​“Hey! I think we should rest!” Asael shouted, her voice completely swallowed by the howling mountain blizzard. She was struggling to take a single step through the knee-deep drifts, the sub-zero gale slamming into her body and tearing at her clothes. “The air is too strong! I can’t even see where we’re going!”​Todd let out a heavy, fogged breath, pausing briefly in the whiteout to glare back at her. “You should have stayed inside the car when he asked you to!”​“I was going to stay inside the car!” Asael yelled back, her boots slipping on the hidden ice beneath the snow as the wind pulled her backward. “But you were the one who told me you wanted me to come with you!”​“I asked you to come so you wouldn't die inside the car!” Todd delivered flatly, his tone cold and unyielding against the storm.​Asael stared at him in utter shock. “What?!”​“Trust me, we should keep walking,” Todd commanded. He reached out with a thick, gloved hand, grabbed Asael firmly by her arm, and dragged her

Gage struggled to rise.His palms pressed against the frozen ground as he tried to force his broken body upright, but his strength had completely abandoned him. His arms trembled violently under his own weight. His breathing grew heavy and ragged in the freezing air.He managed to lift himself halfway off the snow—and then his body gave out.*THUD.*Gage collapsed back onto the frozen ground. For several endless seconds, he lay there, motionless, his face buried in the frost.Then, something unnatural happened.Far away across the frozen wilderness, the wolves suddenly stopped. The pack hunting Roman came to a dead halt. The beasts tracking Vener froze in their tracks. Those hunting Todd and Asael went completely motionless. Even the wolves moving silently through the storm around Lyssa froze like stone statues.One by one, every wild beast on the mountain turned its head in the exact same direction—toward Gage.Without making a sound, hundreds of paws tore through the snow as the ent