When I stepped through the massive, heavy iron gates of the fortress, the freezing wind of Alberta snapped against my back like a final, cruel lash. As the doors groaned shut with a sound that felt like a tomb sealing, the wild cold of the outside world was severed.
But the chill inside me? It ran far deeper.
This wasn't the kind of cold that froze the bones; it was a soul-deep desolation that had settled into my very marrow, a hollow ache whispering that I no longer belonged to myself.
I carried Kael's scent on me—that "clean," "civilized," and "romantic" fragrance I once mistook for safety. In that life before the Alpha Varg, it would have reminded me of rainy city mornings, the comforting hum of a taxi, and the smell of old library books. But here, within the heavy, animalistic, and suffocatingly possessive atmosphere of Varg's domain, that scent felt like a scream.
And now, I was bringing his "sanctity" into the wolf's den.
