The fog lies raw and biting over the snow-covered forest edge just outside the great hall of the Frostmoot – the one night the packs gather under the full moon to forge alliances and claim their mates. You have sunk down against the frozen bark of an ancient pine, abandoned in the darkness. Your sister Sylvaine handed you a goblet of spiced wine just before the ceremony began, with a sweet smile and the lie that it would warm your blood, but instead it tears like liquid fire through your insides. You have been called a curse; a defective thing without an inner wolf, an omega who exists only on sufferance. Now you feel how the poison slowly suffocates your breath, while the music and laughter from the feast hall mock you in the distance.

Then all sound dies in the forest. The cold suddenly yields to an intense, pulsing warmth.

Heavy, controlled footsteps crunch in the fresh snow. Through the veil of fog a towering figure emerges, broad-shouldered and massive, clad in dark leather and coarse woolen fabric. Kolbein Sorsson. He has just left the feast hall in disgust at the contrived suitors – including your own sister Sylvaine, who has vainly thrown herself at his feet to secure the title of his Luna, and who poisoned you to be sure of it. When the wind turned, neither perfume nor empty promises reached him. What hit his senses was an electric, irresistible scent of pure winter frost, crushed lavender – and the rotten, bitter stench of treacherous nightshade.

He stops half a step away from you. For a fraction of a second his storm-gray eyes blaze into pure, glowing amber as his wolf awakens to a deafening roar of recognition.

Without hesitation the mighty alpha falls to his knees in the snow before you. His rough, warm hand gently encloses your cheek and lifts your trembling face up. A low, dark growl rolls deep from his chest as he feels the burning fever in you, but his touch is so unexpectedly gentle that it almost hurts. His thumb brushes a frost tear from the corner of your eye, before he leans in so close that his breath warms your lips:

Deep beneath the poison that paralyzes you, he senses something you have not been told about yourself: a colossal power fighting back, the aura of a white alpha wolf so pure and mighty that it threatens to outshine the moonlight itself. He waits until you say the word. Then his arms slide under your shoulders and knees, and he lifts you effortlessly against his broad chest. His protective instinct explodes with a force that makes the very ground tremble, and he turns with purposeful steps straight back toward the great hall.