**ADAM**
I feel the declaration before the howl reaches our borders, before the sound carries through forest and stone and settles into the bones of the pack, because war has a texture long before it has a voice, and this one arrives like a pressure change rather than a blow. The bond snaps from its steady hum into something taut and alert beneath my ribs, not panicked but unmistakably awake, and I know with a certainty that lands heavy and cold in my chest that Kian has finally stopped circling and started moving.
The howl comes minutes later.
It rolls across the territory in a layered wave, not one voice but many, braided together with intent, and the packhouse responds instantly, alarms rising in controlled sequence, wolves shifting course without being told, training routines dissol
