Chapter 67
The compound woke slow the morning after the raid, each movement careful as if someone might reach out and pull the world apart. We had taken blows and given them back, and the ledger’s paper had become tinder for a new kind of resolve. Still, the undercurrent of fear hummed low like a mosquito—annoying, persistent, impossible to ignore. Dastien moved like a man who’d swallowed iron and was carrying it in his chest. There was no lightness in him this morning—only a blade of focus and the soft exhaustion in his jaw that told the story of sleepless nights. He was there before dawn in the training yard, watching the younger wolves run drills, correcting grips and stances without a single idle word. Seeing him with the pack like that calmed the muscle of my anxiety more than sleep ever could.
- Writer
