Lycan’s POV
Something shifted before I saw it. It wasn’t obvious, not something the others would notice immediately, but it moved through the edges of the territory like a disturbance that didn’t belong there.
The air carried it first, faint but deliberate, a disruption in patterns I had learned to read long before I ever stepped into Ironfang. I stood still at the ridge, letting the silence stretch, letting my senses sharpen until the difference became clear enough to name.
This wasn’t internal.
It wasn’t pack tension, or council politics, or the fragile instability that had been building within these borders. This was external, controlled, and careful in a way that spoke of intent rather than coincidence. Whoever it was, they weren’t rushing in blindly.
They were observing, waitin
