Rowan’s POV
I sat on the edge of the bed and felt the mattress give slightly under Caroline’s small weight. In the darkness my hearing sharpened. I caught her uneven, heavy breathing and the suffocating salty scent rising from her tears.
Twenty years old.
At that age, the young ones of our pack had already survived their first change. They knew the strength of the forest and the call of blood. Caroline, meanwhile, was curled beneath her blanket, fragile and lost, on a day meant to celebrate life. Something stirred inside me. Not the commanding voice of the Alpha, but something far older and deeper.
“Twenty years is a long time,” I said, my voice sounding strangely soft even to my own ears in the quiet room. “But on this mountain, time moves differently. Here it is not the years that ma
