The stone was still warm beneath my fingertips.
Sunlight lingered against the outer wall of the grand library of Polaris, painting the pale stone in gold and ivory, but no amount of light could soften what had been carved into it. The plaque had been placed high enough to be seen by everyone, low enough to be touched—an intentional choice, I’d been told. A reminder that memory should never be out of reach.
Names filled the metal surface in neat, unforgiving rows.
So many of them.
I read them slowly, my eyes dragging over each letter as if speed might cheapen the lives they represented. Warriors from Polaris. From packs whose territories I could barely place on a map, yet whose people had stood shoulder to shoulder with us when it had mattered most.
Some names I recognized.
Some I di
