Page 7 of Iron Beneath the Snow

She struck at him with her free hand, aiming for his throat with everything she had, but he absorbed the impact with barely a shift, as though her force had nowhere to land.

“I said you will not fight,” he repeated, leaning closer.

Only then did his scent reach her—smoke, cold iron, pine crushed beneath weight—nothing like Frostvein’s controlled purity, something harsher and less contained, something that set every instinct on edge.

Her wolf responded in kind.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” she said.

His gaze moved over her—the white dress, the drying blood, the remnants of ritual still marking her skin—before settling again.

“Oh,” he said quietly, “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

She drove her knee upward, but he shifted with the motion, catching her and turning her just enough to break her balance so she struck the wall behind her.

His hand came to her jaw, firm enough to hold her still.

“For once,” he said, his voice lowering, “be silent.”

The command should have ignited anger.

Instead, something in it cut through the chaos with a precision that felt almost surgical.

From the corridor came a roar—deep, furious, unmistakable.

Her father.

The sound rolled through the stone, but the man in front of her did not react.

“Listen carefully,” he said.

Her breath had gone uneven, but she did not look away.

“In the next few seconds, I am going to mark you.”

The words struck harder than the noise outside.

“No.”

“You will not scream.”

Her wolf surged violently.

“You will not beg.”

“I would never—”

“And when you wake,” he continued, as though she had not spoken, “you will not remember this clearly.”

Cold spread through her veins.

“You think this is mercy?”

For the first time, something shifted in his eyes—not doubt, not hesitation, but recognition of the question itself.

“Mercy,” he said quietly, “has never kept a pack alive.”

Another clash of steel sounded closer.