Six weeks of ice, sweat, and bruised shins had stripped away every lingering illusion about the four wolves running beside me.

They weren't Nolan. They didn't operate on quiet control or unspoken debts.

Ronan would squint at the hairline fractures across an icy shelf, his heavy brow furrowing in deep suspicion. "That crust won't take two hundred pounds," he would rumble, challenging the angle.

"The limestone underneath holds dry," I would tell him.

He would grumble, spit into the snow, and then plant his boot exactly where I told him to, throwing his full weight behind my lead without another word.

Elias was different. Methodical and lethal, he treated physical boundaries like tripwires. Whenever my crampons slipped or my harness needed tensioning, his hands would hover two inches off my gear. "Wren, may I adjust your chest clasp?" he would ask, waiting for my nod before his fingers touched the webbing.

Asher read the air. Twice a week, the unsevered bond in my chest would flare with a hollow, burning ache—Nolan’s lingering phantom tug trying to drag my pulse toward Silvercrest territory. Whenever it happened, my scent inevitably shifted, bitter and sharp with stress. Asher never probed. He never gave the pain a name or made me explain it. He would simply step up beside me, press a warm metal flask of sweetened tea into my gloved hand, and toss a dry joke at Ronan until the tightness in my ribs faded.

And then there was Cassian.

The Alpha of Ravenscar didn't micromanage. When we reached split ridges where the maps went blind, he wouldn't pull rank or offer a vote. He would stop, step back, and look straight at me.

"Your call, Wren."

He had given me the wheel, and in six weeks, I hadn't steered them into a single crevasse.

The joint pre-race trial run was our first public outing as a registered squad.

The neutral lower basin was packed with scouts, elders, and competing squads testing their equipment. The moment Ravenscar hit the gravel staging track, Silvercrest appeared on our heels.

Nolan had positioned his squad five paces behind us, matching our rhythm step for step. Brielle ran just off his shoulder, her silver armband gleaming under the pale morning sun. Every time I changed our team's cadence, Nolan shifted his vanguard to shadow us, turning a routine warm-up into a stifling parade.

When we pulled up at the perimeter turnaround, Nolan brought his team to an abrupt halt right beside ours.

Spectators drifted toward the fence line, sensing the friction. Nolan wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, projecting his voice so it carried clearly across the assembled packs.

"Look at them," Nolan said, a dismissive smirk touching his lips as he glanced at the scouts along the rail. "Four apex Alphas playing nursemaid. You're spoiling an Omega, Cassian. Wrapping her in iron thread won't stop her from breaking the first time the high ice cracks."

Brielle let out a quiet, delicate laugh, shaking her head. "It's just dangerous, Nolan. They're indulging a tantrum."

Ronan’s jaw hardened, his fist tightening around his trekking staff until the wood creaked. Asher took a slow step forward, the easy humor vanishing from his eyes.

I raised my open hand.

None of them moved. The four Alphas froze on my signal, holding their line.

I didn't look at Nolan. I didn't dignify the taunt with a single word. Words on the flats meant nothing; the mountain only cared about blood and balance.

"Cassian," I said evenly. "Limestone chute. Tight formation."

"On you," Cassian replied.

I pivoted on the balls of my feet and broke into a dead sprint toward the narrow southern gully.

Nolan’s mocking laugh cut short behind us. "Keep on them!" he barked to his team. "Don't let them take the inside turn!"

Silvercrest surged forward, trying to pin us against the gravel bank. But Nolan only knew the basin from the flat map. He didn't know that fifteen yards into the chute, the drainage ditch dropped two feet beneath a blind lip of shale, coated in morning run-off.

I hit the lip, planted my left heel into the single dry outcrop of bedrock, and leaped cleanly across the churned mud.

"Bank right, three paces!" I called over my shoulder.

Cassian cleared the jump in my exact footprint. Ronan’s massive frame vaulted the gap without shaking the stone. Elias and Asher flowed through like smoke, cutting tight along the hard rock wall.

Behind us came the heavy, chaotic crunch of sliding gravel.

Nolan tried to lead his squad through on brute speed. Brielle’s boot caught the slick shale, and she went down hard on one knee with a sharp cry. Garrett Shaw collided with her shoulder, stumbling into the mud. Nolan had to slide sideways to keep from trampling his own vanguard, his boots digging into the muck as his momentum collapsed into a tangled heap.

By the time Nolan hauled Brielle to her feet, Ravenscar was fifty yards clear, crossing the boundary line in perfect formation.

I didn't turn back to look at his humiliated face. The silence from the spectators said everything.

***

The horn for Stage One blew three days later, echoing off the iron peaks like a war cry.

The real mountain was nothing like the trial grounds. Within the first two hours of the ascent, the temperature plummeted. The lower pine forests gave way to brutal, vertical shelves of granite dusted with wind-scoured ice.

And Silvercrest was right behind us.

Nolan had abandoned his own scouting split, locking his squad onto our tail. He was using our draft, letting me read the terrain while his vanguard conserved energy, waiting to blow past us the second we hit the first plateau.

I watched the cloud line descending from the high ridge. The sky had turned the color of bruised slate.

"They're crowding the primary route," Elias warned, checking the rear. "Fifty paces."

"They want to force an error," Ronan growled, his breathing heavy under the load of his pack.

I glanced up at the jagged western tooth towering above us. A narrow, unprotected shelf skirted the upper wall—the alternate high-line route I had mapped during my solo winters. It bypassed the congested gorge, but it was brutal, exposed, and entirely unvetted by council standards.

"We're taking the high line," I commanded.

Cassian glanced at the sheer granite rise, then back at me. "Now? We're three hours ahead of the scheduled ridge climb."

"The clouds are dropping too fast," I said, pointing toward the swirling gray vortex above the peak. "The main gorge will funnel the wind into an air cannon before we clear the narrows. We burn the alternate line now, or we get pinned by Silvercrest in a dead end."

"Lead," Cassian said instantly.

We cut hard left, leaving the beaten trail.

Silvercrest hesitated for ten seconds before Nolan signaled his team to follow, scrambling up the steep scree to keep us in sight.

Then the mountain broke.

The gale hit us like a solid wall of iron and snow. Within five minutes, the light died, swallowed by a screaming whiteout that erased the ridge ahead and obliterated our footprints behind. The wind shrieked through the stone teeth, tearing the breath from our lungs.

We were traversing a forty-degree icy slope when the disaster struck.

The heavy supply sled—carrying our emergency rations, medical kits, and dry shelter canvas—hit a submerged ice pocket. The steel runner snapped with a sickening metallic crack.

"Hold the line!" Elias roared, throwing his full weight onto the tow rope.

Ronan lunged forward, his boots digging into the crust, veins bulging in his neck as he grabbed the nylon tether.

A savage gust ripped down the couloir, blowing ninety miles an hour. The sled twisted violently, sliding sideways over the sheer edge of the drop-off.

"Let it go!" I screamed through the howling wind. "Ronan, drop it!"

Cassian’s knife flashed in the blinding storm. With a clean, vicious swipe, he severed the tension cord just as Ronan was dragged toward the rim.

The supply sled flipped into empty space, tumbling down a five-hundred-foot ravine before shattering against the rocks below.

Silence fell between our gasping breaths, broken only by the roar of the blizzard.

We were stranded on an open cliff face. No tents. No heavy blankets. No extra fuel.

"Stage checkpoint is four miles up," Ronan panted, ice encrusting his beard, his hands trembling with adrenaline. "If we push the pace without the sled, we can still place in the top three for the leg."

"We push into the upper ridge without shelter, we freeze before midnight," Asher shouted over the gale, shielding his face. "The temperature is dropping ten degrees an hour."

They all turned to me.

The choice pressed against my chest like a boulder. The Moon Hunt was about glory, bloodlines, and claiming the mountain. Silvercrest was right behind us; if we turned off the stage path, we gave up our position. We gave up the lead I had fought six weeks to build.

Nolan’s voice from the courtyard echoed in my mind: *No Alpha team can afford to carry an Omega through the mountains.*

I looked at Ronan’s bloodied knuckles, at Elias shivering against the gale, at Asher’s narrowed eyes, and at Cassian, waiting for my order.

"To hell with the ranking," I said, my voice cutting through the roar of the storm.

Cassian’s eyes flared in the whiteout.

"Two miles west," I commanded, pointing down toward a jagged depression in the timber basin. "There’s an abandoned forestry station tucked under the granite lip. It’s off the race corridor, but the walls are stone and the timber roof will hold. We don't freeze for a plastic ribbon. We move to the station. Now!"

None of them argued. None of them questioned why their Omega was ordering a retreat from the race line.

"You heard her!" Cassian bellowed into the wind. "Pack tight! Follow Wren!"

I turned, digging my picks into the ice, forging a descent through the blinding snow toward the only shelter that could keep us alive.

Through a sudden tear in the swirling whiteout, I glanced back up the slope.

Five silhouettes emerged through the storm.

Nolan’s team had reached the high traverse, their white-and-silver jackets battered by the gale. Nolan stopped at the edge of the shelf where our sled had fallen. He saw our tracks veering off the official stage line, cutting straight toward the forbidden timber basin.

Instead of pushing forward toward the summit checkpoint to claim the lead, Nolan’s silhouette froze.

He raised his arm, barking an order into the wind.

Silvercrest pivoted. Abandoning the race path, Nolan led his squad down the slope, plunging through the blizzard directly after us.