A Cage of Frost and Ferns

Told in alternating third-person perspectives, the story opens in the bloody chaos of a forest ambush. Nevra Tallen - a brilliant botanist wandering too deep into the Vokran Taiga - makes a foolishly compassionate choice. Kind-hearted to a fault, she swaps cloaks with a terrified, condemned poacher to save the girl's life. Now, the militant Skolovzar pack, a legion of ruthless dread-wolves preparing for a supernatural war, believes Nevra is their sworn enemy. At their head is Vorok, a colossal, blood-drenched Alpha whose mere presence freezes the mist. But Nevra harbors a unique immunity: she can hear the wolves' thoughts. While Vorok snarls and threatens her with feral dominance, his mind betrays a bittersweet, unspoken devotion. 'She is so fragile,' his thoughts echo. 'I must not crush her.' Bound by her fake identity and his silent love, Nevra must navigate an eerie war-camp of monsters alongside her spectral moth-toad, Chulu. But with a magical sickness turning her lungs to crystal, what happens when the feral Alpha realizes his fiercely guarded obsession is dying from the very forest he rules?