The air outside hit me first.
It wasn’t cold, but it wascharged, and thick with scent and motion and the unmistakable hum of bodies that were no longer pretending to be human.
My heart rate spiked instantly, my magic flaring in reflex before I could rein it in.
The alphas were waiting.
At least a dozen alphas paced the wide sweep of stone before the Academy, their massive forms moving in restless arcs that carved invisible lines into the ground. Fur bristled and shone under the sunlight. Their muscles flexed beneath coats of brown, gray, black, and mottled gold. The sounds of the claws tapping and tails swishing sent an intense energy through the air. They were ancient, alpha, and unapologetically dominant.
This wasn’t a delegation. This was apresence, and I forced myself to breathe.
Beside me, Keegan stiffened, as his body responded before his mind could intervene. I felt the echo of it through our proximity, the old instinct waking and then stopping short, like a snarl caught behind teeth.
“You okay?” he murmured, not taking his eyes off the group.
“Ask me again in thirty seconds,” I whispered back.
I stepped forward anyway, and the Silver Wolf remained just behind us, her posture calm but coiled, a sentinel rather than a shield.
The wolves’ pacing slowed.
One by one, the alphas lifted their heads.
Their gazes locked onto me with unsettling synchronicity.
The feral pressure intensified. It wasn’t aggressive yet, butassessing.
Measuring.
Deciding.
What? I didn’t know.
I swallowed and glanced sideways at Keegan.
He met my look immediately with calm in his gaze, even as his shoulders squared. He hadn’t shifted, not since the Hunger Path ended, and for the first time, the thought unsettled me more than it comforted me.
One of the alphas stepped forward.
He was enormous, even by their standards.
His coat was a deep, rich brown streaked with darker shadow along his spine. Old battle scars mapped his shoulders and flank,and pale lines etched through fur that spoke of fights won rather than survived.
When his eyes met mine, something in my chest clenched hard.
They weren’t wild.
They werefocused.
He stopped several paces away, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from him, close enough that one swipe could end everything I was standing for.
My magic stirred uneasily.
“This wasn’t how I expected the morning to go,” I said lightly, mostly to hear my own voice.
The brown alpha’s ears flicked forward.
“You ended the Hunger Path,” he said.
