The pack council convened in a location I had never seen before, a neutral hall deep in territory belonging to none of the coastal packs specifically, representatives from four different bloodlines gathered around a long table carved from wood old enough to have witnessed decades of exactly this kind of gathering.
Ronan stood to present our evidence, still favoring his injured shoulder slightly, and I watched him command the room with a steady authority that made something proud swell in my chest despite the gravity of everything we were about to reveal.
He laid it all out carefully, Cole's photographs, the papers recovered from the farmhouse, my vision confirmed through Mabel's testimony as a legitimate ritual result rather than fabricated grief, and finally the account of yesterday's r
