He made me run laps until my legs burned, taught me to track scents and how to move without a sound.

“You have to be strong, Eira,” he’d say. “The world won’t protect you, you’ll have to protect yourself.”

Because of that, I wanted to be strong, wanted to stop waking up screaming and stop feeling like prey. Cyrus was the only one feeding me the tools to do that.

~

One night, when I was seventeen, I found him sitting in the study, a bottle of dark liquor on the table beside him. His jaw was tight, his eyes were sharp.

“I found out who sent the killers.”

The words were like a stone dropping into still water.

“Who?” My voice trembled.

His gaze caught mine, steady and unblinking. “Alpha King Gideon Stormfang.”

The name meant nothing to me then but the weight in Cyrus’s voice gave it shape, they were cold and brutal.

“He’s the reason your parents are dead and the reason Diana’s gone. He wanted to wipe out your family, Eira and he succeeded.”

I couldn’t breathe. “Why? We… we weren’t even enemies with him. My parents were the kinddess of all and I don't think they will have issues with anyone”

“That’s the worst part,” Cyrus said, bitterness curling his mouth. “Your parents were respected and loved. But power-hungry Alphas like Gideon don’t need a reason to slaughter anyone he desires.”

I sat there, staring at the grain of the wood table until it blurred through my tears.

From that night on, the name Gideon Stormfang became the monster under my bed.

Cyrus fed me the story in pieces over the years, that he is a brutal betrayal, a calculated slaughter, the King walking away untouched while my family burned.

He will tell it in the quiet hours when the wind howled and I couldn’t sleep. He made me feel the injustice, the rage and to make it right.

By the time I was twenty, I was no longer the girl who stumbled into his home. My body was honed for combat. My reflexes were sharp. I could shoot, run, climb and kill without hesitation. He made sure of that.

~

On my twenty-second birthday, he celebrated it with me and told me about his plan.

“I have a plan,” he said and continued.

“You’ll go to Stormfang territory. Watch him, learn him and wait for the right moment. When the right moment comes…” He closed my fingers around the dagger my father gave me when I was sixteen, I told him of it.

“…you end the monster who destroyed your life.” He concluded.

That was the day I stopped being Eira Frostclaw, the Alpha’s disgraced daughter and became Eva, his shadow and weapon.

I didn’t know then that my cage will be built not of steel but of trust. And that trust will be the sharpest blade of all.

~

Gideon's POV

I have been trying to avoid looking at anyone this days. The council was driving me to the brink. Shadowbite’s pack trade demands, Darkhowl’s latest border skirmish, and the fact that the moon was nearing full without my wolf stirring for a mate.

Then I saw her.

She was in the training yard, kneeling beside a flower bed, trimming the frostbitten leaves with steady, careful hands.

The sunlight caught her hair, turning the strands into something almost silver. Her movements were graceful and precise, nothing like the hasty, hurried motions of most servants trying to get through their work.

Something in my chest… shifted. My wolf surged to the surface so fast it nearly stole my breath.

Who is she? The question burned through me. Not what’s her name or where’s she from but 'who' in the way you ask when you’ve just seen a storm coming over the horizon.

I’d seen every type of woman in these halls, ambitious nobles, shy Omega maids, fierce warrior she-wolves. None of them have ever done this to me.

I made myself walk past her pretending not to notice her but my wolf didn’t stop watching.

It wasn’t until two days later, during the morning rations round that I spoke to her. She was carrying a tray of bread for the kitchens with her head bowed.

“What’s your name?” I asked without thinking.

She froze for half a heartbeat before saying, “Eva, Your Majesty.”

Eva..... The name fit her like it have been waiting for her all along and yet… something about it rang false, like a note slightly out of tune.

That afternoon, I passed the west wing, the one no one was allowed in without my permission. Behind the door lay the only secret I kept from my pack; a young woman who was brought to me half-dead five years ago and she have never woken.

Her name is Diana as I was told back then, though, I have never told anyone her name, not the healers nor my generals.

When I opened the door, the scent of lavender greeted me. Her golden hair fanned across the pillow and her breathing, it's slow and steady. I sat beside her bed as I use to do every evening.

“You will like her,” I murmured. “Eva. There’s something about her that doesn’t belong here… and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Diana, of course, didn’t answer. She can't because she is in a coma.

~

Eira(Eva)'s POV

Gideon Stormfang noticed me but I didn’t care. I was here for a reason and it's not supposed to be seen.

Still… there was something about the way he said my name earlier that unsettled me, like it mattered to him.

The west wing assignment came three weeks into my posting. I was told to deliver water and change linens for a patient under the Alpha’s care.

When the guard opened the door, I stepped inside and froze. A young woman lay in the center of the massive bed, pale but… radiant. Her dark lashes fanned against her cheeks and her lips faintly flushed.