Chapter 5

Elara POV

The work was brutal and slow. The permafrost fought us with every inch, splintering our makeshift tools and draining what little strength we had left. My palms blistered and bled, and my brothers' breath came in ragged white plumes that spoke of exhaustion nearly beyond bearing. But we did not stop. The moon climbed high above the Frostfang Wilds, casting pale silver light over the frozen slope, and still the sound of stone striking stone rang out into the howling wind.

By the time the last light of dusk had long faded into true night, we had managed to carve a narrow, rough hollow into the frozen earth-barely large enough for the five of us to huddle together in a single tangled mass. It was not a home. It was not even a proper shelter by any civilized measure. But the frozen walls blocked the killing wind, and our shared body heat gathered in the cramped space like a fragile, defiant ember. We dragged the torn furs from the hovel over the entrance, packed the gaps with packed snow for insulation, and collapsed inside, too exhausted to speak.

The morning light at the Black Moon Outpost's Ration Clearing was as gray and unforgiving as the frozen mud beneath our boots. The air reeked of wet earth, copper, and the unmistakable stench of despair. At the edge of the clearing, guards callously dragged away the stiff, frostbitten corpses of those who hadn't survived the night, leaving ugly trails in the snow.

We had survived our first night in the dugout shelter, but just barely.

Standing in the ragged line of exiles, we each received our daily ration from a masked guard: a single, fist-sized Stone-Tack. It was a gray-black lump of baked grain, hard as actual rock.

As we huddled together away from the biting wind, I saw my mother, Catherine, subtly reach out. Her maternal instincts, desperate and self-sacrificing, overrode her own starvation. She tried to press her only Stone-Tack into my brother Finn's hand.

Finn recoiled as if she had pressed a white-hot branding iron to his palm.

A low, suppressed growl tore from his throat. His eyes, usually bright with brotherly warmth, flashed a furious, humiliated red. He shoved the hard bread back into her trembling hands.

"I am a Warrior of this family!" Finn snarled, his voice cracking under the weight of his shattered pride. "Not a pup who needs his mother's scraps to survive!"

Catherine flinched, stepping back as tears instantly welled in her eyes. For a proud male wolf, being unable to provide for his Pack-being reduced to eating his mother's starving portion-was the ultimate degradation. His anger was born of a terrifying guilt and his own perceived uselessness.

I stepped forward, my gaze locking onto my brother with icy precision, ready to intervene. But Mason beat me to it.

My eldest brother grabbed Finn's shoulder, his grip firm and grounding. Under Mason's steady pressure and my unyielding stare, the wild fury in Finn's eyes fractured. His shoulders slumped. Reaching out, he gently took our mother's hand. "I'm sorry," he rasped, his voice thick with shame.

Catherine nodded, a fragile truce settling over them. But I saw the cracks. Love and sacrifice were beautiful in the Capital, but here in the Frostfang Wilds, they were a fast track to a shared grave.

"Stop," I said.

My voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the freezing air with the sharp, glacial authority of an Alpha. I looked at my mother, my brothers, and finally at my father, Arthur, who was still staring blankly at the dirt.

"Eat your own rations," I commanded.

When Catherine hesitated, clutching the bread, I didn't soften. I couldn't afford to.

"From this moment on, we are a Pack," I declared, my tone leaving absolutely no room for debate. "In this Pack, every member's survival is the priority. Anyone who gives their ration away is betraying the Pack. They will be considered a Rogue to me, and left to fend for themselves. We survive together. Or we die alone. Eat. Now."

The word *Rogue* hung in the air, heavy and terrifying. It was the ultimate threat to any wolf.

They stared at me-their *wolfless*, fragile youngest sister-but they didn't see a pup anymore. They saw a leader. Slowly, mechanically, Mason took a bite of his rock-hard ration. Then Finn. Then Catherine. Even my father, spurred by the sheer force of my will, lifted the Stone-Tack to his lips and began to chew.

I took a bite of my own, ignoring the way it scraped against my gums. We had food, and we had a temporary shelter, but my mind was already racing ahead.

The dugout had kept us alive through the night, but the frozen earth was unstable. As the morning sun hit the permafrost, the soil would shift. Without proper reinforcement and a ventilation shaft, our sanctuary would become a suffocating tomb.

I swallowed the dry, tasteless lump and looked up at the towering black stone quarry in the distance.

"Mason," I said, wiping the crumbs from my cracked lips. "Finish eating. We need to head to the tool shed near the quarry rampart. We need a shovel and some sturdy iron bars to reinforce the shelter roof."