The frost that blossomed across the polished mahogany floor of the Royal Solar did not belong to the changing of the seasons. It was a cruel, crystalline gray, spreading from the darkest corner of the room like webbed fingers of bone.
Lucien's voice had dropped into a register that made the heavy silk curtains stiffen. "Kaelen, wake up. Now."
The Alpha of the West did not need to be told twice. The heavy mantle of sleep was stripped from him in a fraction of a second, his golden eyes instantly losing their soft, paternal warmth and sharpening into the cold, calculating focus of a apex predator. His nostrils flared, his chest heaving as he drew the air of the room deep into his lungs, looking for the scent of an intruder.
"There is no scent," Kaelen rumbled, his body automatically shifting over Gwen and the baby, creating a fortress of muscle and fur. "No blood, no sweat, no alchemical residue. But the air... the air smells like the deep trenches of the North."
