Northern Wild (Frosthaven Academy: Northern #1)

Prologue Seven Years Ago

The plane was too small and too loud and I loved everything about it. Bouncing in my seat, I couldn’t keep the smile inside. I was on a plane going to Frosthaven Academy.

I pressed my face to the scratched window, watching the world turn white beneath us. Endless. Empty.

"Look at all that nothing," I said. "It's perfect."

"Perfect for what?" Gregor asked from across the aisle.

"Everything. You could hide anything out there. Whole cities. Dragon lairs. Secret government—"

The world tilted.

I wasn't on the plane anymore.

I was cold.

I was really cold. The kind of cold that settles into your bones and stays there. Snow everywhere, blown sideways by wind that didn't stop.

Something moved in the white.

A wolf burst from behind a ridge, huge and pale, running hard and wrong. One back leg dragged. Blood darkened the snow beneath it, already freezing.

Something in my chest cracked open. Warmth poured in where cold should have been.

Mine, I thought, though I didn't know why.

Behind it — shadows. Other wolves. Leaner. Meaner. Their teeth flashed as they snapped and lunged, driving it forward, forcing it higher.

My nails dug into the armrest. Somewhere far away, on a plane I'd almost forgotten, the leather creaked under my grip.

No. No, no, no—

The pale wolf turned at the last second.

Not to fight. To bluff.

It bared its teeth, shoulders shaking with the effort, a growl tearing out of its chest that sounded like it hurt to make. One of the others lunged anyway. There was a flash of teeth, a spray of blood, and then the pale wolf was suddenly alone.

The others melted back into the storm.

The wolf stood there. Panting. Trembling. One ear hung in shreds. Its chest heaved too fast, too shallow. It tried to put weight on the bad leg and nearly went down.

It didn't cry out.

It limped away instead.

I followed — without breathing — watching as it dragged itself toward a break in the rock. A cave. Barely shelter. Inside, the ground was hard and littered with old bones picked clean. Not trophies. Leftovers. Evidence of how long this had been happening.

The wolf collapsed just inside the cave mouth.

It curled in on itself, licking at the wound on its leg with slow, careful movements. Not fixing it. Just keeping it from getting worse. From freezing solid. From killing it tonight.

Then it lifted its head.

Looked at me.

Not through me. At me.

Its eyes were sharp with pain. Exhausted. Furious. And underneath all of it — aware.

The vision shattered.

I slammed back into my body so hard I choked on my own breath. The plane was still humming, still bucking against the wind, but I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel anything except the cold still clinging to my skin, the image of that wolf burned into the backs of my eyes.

"Lumi?" Cora's hand was on my shoulder. "Sweetheart?"

I was crying. I hadn't noticed until now — tears streaming down my face, hot against the cold that hadn't left me. My chest felt cracked open, hollowed out. Like I'd watched something die slowly and couldn't do anything to stop it.

"The mountain." My voice came out raw. Wrong. I pressed my face to the window, searching. "What mountain is that?"

Someone checked a tablet. "Denali. Highest peak in North America."

There. Rising from the wilderness like a fist. The place where something was suffering alone, fighting every day just to survive until tomorrow.

"Gregor." I turned to him, and my hands were shaking. "What's it called when wolves forget they're human?"

The cabin went quiet. Gregor's face lost its color.

"Why are you asking that?"

"Please."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then: "Going feral. It's called going feral."

"And if someone's been feral for years? A long time?"

"Lumi—"

"Please."

His voice went heavy. "After a certain point, there's no coming back.

The human mind dissolves. Becomes purely wolf, purely instinct.

If someone's been feral for years..." He shook his head slowly.

"The person they were is gone. It's one of the greatest tragedies of our kind. Death while breathing."

Death while breathing.

The words landed like stones dropped into water.

But the wolf in my vision hadn't been empty. Hadn't been gone. Had looked at me with eyes that were exhausted and furious and aware — still fighting, still holding on, still waiting for someone to see that they were still in there.

Everyone said ferals were gone.

Everyone was wrong.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand. The tears wouldn't stop, but something else was building underneath them now. Something that felt less like grief and more like refusal.

"I'm going to climb that mountain," I said.

"You're eleven," Gregor said flatly.

"Not today. When I'm older. When I'm ready." I looked back out the window at Denali shrinking behind us. At the place where someone had been abandoned to die slowly, and no one even knew they were still there. "I'm going to find him."

Cora squeezed my shoulder. "Find who, sweetheart?"

I couldn't explain. Couldn't make them understand what I'd seen — the limp, the cave, the eyes that hadn't given up even when everything else had.

"Someone who's been lost a long time," I said. "Someone who's still waiting."

Gregor was watching me with an expression I couldn't read. Concern, maybe. Or the beginning of belief.

"Her visions are rarely wrong," he murmured to Cora. "If she says someone's on that mountain..."

I pulled out a notebook. Started writing.

I had so much to learn. Years of training. A mountain that had killed better climbers than I would ever be. And at the top of it, a wolf that everyone had already given up on.

Death while breathing, Gregor had said.

But I'd seen those eyes. Tired and furious and refusing to disappear.

That wasn't death.

That was someone waiting to be found.

I was going to find him.