#####Chapter 2

She trained with bruises on her arms and questions in her heart. Jessie never answered all of them. She didn’t speak of Snow Pack. She didn’t speak of Alpha Jon or Lira or the trial that stole a mother from her child. But Mia remembered every detail. Every scream. Every betrayal. And that silence became her vow.

By twelve, she could out-sprint most warriors in Green Pack. By fourteen, she could disarm Denis with a wooden blade. By sixteen, she knew how to kill a man in four different ways without spilling a drop of blood.

Jessie taught her not to just survive, but to infiltrate, manipulate, destroy.

“You’re not just a girl,” she said one night, voice low by firelight. “You’re a weapon.”

Mia didn’t flinch.

“I don’t want to be a weapon,” she whispered. “I want to be more, I want to be a storm.”

Jessie looked at her, then nodded.

“So be it.”

The Green Pack’s training ground was always alive with sound swords clashing, boys shouting, elders barking orders but the noise faded at the edge of the cliffs where three children used to escape. They weren’t supposed to be there, high above the valley where eagles circled, but it was the only place Mia could breathe.

She sat cross-legged on the edge, scuffed knees and bleeding knuckles hidden beneath her tattered cloak. Jayson stood behind her, silent as always, while Kira darted around the boulders with reckless energy.

“You’re going to fall one day,” Jayson said quietly.

“I won’t,” Mia replied, not looking back. “I watch my footing.”

He didn’t argue. He never did. Instead, he sat beside her, leaving a respectful space between them. Kira eventually joined, brushing grass from her clothes.

They were just eleven years old when they’d first found that cliff. Raven would always come and watch her and smile at her but will disappear once she looked back at him. It wasn't love he felt but something more comforting.

Mia noticed Raven first and then Jayson and Kira. He wasn't widely known in the pack, so they asked Mia to stay far.

Jayson Stark, the noble son of a respected warrior, had always been quiet, withdrawn yet drawn to Mia like moss to stone. Something about her made him stay. Maybe it was the way she never cried when the boys called her names, or how her eyes burned when the trainers told her to behave like a girl.

But Jayson didn’t see a girl. He saw a warrior.

“Why do you always pick fights?” Kira had asked once, swinging her feet over the cliff’s edge.

“Because they deserve it,” Mia muttered. “They call me weak because I was adopted. Because I like swords. Because I’m not one of them.”

“You fight too hard,” Jayson said. Not as a criticism, but a quiet observation. “Harder than even the sons of Betas.”

Mia turned to him, eyes narrow. “You think I shouldn’t?”

“I think you don’t have to fight to prove anything to me.”

That was the first time Mia felt something strange when she looked at him. A flutter she buried beneath anger and grit.

As the years passed, their bond only deepened. The other boys saw Mia as a threat, always too fast, too clever, too determined. She disguised her pain with sarcasm and the sharp edge of her blade, but Jayson and Kira saw through her armor.

Kira became the glue that held them together. Fierce and loud-mouthed, she always teased Jayson for his brooding silence and Mia for her reckless anger. But when Mia came back bloodied from another fight, it was Kira who patched her up, muttering curses at the boys who dared touch her.

“She doesn’t need your protection,” Jayson had told Kira once, watching as she dabbed a cut on Mia’s cheek.

One cold evening on her way back from personal training, she was jumped.

Mia spun, breath ragged, a cut split across her brow, but her stance held firm. The boy at her feet groaned, clutching his ribs.

“Next time,” she snapped, “don’t try grabbing me from behind.”

A cluster of boys loomed nearby, all sons of minor warriors bitter, bruised, and eager to put her in her place. She’d humiliated three of them before the others grew bold enough to intervene.

“She’s not even one of us,” one spat, wiping blood from his mouth. “Jessie’s stray mutt. Rogue trash.”

Mia tilted her head. “Funny. You say that while coughing up teeth.”

Another stepped forward bigger, louder, but slower. He was breathing heavy from their earlier sparring match.

“You think strength makes you one of us?” he barked. “You’re not blood. You’re not even pack.”

“And yet you’re on the ground,” Mia replied coldly.

He lunged sloppy, angry.

She pivoted, dodging low, then slammed her elbow into his spine. He hit the dirt with a choked grunt, and the circle of onlookers gasped.

“Enough!” one of the older trainees barked, stepping in. “This isn’t a brawl. Back to formation.”

Mia backed away, chest heaving, blood dripping slowly down the side of her cheek. The others began to scatter, some throwing glares over their shoulders.

That was when she heard it.

“Don’t waste your time on her, bro,” one boy muttered under his breath. “You should be training for the Alpha Trials.”

Mia froze.

The words struck like a blow.

Alpha Trials?

She turned sharply, narrowing her eyes at the retreating backs. “What did you just say?”

The boy smirked but didn’t stop walking. “If you don’t know, you don’t matter.”

She stood in the middle of the field, the icy wind biting at her skin. For a moment, she forgot the sting on her cheek, the ache in her knuckles.

Alpha Jon had no male heir.

And the Trials… were only for males of strength and royal blood.

Something twisted deep in her gut.

Something old. Cold. And burning.

The fire inside her, long buried under frost and discipline, roared back to life.

Mia rushed home, shaken after hearing about the Alpha Trials.

She told Jessie, who already knew and had signed her up already.

The moment the boy uttered “Alpha Trials,” Mia felt the world tilt beneath her.

Her heart slammed against her ribs as she spun and sprinted from the training ground, the words pounding louder than any clashing swords:

Alpha Jon had no male heir. The Trials were returning.

Boots skidded over frozen dirt and snow as she tore through the village path, dodging pine roots and frost-slick rocks. When the sharp outline of Jessie’s cabin appeared on the horizon, Mia didn’t slow. She barreled through the door.

She stood at the table, sharpening a curved blade, the rhythmic scrap of metal against stone filling the room. Her untouched bowl of stew sat cold beside her.

“They’re talking about the Alpha Trials,” Mia said, breathless.

Jessie looked up calmly. “I know.”

Mia’s eyes widened. “You knew? Since when?”

Jessie set down the blade, wiping the metal clean. “Since last night. Word spreads quickly when you’ve trained yourself to listen.”

“And you weren’t going to tell me?”

Jessie gave a short shrug. “I was waiting to see if you were alert enough to figure it out. You did.”

“So what now?” Mia stepped closer, anger and disbelief rising. “You think I’m going to watch them choose someone else to take the throne that should’ve been ”

“I already signed you up.”

The words hit like a slap.

Mia blinked. “What?”

“You’re not going as Mia Snow,” Jessie said firmly. “You’re going as Clinton.”

That name, the false identity Jessie had crafted long ago for a future they were never sure would come, sank into the silence between them like a blade.

“I can’t do this,” Mia whispered. “Pretending to be someone I’m not…”

“You’re not pretending. You’re becoming,” Jessie interrupted. “If you want revenge, justice, your birthright,then this is how you take it.”

Mia turned away, throat tight. “I don’t want to be a boy.”

“Then you can stay here and keep bleeding for nothing,” Jessie snapped. “Or you can remember how your mother died chained and beheaded in the snow while your father watched without a word.”

The memory struck with savage clarity, blood, frost, the roar of silence.

Mia looked back at her mentor, eyes burning. “Do you have to cut the wound deeper every time just to remind me?”

Jessie didn't even look up at her.

The next three days stretched beyond agony.

Jessie and Denis pushed her past her limits. Every hour was filled with drills, posture corrections, voice training, movement adjustments. Mia learned to walk with weight in her shoulders and silence in her spine. They bound her chest in layers of cloth until her ribs ached. She spoke in lower registers until her voice scratched and broke.