Rowan
The pack house breathed at night.
It wasn’t alive, not in the way a wolf was, but when you stood out front long enough, you could feel it. The timber frame carried the weight of generations. The porch groaned with the memory of arguments, laughter, vows made and broken. The stone hearth inside still carried faint traces of every fire that had burned since it was built.
It smelled like pine pitch, old smoke, and home.
And I stood there like a man without one.
The moon was a thin crescent above the pines, and the air had that knife-sharp chill that slipped under skin. The pack was asleep inside, breaths braided together in the invisible rhythm of belonging.
My wolf, Roco, should’ve been soothed by it. Instead, he prowled behind my ribs, restless, pressing images into my mind the
