Prologue

As the first snowflake settled, it whispered secrets of a winter tale waiting to unfold. First snowfalls usually come lightly to Sequim. The snow is soft as it glides down towards the cold earth. This year, however, it came in a blizzard. Snow dropped like an anvil, with ice forming instantaneously along the roads and trails. The wind blew so hard that the forest wolf patrol on duty had to seek shelter. They couldn’t see two feet before them, even with their werewolf eyesight. Thinking no one would be out in this storm, they hunkered down in the small town, warming themselves by their fires and watching movies to pass the time. They didn’t expect a young witch secretly making her way through the trees towards an old house.

She’d never been to this town so she wasn’t sure of its whereabouts, she only knew what she was told by the one who sent her. Carrying the device that would change her fate and two rival packs, she slowly crept through the foot of snow that had already settled on the ground. The wind whipped her white hood off her head, blowing her hair in her face. She wasn’t used to wearing white; it was as foreign to her as the forest she walked in. Her standard black and crimson to the shade of almost purple cloak was left at home to ensure she stayed unseen in the blizzard made by her mother.

Before she could put the hood back on, she looked up to see what she had been looking for, the wind helping her quest. There it was, standing just outside the line of trees that makes up the forest—an old two-story wooden house lined with a porch. Even in the blizzard, you could tell the house looked ancient. It held well against the onslaught of wind and ice that jabbed at it from every which way. Whatever magic it had in the house’s bones ensured it would stand even in dire circumstances. She quickly set to work on the secret mission only she could perform. She held the key to slipping through, they told her. She carefully set the device up next to the trail on the other side of the tree wall, making sure not to touch the pointed tips that barely stuck out of the bush. From the naked eye, you couldn’t tell it wasn’t from the forest.

Her fingers turned red and almost stopped working correctly before she finished, the snow already collecting on her shoulders and the top of the device holding a secret weapon. She looked up one more time at the ancient house, deciding that even in a blizzard, it had a beauty. Not that she would ever admit it to anyone for fear of being whipped. She turned and left the future to it's fate. The snow covered the house and surrounding forest like a chrysalis, incubating the events of what was to come. As soon as she was done, she left just as she had entered. Quietly, swiftly, and with lethal focus. The blizzard was already covering her tracks before anyone knew she was there.