Aria’s POV
The air still crackled with tension, even after the meeting had long ended. I sat alone on the wraparound porch of the old Alpha house, staring into the fading light. The weight of everything bore down on me: the resistance, the expectations, the fragile peace we were trying to hold together. Klaus had been quiet since the meeting, though his hand never left mine.
We had come so far, yet so many still clung to the past, refusing to see the future we were offering.
My thoughts drifted to Orion's father, my uncle—a former Alpha of the now-defunct Moon Stone Pack, which once barely numbered sixty before joining Willow for safety. His pride was suffocating. He acted as if he had single-handedly carried his people through the worst of times, when in truth, it had been unity that s
