Winter's Edge (The Crimson Winter Reverse Harem Series Book 1)

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  Winter’s Edge

  The Crimson Forest Reverse Harem Book 1

  Lindsey R. Loucks

  Contents

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About the Author

  Connect with Lindsey

  Read More from Lindsey R. Loucks

  Winter’s Edge (The Crimson Forest Reverse Harem Book 1) © December 2019 Lindsey R. Loucks

  Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Cover: Covers by Cherith

  Editing: Amalie Editorial

  Map: mrchris92

  Created with Vellum

  Map

  Chapter 1

  I heard him cry this morning when he thought I was still asleep—sobs, more like—from my immovable, crotchety, emotionally unavailable father. Or Baba as I called him. He’d cried only once before in my lifetime when my mother died, so now, I wondered if anyone else had met that same fate.

  The memory of his tears pressed down on me, slumping my shoulders as I stood outside the eastern edge of our cabin. The blustery cold wind threatened to knock me over, biting into my cheeks and nose and upsetting the balance of my bow and arrow. It was only the second snowfall, still too early for the wilds to hunker down for the coming winter. Soon, they'd be scarce, though, making all the lives of those who lived in Margin’s Row that much harder.

  Just a single line of eight cabins, separate from the town called Margin, Margin’s Row was the first line of defense for the wilds who wandered out of the Crimson Forest. A blessing for the townsfolk; a curse for us, especially since six of the eight houses in Margin’s Row were empty. Some in Margin’s Row had moved away. Some had gone into the Crimson Forest and had never come out.

  “Don't you start this again, Hellbreath," Baba hissed from the front of the cabin.

  The tension seeping from him gathered in a knot inside my chest. Since this morning, he’d barely said a word to me, which was normal, but he seemed agitated. Now, his footsteps were clipped as he tried to saddle Hellbreath.

  From the sound of her hooves crunching over the snow, she wasn't having it. Like me, she had a stubborn streak.

  I smiled into the wind, then froze at a snap from the forest. I spun to aim, noting Baba’s sudden silence. He'd heard it, too, no doubt, but why was he so jumpy?

  I released a slow breath, feeling the steam rise up my face, and listened to the sounds of the forest, which were both familiar and dangerous.

  After a moment, Baba began arguing with Hellbreath again. I'd offered to saddle her myself since I was the only one she listened to, offered to go with him like I sometimes did, even offered to go myself so he could sort out whatever was troubling him.

  "No," he'd snapped, louder than normal.

  Useless. So useless and broken…

  I squeezed my eyes closed and focused on the feel of the taut bowstrings, how the ash arrow rubbed against my fingers. The crisp smell of winter filled my lungs, and I breathed it in deeply, willing it to freeze into my soul to make me not so useless and broken. I'd been doing that for years, and it hadn't worked yet.

  A squirrel chittered around the same spot I'd heard the snap. Bracing myself against the wind, I let the arrow fly toward the sound. And missed. It thwacked into a rotten tree trunk instead. The squirrel had taken off, and now the forest held silent. Unnaturally so, like it was bracing against something too.

  Then another sound barreled toward the other side of the house. A carriage, I realized, rickety and loud and coming from the opposite end of Margin’s Row.

  "Shit." Baba tromped toward the edge of the house where I still stood with my bow. "Aika, to the Crawfords’. Now."

  "Why?"

  But he didn't answer. He was already racing toward Hellbreath. The tension in his movements and his quick breaths strangled the knot he’d put in my chest.

  The carriage came faster, hurtling toward us from where the edge of the forest wasn't quite as thick.

  "Baba?" I called.

  Footsteps sounded as he rounded the corner of the cabin to where I hunted. He grabbed my hand roughly and shoved a wrapped package into it, the worn cloth fibers damp from his sweat and the fresh snow.

  "Take this and go to the Crawfords’," he hissed. "Don't come out until they're gone. Now go."

  "Till who's gone?" But he was already striding away again. I followed, my legs trembling all the way to the soles of my boots. "Baba?"

  "Hey there!" he shouted, sounding chipper and friendly when he was anything but, and turned the corner of the cabin.

  I stopped, just behind the wooden cover of the east wall, my bedroom located on the other side. The sharp wind whistled through the cracks at night and kept me awake, making me imagine that an unholy wild had slinked out of the forest and was lurking outside my house. Kind of like now.

  The noise of the carriage didn't lessen. It didn't slow.

  “Aika,” Baba gritted out, less than two feet away from me. “Go.”

  “Who do you see—”

  A loud pop cracked the air like a whip. Warmth sprayed across my face and onto the snow around my boots in a violent splatter. Then a sickening thud sounded.

  I jumped back and slammed my hand over my mouth. Bile kicked at the back of my throat, and the cutting wind brought tears to my eyes.

  I swallowed thickly and tried to draw a breath. What had just happened?

  "Baba," I tried to say, but nothing came out.

  Baba. My dad.

  Silence, as absolute as the panic taking root inside me. I clamped my teeth down on it, anchoring myself to the side of the cottage, and listened. The carriage had stopped. The wilds in the Crimson Forest were quiet, too, as if they were watching what would happen next.

  Wiping at my face, I took a step backward along the side of the house, my heart pinched and barely beating. A part of me wanted to rush forward, though, to see that Baba was all right, but the air felt too tense. I didn’t trust it.

  "Seems you have a delivery, Kane Song!" a male voice shouted, the accent strange and foreign to my ears.

  I jumped at the sound of it. I squeezed my bow and the package tight, backing away along the side of the cabin, away from the voice that hijacked my spine and rattled it to its base.

  "How about you give it to me, and I'll deliver it for you,” the man said. “It's the least I can do."

  A bubbly groan carried on the wind, gruesome and wrong, like the sound of dying. Ba
ba. He was still alive.

  "Where is it?" the man demanded.

  My boots snapping over the fresh-fallen snow were much too loud, even with slow, careful steps. The man would hear me if I ran, and I wasn't certain if there were more men than just him. If there were, they could be circling the cabin right now. I had one arrow in the quiver on my back, the other in the forest somewhere.

  I turned toward the back of the cabin, and guiding my elbow along the side wall, I unbuttoned my wool coat at the bottom, enough to stuff the package down the front of my pants. After I re-buttoned it against the bludgeoning wind, I took my last arrow from the quiver and nocked it in my bow.

  How exactly was I going to do this? Not run up the Crawfords' porch steps to their front door. I'd be spotted. I'd likely be noticed anyway since I was leaving a trail of footprints behind me in the snow.

  A crash came from inside the cabin. Someone was in there, searching.

  I turned the rear corner, and the ferocious wind snapped at my face and hands, stinging tears from my eyes and forcing me back the way I'd come. While feeling for the first window, my bedroom’s, I pressed on. When I felt a pane of glass like ice on my palm, I ducked low.

  He—they?—wanted the package. That had to be right because it was the only thing of value we had. Without Baba's monthly deliveries, we had nothing except for what the Crimson Forest gave us. Lately, the forest’s offerings had thinned, and with winter coming in about two weeks’ time, it wouldn't be enough to survive. Here, winters were long and brutal, and without the meager payment for Baba's delivery, we wouldn't be able to go into town to buy food. We'd starve. So would the Crawfords. It was just Jade and Lee who lived there now because their parents hadn't survived two winters ago. Jade was only fifteen, and Lee, though older, could barely take care of himself. Baba had sworn to their parents that he would help their children while they lay on their deathbeds, the one good thing I’d ever heard him do. But without our help, Jade and Lee wouldn't make it.

  Our help—or mine if Baba…

  I crushed my teeth together. I would have to make the delivery myself. I knew where to go, who to speak to. I'd gone with Baba a couple times.

  Useless. So useless and broken…

  No. I could do it. I had to do it. I nodded as I crept along the back of the cottage. I just needed to get to Hellbreath without anyone seeing me.

  Another crash, which sounded like the pans of deer jerky I'd made, and then a string of curses.

  I kept low underneath another window, keeping my footsteps as light as possible. I often heard wilds prowling around at night, but that might have been because I knew they were there in the first place. I didn't think the man who'd shot Baba knew I was here. Yet.

  But I would have to sprint out into the open, between our cabin and the Crawfords', because if Baba were alive, I couldn't just leave him there. I had to tell Jade that Baba was hurt before I took Hellbreath.

  My fingers sought the corner of the cabin, and I stood there for a second to gather up all my courage and hold it to my thrumming heart. It was about twenty steps from the back corner of our cabin to the back corner of theirs, at least it had been when I'd counted as a girl. Jade's bedroom window would be along the back wall. If I knocked, she would answer.

  "Goddamn it," the man shouted from the front of the house. "You."

  Not me. He couldn't see me. I was sure of it.

  Now. I had to go now.

  I ran out into the open, counting each step, with no cover to block the wind and blowing snow. It battered against me, throwing me off course and blinding me even more than I already literally was. It smothered my sharp hearing so it felt like I existed in a void. If I lost my way, I wouldn't dare shout because then I'd be giving away my location. If I lost my way, I might not make the delivery in time. The package had to be delivered the first of the month. Always. If I lost my way, I might just freeze to death since there was nothing around for miles. Even Margin, the nearest town, was twenty miles out.

  Six, seven, eight… I sure hoped I was stepping in the right direction.

  A cry pierced the wind. A horse's cry. What was that man doing to my girl, Hellbreath? Searching her for the package? Fury stormed through my veins, forceful enough to stall my steps and almost spin me around to go rescue her. But if he made her cry out like that, what would he do to me?

  With a sob that hissed through my teeth, I kept going.

  Ten, eleven, twelve… I had to be more than halfway there by now.

  At step eighteen, my boot hit wood. I brought up my hands to feel the side of their cabin. I'd veered too far to the right, but was I visible to the man? I couldn't hear him or Hellbreath. Shit, if he'd killed her… I shook my head to clear that thought away and palmed my way left to the back of the Crawfords'. This far away, I doubted the man could hear me, so I went quickly. At the back of the cabin, I turned, and when I touched glass, I rapped on it hard.

  After a few seconds, the window lifted, and I immediately felt familiar comfort touch the air around my best friend, my sometimes enemy, my teacher, my eyes since she was old enough to talk.

  "Aika, I heard a gunshot." Jade gasped. "Is that blood on your face?"

  "Please." My voice warbled so much, I didn't even recognize it. "There's a man at my house. He shot Baba."

  "What?" She grabbed onto my coat and pulled me closer like she wanted me to climb inside to safety. "I just thought it was your baba hunting. Is he okay? Who was it?"

  I shook out of her grip. "I have to deliver the package."

  Silence for several heartbeats. She knew about the packages and that they helped feed her and her brother.

  "What do you need me to do?" she asked, her voice going hard with confidence. A slight thing at fifteen, she was much tougher than I was, and I had four years on her.

  "Get your gun. Pretend you’re not home. Don’t answer the door. Keep an eye out for when that man leaves, and then go help Baba." If he was still alive.

  “But…but…” Lee’s voice sounded from somewhere inside, agitated from the gunshot, most likely. He didn’t deal with loud noises or changes of any kind, so he was going to hate this.

  "Are you sure about this?" Jade asked.

  I knew she was talking about me going into the Crimson Forest by myself, and her question came from both doubt and worry. My blindness often wedged us apart, mostly because she thought I needed her help, and I resented her for it. But she didn’t know the way through the forest to Old Man’s Den. Otherwise, I was sure she would’ve offered to go.

  "Yes. I'm sure," I said.

  "Aika, where? I love you. You’re so pretty,” Lee called from somewhere close inside.

  Startled, I stepped back and ducked to the side so my bloodied appearance wouldn't scare him. "I don’t want to upset Lee," I said, but I wasn't sure Jade heard me. The wind had picked up with a symphony of howls that sounded eerily similar to the wolves I sometimes heard in the forest.

  I waved goodbye, hoping that Jade could still see me, my trust in her to do what I'd said solidified with our years of friendship, despite how much I resented her sometimes. She'd take care of Baba.

  At the corner of the Crawfords’, I stopped to get my bearings. If I headed in a diagonal, I would be at the front of my house where Hellbreath was, where the man might see me if he hadn't already given up. Would he give up? He'd shot a man in cold blood to get his hands on the package. So what would he do if he found it?

  I stepped out into the void again, the wind even angrier than before, yanking on my coat and pushing me sideways. It sucked the air from my lungs and whipped it around in a cold frenzy so I couldn't draw it back in again. I gasped for breath, feeling like I was drowning in this endless nothingness. Panic seized my muscles and rang alarms in my head, but I counted my way through it. About thirty steps to the front of our cabin. I could do this. I had to do this.

  Thirty-one, thirty-two… The wind must've blown me way off course. Suddenly, the beams on the front porch caught my midsecti
on. I reeled back and stumbled backward behind the cover of the cabin, listening over my frantic heartbeat. Nothing from Hellbreath or inside. Had the man left?

  No. No, he hadn't left. Two horses snorted over the howling wind, two horses that were surely tied to his carriage. So where was the man?

  Shivering deeper into my coat, I plotted out my next move and the steps that would get me there. To Hellbreath, because I didn't want that man anywhere near her since he’d made her cry like that. If he’d hurt her… I ground my teeth together. If this didn't work, I would steal his carriage.

  Time to go. I skirted around the porch and flung myself past the front door, which stood wide open. The smell of spiced jerky and the heat from the fire stirred with the winter air, soothing on good days but now filled with a foreign presence that scraped icicles down my back.

  "Hellbreath," I said, just a whisper.

  She answered with a grumble from the direction of her post, the sweetest sound I'd ever heard.

  I flew toward her and then rubbed my face against her muzzle while running my hands through her sleek coat to check for wounds, to soothe her, to soothe me. Not long, though, and not long enough to whisper to her how much I loved her for being so brave. She was already saddled, so once I unwound her reins from the post and pulled myself up, we were off, hurling straight into the Crimson Forest.

  Chapter 2

  Thick branches laden with snow tugged at my hair, scraped ice across my cheeks as we raced farther into the forest. Shivering, I tucked my body as close to Hellbreath’s back as I could.

  "Go, girl." I flicked the reins and kicked her sides again. "Go as fast as you can."