leaned over her lap, eyes bright as she peered out the window. “Mom…look! Real mountains! They’re huge! Are they bigger than the ones in the pictures? They look bigger. They look…alive.”
Dani’s breath hitched.
Alive.
Yes. That was one word for it.
She wished Aurelia couldn’t feel her tension humming through her veins, but her daughter had always been far too perceptive. Aurelia’s magic was still budding, still wild, but her intuition cut clean and sharp.
Dani forced a smile. “They’re just mountains, Auri.”
Aurelia scrunched her nose. “Not just mountains. They feel…important.”
That was the problem.
Everything here felt important. Heavy. Like memories packed the air as thickly as the cold.
Dani tore her gaze away from the window, trying to breathe evenly. She’d expected nerves. Panic, even. But this…this was worse.
She hadn’t been back to Alaska in ten years.
She hadn’t planned to ever return.
Not for anything. Not for anyone.
Least of all Arthur Wells.
Her heart lurched painfully at the thought of him. She squeezed her hands together, trying to ground herself.
She pictured him as she’d last seen him. The carefully blank expression on his face. The cold wall he’d put up. The casual cruelty in his words.
Then she pictured him now.
Older. Harder. The Alpha of the Nordan.
And she pictured his expression when he saw Aurelia.
When he realized she had a child.
A child with his eyes.
Dani’s stomach flipped violently.
“You okay?” Aurelia asked, leaning closer. “You look like you’re gonna throw up.”
“I might,” Dani admitted.
Aurelia blinked. “Is it car sickness?”
“No,” Dani whispered. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
If only it were because of car sickness. And not because of…
Because of Arthur.
Because of the pack that had exiled magic long before she was born, long before she had any.
Because if Arthur decided she was a threat…or worse, a traitor…
She didn’t want her daughter, had she been left behind in Salem, to receive a phone call that her mother—
She couldn’t even think the words.
As much as Arthur might hate her, he wasn’t sadistic. He wouldn’t kill a mother in front of her daughter. The strongest witches in the coven were in the delegation. Aurelia was safest amongst them. Under her protection.
A mother wolf, whether or not she could shift, never left her child unguarded.
The van slowed suddenly. Braked.
A murmur ran through the witches seated ahead of her.
The driver cursed under her breath. “Well. That’ll be the welcoming party.”
Dani’s pulse throbbed at her temples. She lifted her head.
Through the windshield, shapes moved in the snow.
Dozens of them.
A line of wolves stretched across the road, silver pelts bristling, steam rising from their jaws. A handful were in their human form, bare-chested despite the cold, tattoos and scars gleaming.
Nordan wolves.
Her pack.
Her executioners, if they chose to be.
Dani’s fingers trembled.
Aurelia squeezed her hand. “Mom?”
“Stay close to me,” Dani whispered.
The doors opened, cold air slapping into her. Lavinia descended first, her robes brushing the snow, her aura calm and commanding. The rest of the coven followed.
Dani stepped out with Aurelia at her side.
The cold cut through her coat instantly.
A man detached himself from the Nordan line and walked forward. Broad shoulders. Familiar jaw.
Not Arthur.
Chase.
Arthur’s younger brother.
He’d grown. Taller, more filled out, features sharpened into adulthood. But she knew him instantly, the way he squinted when assessing someone, the way tension sat high across his shoulders.
Chase’s gaze swept the coven.
Paused on her.
He didn’t react.
Didn’t recognize her.
For reasons she couldn’t begin to name, that hurt.
“Witches,” Chase called, voice ringing across the frozen clearing, “you are not welcome in Skymist. Turn back.”
Lavinia moved forward, chin high. “We were invited by Dominic Volkhov, Alpha of the Volkhov pack. This land belongs to all valley packs. You have no authority to deny us passage.”
Chase’s expression didn’t change. “I speak on behalf of the Nordan Alpha. Witches will not cross into our territory.”
Wolves growled in support, sound rumbling like distant thunder.
Several witches stiffened, magic humming beneath their skin, visible in the air like heat shimmer.
Aurelia pressed against Dani’s side, small fingers digging into her coat.
“We have been called to a summit,” Lavinia said evenly, “a matter of urgent danger to all species. We will not turn back.”
Chase’s jaw worked, but he didn’t budge. “Then you will wait here until my alpha arrives to dismiss you himself.”
“Bring him out,” Lavinia demanded.
“He is coming,” Chase replied. “Until then, this border holds.”
Wolves shifted nervously, some baring their teeth.
Dani’s heart hammered against her ribs. She could almost feel the proximity of Arthur like static before lightning.
He was coming.
He was close.
She tasted metal on her tongue.
The witches began to murmur heatedly. Lavinia raised her hand, but tension thrummed through the air like a drawn bowstring.
A voice cut through the rising hostility from the far side of the clearing. “Stand down, Chase.”
Dani’s breath caught.
From the opposite tree line, a second pack emerged, sleek-bodied wolves with dark pelts and sharp eyes moving with lethal confidence.
At the fore walked Dominic Volkhov.
He strode forward with the certainty of a man who had won every fight he had encountered. His warriors flanked him, forming a second line opposite the Nordan.
Her breath caught. He had been a brooding teenager when she’d last seen him. She barely recognized the formidable warrior at the helm of the mighty Volkhov.
“The witches travel under our protection,” Dominic called. “They will pass.”
Chase stepped forward, bristling. “Not without Nordan clearance.”
“Your clearance is irrelevant,” Dominic replied coolly. “They were invited by me.”
“This is Nordan territory.”
“This is neutral land.”
“My alpha says otherwise.”
Magic crackled in the witches’ hands. Wolves snarled, pushing forward. The air turned dangerously thin.
Aurelia’s breath hitched. Dani wrapped an arm around her, pulling her back.
“Mom,” Aurelia whispered, “they’re going to fight—”
“No, they aren’t,” Dani whispered tightly. “They can’t.”
But gods, they wanted to.
Dominic’s eyes narrowed, voice dropping into a growl. “Your alpha is playing a dangerous game.”
Chase’s lip curled. “So are you, if you think we’ll let witches walk freely through our home.”
“You do not speak for your alpha.”
“I do until he arrives.”
“Then he’d better arrive quickly,” Dominic snapped. “Because I will not be kept waiting by pups with more pride than sense—”
A ripple moved through the Nordan line.
Every head turned sharply toward the forest.
Wolves stilled.
Witches faltered.
Even Dominic’s posture changed, straightening as though preparing for impact.
A voice rolled across the clearing like winter thunder.
“Enough.”
Dani’s blood froze.
She knew that voice.
Knew it in her bones.
Arthur stepped out from between the trees as though the forest parted for him.
Broad-shouldered. Towering. A fur-lined coat draped over a body built of war and wilderness.
His hair was tied back, his beard full. His eyes, Gaia, those blue eyes, were as cold and sharp as glacier ice.
Three scars, silvery-white, shone in stark contrast to his tanned skin from his temple down to his jaw.
Power radiated off him. Authority. Fury.
Her breath caught. Her lungs stopped working entirely.
The Ice Bear.
Arthur strode forward, surrounded by elite Nordan warriors. Every wolf bowed their head instinctively as he passed.
Dani couldn’t move.
Couldn’t think.
Her knees trembled. Her pulse roared in her ears.
He was older. Harder. Every inch the alpha she always knew he would become.
And when his gaze swept the coven…
When it landed on her…
He stopped walking.
The entire clearing seemed to freeze in time.
Arthur stared at her like the world had just tilted beneath his feet.
Shock flickered across his face.
Then fury.
Then something darker, deeper, more dangerous than either.
Dani’s heart stumbled.
After ten years, ten years of hiding, of building a life, of swearing she would never return…
Arthur Wells was standing in front of her.
And he was looking at her like she had personally torn open the earth beneath his feet.
Aurelia gripped her hand tighter, but Dani couldn’t look away from him.
Couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t run.
She had known this moment was coming.
But knowing had done nothing to prepare her for the reality of it.
For the way Arthur’s eyes burned straight through her.
For the way her heart ached like a reopened wound.
For the way the air between them went sharp, alive, dangerous.
Her past had found her.
And Arthur was only just beginning.