The Pack Healer’s Temple, usually a place of quiet reverence, hummed with an electric tension. The vaulted ceiling, made of polished river stone and ancient timber, rose above the gathering, adorned with mosaics that depicted the constellations and the spiralling helix of life. Sunlight, filtered through stained-glass windows, usually fractured into gentle patterns across the floor, but today, it seemed to blaze through, casting harsh beams over the faces in the room.
Today, the temple felt less like a sanctuary and more like a crucible.
Aria stood at the altar, her figure stark against the backdrop of glowing moonstone. She wore a simple, cream-colored linen gown, loose but still revealing the undeniable curve of her belly. Her face, pale and calm on the surface, hid the maelstrom withi
