*Chapter 19: Old Wounds*
The letter came at dawn.
No seal. No name. Just a single line in hurried ink:
_The Council is coming. Three days. Be ready._
Kade found me in the clinic, reading it twice before I passed it to him. His face went still in that way it did when he was weighing violence against politics. Politics usually won. Barely.
“The Regional Council,” he said. “Not our local one.”
I nodded. “They don’t show up unless there’s a breach of pack law they think is worth overriding.”
Mara had the same thought. She called an emergency council meeting before the sun was fully up. The room was tense, chairs scraping, voices low.
“They’re coming because of Damon,” Mara said. “He filed a formal appeal. Claims the tribunal was biased, that the vote was coerced, that his rights as
