20oAdewumi
Nineteen-year-old Dahlia has spent her entire life in the freezing shadows of Oakhaven's Great Briar Wall, taught to fear the bloodthirsty beasts that roam the endless winter outside. But when her eight-year-old sister falls deathly ill with the winter fever, Dahlia risks everything to steal the hoarded medicine from the village elders.
Caught and convicted of treason, her punishment is absolute: exile past the wall, directly into the jaws of the monsters.
But Dahlia doesn't die on the forest floor.
Instead, she is claimed by Vane, the ruthless, scarred Alpha of the Blackwood pack. Bound to her by an ancient, fated magic he calls "the bond," Vane offers her warm hearths, safety, and a promise to secretly protect her sister.
But Dahlia knows better than to trust a predator's mercy.
Trapped in a towering stone keep filled with wolves who view her as a fragile liability, Dahlia must navigate a lethal web of pack politics and her own deep-seated trauma. Vane promises he won't force the bond on her, offering her a cold, isolated truce. Yet, as the winter deepens, Dahlia is forced to confront a terrifying truth: the monsters behind the wall of thorns might not be the ones she needs to fear the most