8 Welcome to Winter

In the days leading up to Ashleigh’s eighteenth birthday weekend, guests arrived in dozens. Though Winter had many rules and restrictions of intermingling, they still managed to have close relations with numerous wolves outside their pack.

Many of the guests arriving were not Ashleigh’s friends alone. Her parents both had their own guests arriving, and several others were added to the list by her good friends.

Ashleigh did, in the end, decide to invite each of the other Alphas. Telling herself, it was, as she had told her friends, for diplomatic purposes. Which was almost true. She was actively trying to avoid a fight with Granger if and when he found out that Alpha Caleb had been invited.

A fight she knew would happen the moment she sent the invitation, but until it did, she would hold on to even the tiniest thread of hope.