“The alpha transition protocol is clear,” he says. “Merric has the right to step down voluntarily and name a successor for pack confirmation. The pack can accept or challenge the nomination.”
“I’m nominating Jonas.” I look at him across the room. He’s pushed off the wall. Standing straight. His face is unreadable,which means he’s working hard to keep it that way. “He’s led this pack in my absence with more skill than I’ve led it in my presence. He’s consistent, he’s principled, and he’s earned the trust of every wolf in this room. Frostbourne deserves an alpha who’s all in. Jonas is all in.”
Jonas blinks at me. For a long moment, the mask of quiet competence drops, and I see what’s underneath: surprise, and the conflict of being handed something he never asked for and always prepared for without admitting it.
“I didn’t want this,” he says.
“Best alphas never do.”
A ripple of something moves through the room. Not laughter. Recognition.
Edda stands. The room tenses, conditioned by years of expecting opposition from the woman in the back row. But she’s in the front now, and her expression isn’t combative. It’s something I’ve never seen on her face before. Something that might be respect, if Edda’s version of respect didn’t look so much like controlled pain.
“I opposed your mating,” she says. “I opposed your decisions. I thought you were compromising this pack for personal reasons.” She pauses. The room holds its breath. “I was wrong about the mating. I was wrong about the witch. But I wasn’t wrong about one thing: an alpha’s first duty is to his pack. If you believe that moving to Ravenclaw is the right choice, then I trust the alpha who made that choice, even as he stops being our alpha.”
She turns to Jonas. Holds out her hand. “You have my vote.”
Jonas takes her hand. The room exhales.
Karl seconds. Then Petra—fierce and fast, her bandaged arm at her side, her voice carrying: “Aye.” Then the Hale family. Then the younger wolves, the middle ground, the kitchen women, the patrol runners. One by one. Wolf by wolf. Not unanimous; there are a few holdouts, a few wolves who leave the room withoutvoting, their absence a statement of its own. But overwhelming. More than enough.
Jonas stands in the center of his pack and accepts it with the quiet grace of a man who’s been carrying it in practice for weeks and is finally being given the title that matches the burden.
“I’ll do my best,” he says. Simple. Honest. Exactly Jonas.
“You’ll do better than your best,” I tell him. “You’ll do what’s needed.”
The meeting breaks. Wolves approach, some to clasp my hand with both of theirs, some to embrace me, some to glare with expressions I’ll carry for a long time. This pack raised me. Shaped me. Made me who I am. The first faces I saw when I shifted at thirteen. The hands that built my cabin. The voices that howled for my father’s funeral, sang at my naming ceremony, and argued with me over supply routes and training schedules and every small, essential decision that makes a pack into a family.
Leaving it is the hardest thing I’ve done since—
Since the last time I chose duty over love. Except this time, I’m choosing love over duty. And the difference is everything.
Rook finds me outside afterward. He leans against the lodge wall and looks at the mountains the way he always does… like he’s reading them.
“Sienna, Dane, and Briar will want to come with you,” he says.
“I know.”
“I’m staying.”
I look at him. My second. The man who sees through every wall I build and never once used what he found there as a weapon. Who sat on a porch at Ravenclaw and told me to go after Brenna in a voice that meant he’d already decided for me. Who ran ten miles through the forest on legs that should have given out at eight, because his alpha was running, and that’s what seconds do.
“Jonas needs a second,” Rook says. “Someone who knows the pack, knows the politics, knows where the bodies are buried.” He pauses. “Metaphorically.” Another pause. “Mostly metaphorically.”
“You sure?”
“Frostbourne was home before you were alpha. It’ll be home after.” He looks at me. “Besides, somebody needs to keep Edda honest. That’s a full-time job.”
I grip his hand. He grips back. The grip carries a lifetime of silences that didn’t need filling, of battles fought shoulder to shoulder, of a trust so deep it became part of us. We don’t say what it holds. We’ve never had to.
“Take care of them,” I say. Meaning the pack. Meaning everything.
“Take care of yours,” he says. Meaning Brenna. Meaning Cameron. Meaning the life I’m choosing.
I nod. He nods. We let go.
It takes a long time for my hand to stop feeling the ghost of his grip.
