Kieran -
The sound of claws on stone echoed across the training yard as two of my younger wolves circled each other, muscles coiled for the next strike. Sweat beaded on their foreheads despite the autumn chill, and their breathing came in short bursts that misted in the cold air. They were pushing themselves harder than usual—a sign of restlessness that had been building in the pack for days.
Since she arrived.
I stood at the edge of the yard, arms crossed, watching the sparring match with the kind of focused attention that twenty-seven years of leadership had taught me to maintain. But my mind was elsewhere, cataloguing tensions I could feel building like pressure before a storm.
Marcus—barely twenty and still prone to letting emotion override strategy—feinted left before driving his
