I add my voice to the song, howling my claim and my promise to the sky. She is pack. She is home. She is everything I waited for and nearly lost a dozen times over.
When the last echo fades, we stand together in the moonlight, two wolves bound by fate and choice and something stronger than either. The war is over. The conversion is complete. A new chapter stretches before us, full of challenges we cannot predict and joys we have only begun to imagine.
Tomorrow the work begins again. Tomorrow we face the complicated reality of integrating Korren's wolves, of rebuildingwhat the war destroyed, of learning to lead together instead of alone.
But that is tomorrow.
I shorten my stride and let her catch me, nipping at my flank with playful teeth before darting ahead. Her laughter ripples through our bond, wild and unguarded, and I chase her through the silver-dark trees until the fortress rises before us again, warm light spilling from its windows.
She waits for me at the gate, tongue lolling, sides heaving, eyes bright with a joy I have never seen in her before. Not happiness earned through survival or satisfaction won through struggle. Just pure, uncomplicated delight in what she has become.
I shift first, the mist swirling and clearing to leave me standing naked in the moonlight. She follows a moment later, the transformation slower for her, less certain, but when she emerges she is laughing, really laughing, the sound echoing off the stone walls.
"I did it," she breathes. "Stellan, I actually did it."
I pull her against me, her bare skin warm despite the mountain cold, and bury my face in her hair. She smells like pine and moonlight and the wild joy of her first run. She smells like home.
"You did," I tell her. "And tomorrow, we do it again."
Her arms tighten around me, and for a long moment we simply stand there, two people who found each other through blood and war and a bond neither of them chose, holding on to something that turned out to be worth fighting for after all.
15
IRIS
Three months ago, I was dragged to this mountain to pay a debt I didn't owe. Now I stand at its peak, wolf beneath my skin, alpha at my side, and I understand that the blood pact wasn't a prison. It was a path home.
The morning sun crests the eastern ridge and spills golden light across the training yard where I've spent the last hour running drills with the younger wolves. My muscles burn in that satisfying way that tells me I've pushed hard enough, and sweat dampens the hair at my temples despite the mountain cold.
"Again," I call out, watching as two adolescent wolves circle each other in the sparring ring. "Mira, you're telegraphing your left. Kael sees it coming before you've even committed to the strike."
Mira growls in frustration but adjusts her stance, tucking her shoulder in tighter. The next time she lunges, Kael barely manages to dodge. Progress.
I remember Helena's training yard in the South, the endless hours of combat drills she forced on me before I understood why. She was preparing me for this, though neither of us knew it at the time. Every lesson she taught me has found new purpose here in the North, where the wolves respect strength abovealmost everything else. My human combat training combined with wolf instincts has made me a luna who can hold her own on the battlefield rather than hiding behind her alpha's protection.
The pack noticed. The whispers that once questioned Stellan's choice have faded, replaced by a grudging respect that grows stronger with each passing week.
"Take five," I tell the sparring wolves, then turn toward the fortress where Stellan waits in his study. Pack business calls, as it always does, and I've taken to sitting beside him during morning meetings. At first the advisors resisted my presence, but Stellan made clear that his mate speaks with his authority. Now they address their concerns to both of us, and more than once my perspective as an outsider has illuminated solutions they couldn't see from inside their centuries of tradition.
The halls of the fortress have become familiar territory. I know which stones creak underfoot, which corridors catch the afternoon light, which corners hold drafts that whisper secrets to wolf ears. The place that once felt like a gilded cage has settled into my bones as home.
I find Stellan at his desk, surrounded by maps and correspondence. The bond hums with his awareness of me as I enter, and he looks up with an expression that softens the hard lines of the alpha into the man I've come to know.
"The merchants from the Eastern Valley want to renegotiate their timber contract," he says, pushing a letter across the desk. "They claim the war disrupted their supply lines."
"The war disrupted everyone's supply lines. That's not a reason to give them better terms." I settle into the chair beside him and scan the letter. "They're testing you. Testing us. Korren's defeat created a power vacuum and everyone's scrambling to see where the new lines will fall."
"What do you suggest?"
"Hold firm on the original terms but offer them priority status for the reconstruction contracts. They get something, we get loyalty, and it costs us nothing we weren't already planning to spend."
Stellan considers this for a moment, then nods. "Draft the response. Sign it with both our seals."
Both our seals. Three months ago I didn't even have a seal. Now my signature carries the weight of the Northern Pack behind it, and the strangeness of that still catches me off guard when I pause to consider it.
The morning passes in a rhythm of decisions and compromises. A boundary dispute between two hunting parties. A request from Korren's surviving wolves to establish their own training rotation. A report from the southern scouts about unusual activity near the border. Each issue requires attention, consideration, and resolution. By midday my head aches from the effort, but it's a productive ache. The kind that tells me I'm building rather than simply enduring.
Signe arrives as we're finishing the last of the correspondence, her healer's bag slung over one shoulder. "Iris, you missed your appointment this morning."
