Hide. Hide the body. Hide the body where it will never, ever be found.

Kershov had a certain instinct for savagery when he was born, but some things he learned along the way. On the unforgiving arctic tundra, that way was narrow, and treacherous, and colder than ice. Each lesson written in blood and remembered in pain. Each step an equal punishment and blessing. The Law of the Land—the only law known to any—was survive. Ker discovered that unbreakable decree about the same time he learned that no one can be trusted. Then he learned how to lie . . . and steal . . . and hurt others so badly that they would not have an opportunity to cross him again. He learned what sharp fangs could do to flesh. He learned that everyone has a raw primal fear buried deep in their guts and how it could strip away everything about them until there was nothing left but screams. And once he’d gotten very good at the messiest sort of work, Kershov learned how to erase all the evidence as if there’d never been any victim there at all.

The first step to hiding a body—even before that body became a lifeless corpse—was to pick the perfect spot. As the frigid monster hauled the limp form of the fae on his back, he already held a place in mind: the mountains. In the dead grip of winter, none but snow-born wolves would dare hike the perilous paths carved into the frozen cliff faces. A misplaced step might mean plummeting toward certain death. Wrathful blizzards smothered the environment in towers of blinding white, erasing familiar landmarks and trapping prisoners behind insurmountable walls. The rocky range was a death sentence for those that traveled it unprepared. For Kershov, who wanted to get lost, they were the best sort of sanctuary.

Hide the body. There must be no evidence. Nothing to trace. Nothing to find. Snowflakes fell in thick bundles from the slate-grey sky. They settled on Ker’s chiseled visage and the raised white hairs on his nape, but not his spine—that was where the young wolfess lay, perpendicular across his back and limp as a dead doe. Slung over the pallid dragga’s broad shoulders, her fine-bone paws weren’t even close to skimming the ground. He could feel the shallow rasp of her breath as she lay unconscious. Good. Even if she opened her eyes this second, she would not recognize this landscape. Nobody would. In another few hours, the shallow tracks Kershov’s giant paws had pressed into the snow would vanish, and the path he’d just traveled would transform into a completely different road.

With the sun veiled behind those seamless ashen clouds, it was hard to gauge how long the macabre pair had been travelling. Kershov glanced over one shoulder, though of course there was nothing to see behind him but a wall of alabaster and the girl’s “sleeping” face. A low growl thrummed in his chest. They’d gone far enough.

Ahead, a few pockets of snow sagged oddly against the foot of a rising stone monolith. Kershov crept closer and scraped a paw through—not surprised in the least when the glacial layer caved in to reveal an open space hidden beneath. “Looks like we’ve found our shelter, Miss,” the frost-breathing Czar murmured. Suddenly his heart started to slam hard and fast in his chest, so loud he feared the unholy pounding would wake the grayscale lass. He dove into the clandestine cavern before he could change his mind. The Beast was starving. It needed this. It needed her. Kershov would choose the suffering of one over the suffering of his pack any damn day of the year.