Chapter 15 Winslet
FIFTEEN
WINSLET
The snowmobile’s engine was a steady vibration beneath her as they carved a path through the moon-washed landscape back to Korrak’s cabin.
Winslet tightened her arms around his solid torso, pressing her cheek against the thick fabric of his parka.
She tried to anchor herself in the heat radiating from him, but her mind was a storm.
Viktor’s gruff voice was a ghost in her ear. You were already claimed by him.
The words were a foul echo, a brand Bracken had tried to sear onto her soul. An engagement ring, a shared penthouse, two years of her life—in his twisted calculus, that added up to permanent ownership. A transaction with no refunds.
She was so tired of being the prize, the contested territory in a war between men. She wasn’t a painting to be collected or a fortress to be stormed. She was a person. And she was done with narratives she hadn’t written.
Korrak’s broad back was a wall of silent strength before her.
His was a different kind of claim—fated, yes, a cosmic pull she felt in her very bones—but he’d placed the choice in her hands.
He’d given her space even when it cost him.
He wielded his immense power with a restraint Bracken could never comprehend.
Bracken’s love had been a gilded cage, all about what she couldn’t do, who she couldn’t see, how she should be.
Korrak’s love was about making her capable, about standing beside her, not in front of her.
Partnership. The word felt like a warm, solid weight in her chest.
The cabin emerged from the darkness, its windows glowing like a promise. As Korrak guided the snowmobile to a smooth halt, another thought, cold and slithering, resurfaced.
Viktor was a grizzly shifter. Korrak implied Bracken might be one too.
Her memory rewound, scanning two years of Bracken’s behavior—the terrifying rages that seemed to shake the room, the possessive intensity that felt…
animal. The way he’d sometimes look at her, like he was seeing prey.
She’d chalked it up to the pathology of a controlling man.
But surrounded by the quiet, potent power of polar bear shifters, her instincts were recalibrating.
Was she seeing patterns where none existed, or were her senses finally learning to trust themselves?
It didn’t change the threat. It just made it more monstrous.
The engine died, and the sudden silence was profound, broken only by the wind’s low moan.
Korrak swung off first, his movements fluid and economical.
He turned, his ice-blue eyes catching the moonlight as he reached for her.
His hands closed around her waist, and he lifted her down as if she weighed nothing, setting her on her feet but not letting go immediately.
The heat of his grip seared through her layers.
“Your mind is racing,” he said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in the space between them.
“Viktor talked about me like I was a misplaced car key,” Winslet said, the words sharp in the cold air. “Something to be retrieved. Not a person who left willingly.”
Korrak’s thumb stroked a slow arc over her hipbone. The simple touch was a balm and a spark. “He was wrong. You had every right to leave. Bracken is a terrible man.”
“I know.” She took a steadying breath, her gaze locked on his. “But it still stings that he thinks he owns me. That’s why when he comes, I want to be ready to face him. I’m going to be the surprise he never saw coming.”
A fierce approval kindled in Korrak’s eyes. It was hotter than any lust she’d ever seen. This was the Alpha recognizing a kindred spirit, a fellow fighter. “Then let’s not waste the night.”
He kept one hand on her back, guiding her past the dark silhouette of his cabin toward a smaller, squared-off outbuilding half-buried in the snowdrifts. He produced a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, ushering her into a space that was all function.
This wasn’t a gym. It was an armory for the body. The air carried the faint scent of pine boards, old sweat, and gun oil. Rough-hewn racks held an arsenal of purpose. Weights with worn grips, weapons gleaming, and survival gear organized with military precision.
Her heart pounded in her chest, a drumbeat of nerves and fierce, rising determination. She could do this. She needed to become a factor—someone who could meet the coming storm on her own two feet.
She watched Korrak shrug off his parka, revealing the familiar thermal shirt stretched across his broad shoulders, and move to a central mat with absolute focus. Winslet peeled off her own parka, the sweater and jeans underneath suddenly feeling absurdly civilian.
That’s fine, she thought, forcing her hands to her hips to start a series of stretches. Fights don’t wait for yoga pants.
“We start with the foundation,” Korrak said firmly. He stood atop a wide, unstable platform meant to simulate shifting ice. His balance was perfect. “Control comes from the core. Not the feet.”
He demonstrated, shifting his weight with minute, precise adjustments.
The platform wobbled but he didn’t. It was a lesson in contained power.
Winslet mirrored him, her concentration narrowing to the feel of the unsteady surface beneath her boots.
But her body, still whispering with the lingering fatigue from Viktor’s sedative, betrayed her.
A slight tremor in her thigh, a misjudged shift, and her balance fractured. She windmilled an arm.
He was there before the thought of falling fully formed. His hands closed around her upper arms, steadying her with an immovable strength. He didn’t pull her close, didn’t offer a word of pity. He simply became her anchor until the world righted itself.
“Again,” he said firmly.
She nodded, and the moment his hands released her, she felt the absence like a drop in temperature. She refocused, pushing the distracting warmth of him aside. This was about survival, not… whatever this electric pull was becoming.
“Warm-up’s over,” he announced after several more minutes of grueling balance drills. “Now you learn to make space.”
He moved behind her, his presence a wall of heat. “If he comes from behind.” His arms snaked around her, a simulation of an attacker’s grasp. “Your elbows are your first weapon. Don’t fight the hold. Break the leverage.”
He guided her through the motion—a sharp, backward thrust of the elbows, a stomp on the instep, a twist of the hips. His body was the perfect resistance, unyielding but controlled, letting her learn the mechanics of force against his immutable strength.
When he turned to demonstrate a frontal grab, the dynamic changed. His large hands encircled her wrists. Her eyes were level with the strong column of his throat with the faint pulse she could see there. His scent wrapped around her senses.
“Focus, Winslet.” His voice was a low growl, vibrating in the space between them. He’d seen her attention waver.
“I am focusing,” she insisted, her own voice breathier than she intended.
She executed the wrist-break maneuver he’d shown her, her smaller hands slipping from his grasp with a technique that relied on speed, not strength.
“Good.” A flicker of hunger crossed his face. “Now faster. He won’t be standing still admiring the view like I am.”
The comment sent a fresh spark through her. She attacked the drills with renewed fervor, using the flare of irritation and attraction as fuel.
For an hour, the gym echoed with their movements, her sharp exhales, and his terse corrections.
Sweat dampened the hair at her temples, her muscles burned with a righteous fire, and a new, gritty confidence began to settle in her bones.
She was actually doing this. She wouldn’t be easy prey anymore.
The chime was a jarring, alien sound in the midst of their controlled violence. It came from the pocket of her discarded parka. A phone. Her phone.
Winslet froze, mid-pivot. She’d carried the thing for a week like a useless talisman, assuming the Arctic was a dead zone.
“Satellite’s back now that the storm has passed,” Korrak said, not even looking at the coat. He wiped his brow with his forearm, his gaze locked on her. “We’re remote, not extinct.”
Her stomach plunged. She knew, with a sickening certainty, who it would be before she even crossed the room. The cold dread was back, an old friend she’d hoped to forget. She pulled the phone from the pocket. The screen glared in the dim light. A text from Bracken.
Hello sweetheart, I see your phone is finally pinging again. You really should’ve ditched it so I couldn’t find you so easily. Oh well. I know where you are now, and I know Viktor is probably dead. Let your new playmate know that he doesn’t scare me.
The words were a psychic punch. So stupid. In her panic to flee Seattle, she’d committed the cardinal sin of the hunted. She’d kept her leash. She’d led him right to Korrak’s door.
A wave of self-recrimination so intense it was physical washed over her.
“Look at me.” Korrak’s command was quiet but absolute.
She dragged her eyes from the toxic screen to his face. His expression was granite, but his eyes weren’t accusatory. They were… resolved.
“Mistakes are footholds for the enemy,” he said, his voice cutting through her spiraling thoughts. “But they’re also information for us. You know that. He’s told us two things. He’s coming, and he’s arrogant. We can use both.”
The rational part of her brain latched onto the tactic, the strategist rising through the fear. He was right. Bracken had just handed them a data point. But the emotional scar tissue throbbed at the sight of his words, at the casual, threatening ownership in them.
She set the phone down on a weight bench. “He wants me scared. He wants me to feel isolated.”
“Are you?” Korrak asked, not moving from his spot in the center of the mat.
Winslet looked at him—the Alpha standing in his domain, having just spent an hour forging her into something harder and sharper. She looked at the discarded phone, the symbol of her past vulnerability.
A new resolve settled over her. “No,” she said, the word firm. “I’m not. And I’m not done training.” She walked back toward him, her green eyes meeting his blue ones without flinching. “Show me how to make an arrogant man regret his choices.”
Korrak’s teaching shifted from foundational drills to targeted violence. He became a relentless, moving opponent.
“He’ll come in high, expecting you to cower,” Korrak stated, his voice a flat instructor’s tone. He lunged, simulating a grab for her throat. “Don’t meet force with force. Redirect it.”
He guided her through the disarming pivot, his large hands manipulating her limbs with clinical precision.
Her body learned the mechanics: step into the attack, not away; use his momentum against him; a sharp twist of the wrists could break a hold.
When she executed it correctly, spinning him with a surprising leverage that made him grunt in approval, a fierce joy sparked in her chest.
Then came the strikes. “You won’t knock him out, but you can make him rethink his life choices,” Korrak said, holding up a thick leather pad. “Aim through the target. Not at it.”
She threw a punch, channeling all her frustration—at Bracken, at Viktor, at her own past fear—into the motion. The impact jolted up her arm, a satisfying, solid burn. She followed with a kick, her boot connecting with the pad he’d dropped to his side.
“Again. Your shoulder is dropping. You’re protecting it, which telegraphs the move.”
Another hour later, fatigue was a deep ache in her muscles, a tremor in her thighs, but adrenaline was a potent countermeasure.
She pushed past it, driven by the sharp clarity in his ice-blue gaze.
This was a different kind of conversation.
Each successful block, each landed strike, was a sentence in a language they were building together.
Finally, he stepped back, lowering the pad. “Enough. Your body needs to remember the lessons, not just endure the pain.”
Winslet braced her hands on her knees, drawing in ragged gulps of air. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist, her gaze lifting to find him.
Korrak had leaned back against a heavy rack of weights, his arms crossed over his chest, just watching her. His expression was an unreadable mask of Alpha intensity, but the heat in his eyes was unmistakable.
The mate bond was a palpable hum in the charged air between them, a magnetic pull she felt in her very core.
Her body ached, her mind was a riot of triumph and vulnerability, but one truth rose above the noise.
She wanted this man. Not just his protection.
But the bond, the future, the terrifying, beautiful permanence of it.
She watched as he moved to stow the equipment, his actions methodical and efficient. There was a precision to him, a powerful, contained grace that reminded her why she felt safe even when the world was hostile. Here was a man who didn’t lose control, who wielded his strength with purpose.
He finished and turned to her. “Ready to go inside?” he asked, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in her bones.
Winslet straightened, meeting his gaze. The word yes was on her tongue, simple and ready. But in her mind, it expanded, filled with the weight of everything she was too breathless to say.
Yes, I’m ready to go inside. Yes, I’m ready to stop running. Yes, I’m ready for you.
“Yes,” she said aloud, the single syllable loaded with a promise she hoped he could hear.