Time in the pack territory had a way of sneaking up on you. One week turned into two, then three, and before I knew it, the leaves on the trees were starting to shift into deeper shades of gold and crimson. Fall was settling in, crisp and beautiful, and with it came a strange sort of settling in my own chest. Not full peace, I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel that completely, but something close. A cautious kind of belonging that grew a little stronger with every quiet morning and every shared evening.
This particular afternoon, the sky was a soft gray, the kind that promised rain but hadn’t delivered yet. I was sitting on the porch steps of our cabin with a mug of tea gone lukewarm in my hands, watching a few younger wolves training in the clearing down the path. Their movements were fluid an
