The cold never touched him.
He was born of it—bone-deep strength carved from glaciers and storms, skin thick and marbled with blue markings that pulsed faintly in the dark like molten ice. But now, kneeling in the snow with a trembling bundle in his arms, Rhazek was aware of the cold in a new way.
Because she felt it.
His mate.
His wife.
She was cradled against his chest, small hands balled into fists near her heart, lips pale and pressed tight as her body shivered violently in his arms. Her skin—soft and milk-pale—was nothing like his, too thin, too delicate for this place. Her snow-white hair was already crusted with frost. She looked like something made for starlight and silks, not the bitter, savage world he ruled.
And yet—he’d never seen anything so beautiful.
She was quiet. Always quiet. Watching him with wide, blinking eyes as if she wasn’t sure any of this was real. As if he wasn’t real. When he’d found her, half-buried in the ice, his first thought had been that she was some ghost-spirit of the old mountains.
Until she whimpered.
Until she tried to crawl away, limbs shaking with exhaustion and fear, and he’d scooped her into his arms with a gentleness that felt unnatural in his own body.
She hadn’t fought. Not after the second day. Now she just leaned against him like she didn’t know what else to do.
“I have you,” he murmured, voice low and warm against the frozen silence. “You are not alone now.”
He watched her blink slowly, lashes thick with frost. She didn’t answer. But her hand—so small it barely curled around one of his fingers—tightened slightly.
That was enough.
He rose to his full height, wrapping her in furs thick enough to swallow her whole. She weighed nothing. Like a breath. Like something the wind could steal.
But it wouldn’t.
Not while he breathed.
She didn’t belong here. The cold would kill her if he faltered even once. But Rhazek was no longer just surviving for himself. He would become her fire, her walls, her shelter.
And gods help this frozen world if it ever tried to take her from him.