A few days passed in a strange, suspended blur—too quiet to be peaceful, too heavy to be calm.
Polaris had shifted into a state of readiness that hummed beneath the surface of daily life. Warriors trained from dawn until dusk, including Malrik. Maps were spread across tables and redrawn again and again as new intel arrived. Even the air felt different, as if the land itself was holding its breath.
Kael spent most of those days in meetings.
When he wasn’t speaking with Orion, Calen, or Nova, he was talking to other Alphas. I watched him from doorways more than once, seeing how his posture changed when he wore the weight of command. How his eyes hardened. How his voice turned sharp and unyielding. An Alpha preparing for war.
When he finally came to sit with me late one evening, exhaustio
