—Natasha's POV—
The world seemed to have been scoured clean of sound, leaving only a vacuum of anticipation so dense it pressed against the eardrums. The old limestone quarry, a giant’s bowl carved from the earth, was no longer a place of industry but a temple under an open sky. The last molten sliver of sunset drowned behind the black fringe of the pines, surrendering the heavens to a vast, deepening indigo, soon to be dominated by a single, rising sovereign.
They had come in silence, not on roaring bikes, but on foot, a solemn procession into the heart of the rock. Now, they stood. Hundreds of them. Members of both fractured packs, setting aside their daytime rivalries to form a vast, unbroken ring around the quarry’s central dais—a massive, flat disc of ancient stone smoothed by time
