Wolfe’s commands echoed across the clearing with steady certainty, even when his voice was quiet. Killian led the patrols along the ridge as if he’d spent his whole life mapping battlefields. Diesel had the young wolves doing drills so brutal I saw more than one of them throw up in the dirt.
The pack wasn’t hesitating anymore. Shock had worn off, leaving resolve and fear. But we were learning to live with that.
I stood with the druid near the Heartwood, the air around us thick with herbs and ash. They burned another twist of dried sage, and the smoke curled toward the ground instead of the sky.
“Protection,” the druid murmured. “Nothing more.”
Nothing more, but their hands were trembling.
“Will the land hold?” I asked.
“The land always holds,” they said, “but the ones on the land do not always listen.”
I didn’t know if that was meant to reassure me or warn me. A small group of Stonefang wolves approached, dropping satchels of supplies at our feet. One bowed his head deeply to me—too deeply—before backing away as if afraid to linger.
The attack had changed everything. Or my pregnancy had. Either way, things had changed.
“Brand was successful at Four Winds,” Killian called out as he jogged toward us. He held a rolled message in his hand, tied with a thin rope. “They’re sending thirty of their best fighters.Quietly.”
“Quietly is good,” I said, taking the message, scanning it. Seemed Tyler was acting under the will of the Pack Council and not his father.
“Yeah,” Killian said, lowering his voice. “Quietly means they don’t want the Council to know they’re helping you.”
Wolfe joined us then, coming from another direction, wiping sweat from his brow. His wolf was simmering just under his skin, a constant presence that didn’t ease even when he touched me.
“How are things here?” he asked, seeing the scroll in my hand. “Why is she just getting this now?” he asked Killian.
“Things here are steady,” the druid said, answering the first question. “And Rowen and I just returned from the western ridge, which is why he didn’t get us the first time he came by.”
Wolfe frowned. “Why is the southern ridge failing all thetime?” He looked between the three of us. “What’s wrong that it doesn’t hold like the others?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” the druid snapped. “It’s just the most traveled.”
Wolfe didn’t look convinced, and with a glance at Killian, he left us again, and I felt his absence immediately—not just as his mate, but as someone who was suddenly helping hold up a pack half-expecting war by nightfall.
“You’re trembling,” the druid noted.
I didn’t bother denying it. “I feel everything,” I said quietly. “The wards on the ridges. The unrest. The Hollow keeps…pullingat me.”
“Because the land is unsettled,” they said. “It looks to its druid and its daughter.”
“I’m not?—”
“Legacy doesn’t need your agreement,” they cut in, adjusting a line of herbs across the ground. “Only your presence.”
I crouched to help them, placing the branches where they pointed. My hands were steadier when I moved. Purpose had a way of doing that. It was so strange to me that only a few weeks ago I was still trying to prove I could lead this pack, and now here I was, handing over the leadership to my husband, while I knelt in the grass and waved a bunch of burning sage at a tree.
If my father could’ve seen me, I was sure he’d have fallen down laughing. Not that he would have been ridiculing me, it was just a huge shift in my personality; I hardly recognized myself.
“My mother never did this with you?” I asked the druid suddenly.
They shook their head. “No, she watched when she was required as part of a rite for the pack, but she very much wanted to remain beside her husband. She never sought anything…extrafor herself.”
My eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Extra,” I mused, mulling it over. “I fear there was a dig in there, druid.”
Their lips twitched. “Hmm.”
I was going to argue with them, but then the ground shifted under my fingertips. Not physically. Not visibly. But something moved through it—like a thread of breath, warm then gone.
