I just need to know
CASPIAN The alarm comes at midday on a Friday. I am at my desk when the sound moves through the palace walls — that low resonant frequency that reaches into the chest before the mind has processed what it means — and I am on my feet and moving before it finishes. Not fear. Something more useful than fear, the cold clarifying efficiency of a man who has been defending his territory for centuries and knows exactly what his body is for when the territory is threatened. Marcus is already in the corridor. We don’t speak. We don’t need to. The attack is on the northern perimeter. I shift before I reach the tree line, my wolf taking the terrain with the absolute authority of something that belongs to this land in a way that goes beyond ownership — I know every tree, every ridge, every approach,
- Writer
