Wounded Bond
The blizzard descended upon the Whispering Peaks like an avenging deity, not with gentle flakes, but with a blinding, roaring fury. Kael, a young hawk whose amber eyes usually held the keen, predatory glint of the apex hunter, had been caught utterly off guard. One moment he was riding the thermals, a sovereign of the sky; the next, a treacherous, unseen gust had slammed into him, twisting his left wing into an unnatural angle. He plummeted, a feathered stone, tumbling violently into a jagged, snow-choked crevice that seemed to swallow the very light. His world, once boundless and blue, was now a suffocating prison of white. Pain, sharp and merciless, flared with every desperate beat of his heart, a searing reminder of his broken flight, his shattered dominion. He was vulnerable, utterly trapped. And then, through the swirling snow dust and the haze of his agony, he saw her.
