I stayed at the window until the glass fogged with my breath.
Chapter two
Dinner with Rae always felt like coming up for air.
I pushed through the door of their cabin still smiling from something Ash had said, the cold hitting my face after two hours in that warm, chaotic kitchen. Behind me, I could hear Kane and Kade arguing about whose turn it was to do dishes while Vince tried to restore order with his professor voice. It wasn't working. It never worked.
I loved them for it.
The walk back to the dorms was short — Rae and her mates had a place on the edge of campus, close enough that I could visit but far enough that students didn't constantly interrupt them. She'd insisted on that when they started a family. "I need somewhere that's just ours," she'd told me. "Somewhere Alexandra can be loud without scandalizing anyone."
Alexandra was absolutely scandalizing everyone regardless.
Two years old and already running the house. She'd spent most of dinner trying to feed me mashed potatoes with her hands while shouting "Lulu eat! Lulu EAT!" at increasing volumes. When I'd finally opened my mouth to accept the offering, she'd cackled like a tiny supervillain and shoved the potatoes up my nose instead.
Ash had laughed so hard he'd fallen off his chair.
"She gets that from you," Rae had said, pointing at him.
"The strategic thinking or the evil laugh?"
"Yes."
I'd cleaned potato out of my nostrils while Silas quietly handed me another napkin, his pale eyes crinkling at the corners. He didn't say much, Silas. Never had. But he noticed everything, and his silences were comfortable instead of awkward.
"You're good with her," he'd said.
"She's easy to be good with."
"She asks about you. When you're not here." He'd paused. "She calls you her wolf."
That had cracked something in my chest I hadn't known was tight.
Her wolf.
I'd spent eighteen years being the kid Gregor took in. The orphan with the visions. The girl who was always preparing for something no one else could see. But to Alexandra, I was just Lulu. Her wolf. Someone who belonged.
Rae had caught my expression from across the kitchen. She always did.
"You okay?"
"Yeah." I'd cleared my throat. "Just... yeah."
She hadn't pushed. That was the thing about Rae — she knew when to let things sit. Seven years of chosen sisterhood had taught us both when words helped and when they just got in the way.
Gregor had raised me at the orphanage. He was the only father I'd ever known. Then seven years ago, we'd come to Frosthaven and there was Rae — a girl from the lower forty-eight who'd stumbled into our world not knowing shifters existed. She'd taken one look at Gregor and justknown. He'd looked back at her and seen her mother's face staring out of a stranger's eyes.
Father and daughter, meeting for the first time. Both of them certain before anyone said a word.
I'd watched it happen. Watched Gregor's face crack open with something I'd never seen before — recognition, grief, joy, all tangled together. Watched Rae's confusion turn to understanding turn to tears.
And somehow, in the middle of all that, I'd gained a sister.
Not by blood. Rae was Gregor's daughter that way, not me. But she'd pulled me in anyway — looked at the orphan kid her father had raised and decided I was hers too. The kind of family you build instead of the kind you're born into.
The better kind, maybe.
Now I was crunching through snow toward the dorms, mentally running through my pack list for tomorrow's overnight hike. First aid kit. Extra socks. The good thermal layer, not the one with the hole in the armpit.
