Banished to freeze, she woke up trapped under a pile of massive wolves. They weren’t eating her; they were warming her
What happens when the person everyone throws away becomes the one person they can’t live without? For Amanda, being the Pack Omega meant a life of scraps, whispers, and enduring the icy contempt of Alpha Marcus. At the Great Moon Ceremony, she wasn’t just overlooked. She was publicly rejected, cast out, and banished into a raging blizzard. She was nothing. She was no one.
She found shelter in a ruined barn, expecting to die. But when she woke up, she wasn’t alone. She was surrounded by a nest of ten massive wild wolves.
And they weren’t sleeping. They were guarding her.
The blizzard didn’t care about ceremony. It clawed at the walls of the Great Hall, its howl a bitter mockery of the unity Alpha Marcus was preaching inside. Amanda stood in the back as she always did, near the kitchens, where the warmth of the ovens couldn’t quite reach her.
The smell of roasting deer was tainted by the soap on her chapped hands. She was an Omega, the lowest of the low in the Stone River Pack. Her wolf, if she even had one, was silent, a dormant, useless thing that had never answered her call.
Tonight was the Unity Moon, the night the Alpha would finally choose his mate, solidifying his rule. Hope was a dangerous, stupid thing for an Omega to possess, but Amanda’s heart hammered anyway. Not because she thought he would choose her—that was a child’s fantasy—but because she held a secret, flickering admiration for Alpha Marcus.
He was strong, decisive, and handsome in a way that made the other she-wolves like Beth, the Beta’s daughter, preen and posture. Amanda just hoped that once he chose his Luna, his gaze would soften. Perhaps the Pack’s casual cruelty toward her would ease.
Now, Marcus’s voice boomed, silencing the hall. He stood on the raised platform, a veritable god of a man with dark hair and eyes like chips of obsidian. He scanned the crowd.
His gaze passed over the hopeful, eager faces. It passed over Beth, who was practically vibrating with anticipation. Then, his eyes landed on Amanda.
The entire hall went silent. Amanda froze, a cold dread washing over her. He wasn’t looking at her with desire; he was looking at her with contempt.
«We are a Pack of strength,» Marcus began, his voice dangerously quiet. «We honor the moon goddess by culling the weak, by ensuring the Pack remains pure and powerful.»
He took a step toward her. The crowd parted like the sea, leaving Amanda standing alone in a circle of suffocating silence.
«For years,» he continued, stalking toward her, «we have carried a burden, a leech, a wolf-less drain on our resources.»
Amanda’s blood turned to ice. «Alpha, I… I don’t…»
«You don’t what, Omega?» he sneered. «You don’t work, you don’t serve, you don’t eat our food while offering nothing?»
«I do my chores,» she whispered, tears stinging her eyes. «I clean the kitchens, I mend the…»
«You are a void,» he spat, and the word hit her harder than a physical blow. He was just feet from her now. «Your parents, Thomas and Sarah, lowered their heads in shame the day you failed to shift. Your presence here is a curse, a weakness I will no longer tolerate.»
He turned to the Pack. «Beth, daughter of my Beta, will stand beside me as my chosen mate.»
A gasp went through the crowd, followed by a smattering of applause. Beth’s face lit up with venomous triumph, and she shot Amanda a look of pure, unadulterated hatred.
«And as my first act with my true mate beside me,» Marcus roared, «I cast out the taint. Amanda of No-Wolf, you are rejected. Not just by me, but by this Pack.»
He pointed to the door. «You are banished. You will leave Stone River Territory by moonrise. If you are seen again, you will be hunted as a rogue.»
He didn’t just reject her as a mate, a right he barely had as she was never a candidate. He rejected her existence.
«Marcus, no, Alpha, please,» she cried, falling to her knees. «It’s a blizzard. I won’t survive. Where will I go?»
He looked down at her, his face carved from granite. «That is not my concern.»
He turned his back on her. «Guards, escort her to the border. Give her nothing.»
Two of the Pack’s enforcers, men she had known her whole life, grabbed her arms. They didn’t bother with a coat. They dragged her from the hall past her parents, who refused to meet her eyes, and past the smirking face of Beth.
They hauled her through the screaming wind for what felt like miles until they reached the icy creek that marked the edge of their land.
«You heard the Alpha,» one guard, Liam, muttered, avoiding her gaze. He’d been kinder to her in the past. «Go.»
«Liam, please,» she begged, the snow already soaking through her thin tunic. «My family…»
«You have no family,» the other guard, Owen, growled. «You’re rogue now.»
He shoved her hard. Amanda stumbled, falling into the half-frozen creek. The shock of the water stole her breath.
When she scrambled up the other side, they were already walking away, their backs rigid against the storm. She was alone. Banished. Rejected.
Amanda ran. She didn’t know where, just away. The wind tore at her, the snow bit at her skin, and the tears froze on her cheeks.
Her silent wolf offered no warmth, no strength, no comfort. She was just a girl, and she was going to die. After an hour, or maybe it was a lifetime, her legs gave out.
She collapsed against something solid. Wood. Peeling paint. She looked up, her vision blurring.
An old, dilapidated barn, long abandoned from the days when humans farmed this land. It was shelter. A pathetic, broken shelter, but it was something.
With the last of her strength, Amanda pulled open the rotting door, the hinges screaming in protest. She stumbled inside, the smell of old hay and dry rot filling her lungs. She found a pile of ancient, dusty straw in a collapsed stall and burrowed into it, curling into a tight ball.
The cold was too deep; her body was already shutting down.
«So this is it,» she whispered to the darkness. «A barn. A pile of straw. An Omega’s death.»
She closed her eyes, the howls of the blizzard and the ghost of Marcus’s voice tangling in her head. She didn’t expect to ever open them again.
Darkness. Cold. And then, warmth.
Amanda drifted in a feverish, shallow state of consciousness. She was aware of the cold, a deep, bone-grinding chill that had settled into her very marrow. But somewhere at the edge of her awareness, a new sensation was blooming.
A radiating, living heat. She dreamt of fur, of deep, rhythmic breathing, of the scent of pine and rich earth—a smell so potent it chased away the rot of the old barn. A low growl rumbled through her dreams, not one of anger, but of contentment.
Like a cat’s purr, but a thousand times deeper. Amanda’s eyes snapped open. She was no longer alone in the hay.
Her heart leaped into her throat, choking her. She was surrounded. Encased.
The nest wasn’t an exaggeration; it was literal. Massive, furred bodies were pressed against her back, her sides, her legs. She was the center of a living, breathing circle of wolves.
She didn’t scream. She couldn’t. Fear had stolen her voice.
These were not the wolves of her pack. The Stone River wolves were mostly greys and browns, large but lean. These were monsters.
The one pressed against her back was a deep midnight black, its fur so thick it was almost blue in the faint moonlight filtering through the barn boards. The one whose head was resting near her feet was a mottled silver and grey, bigger than any wolf she had ever seen. Another was the color of burnt umber, its eyes closed in sleep.
She tried to count, her mind frantic. One, two, three, five, eight, ten. Ten giant wolves.
And she was in the middle of their cuddle puddle. Her first thought was that this was a rogue pack and they were keeping her. A toy, or worse, a meal they were saving.
But the scene was too peaceful. They weren’t restraining her; they were shielding her. The warmth she felt was their combined body heat, a living furnace that had kept her from freezing to death.
The wolf to her immediate left, a massive creature of pure snowy white—an anomaly, a true winter wolf—opened its eyes. They were not the yellow or brown of a normal wolf. They were a piercing, intelligent, human shade of blue.
Amanda stopped breathing. The white wolf watched her, its gaze unblinking. It made no move, no aggressive gesture. It simply observed.
Then, it huffed a quiet breath, a plume of steam rising in the cold air, and nudged its nose gently against her shoulder. It was a gesture of reassurance.
This was impossible. Rogues were feral. They were broken. They didn’t show tenderness.
Slowly, as if awakened by her fear, the other wolves began to stir. One by one, eyes opened. Golden, green, amber, and that startling blue.
Ten pairs of eyes, all focused on her. This was not a pack. This was an army.
The one she hadn’t seen yet, the one that had been pressed against her back—the midnight black wolf—sat up. It dwarfed the others. This was the Alpha.
He was magnificent, with a scar running over one eye, giving him a look of terrifying wisdom. He stepped over the other wolves with a grace that was almost liquid and stood before her. Amanda pressed herself back into the hay, her body trembling so violently she could barely focus.
