Nightfall believed in excuses for fires.
A clear night after a week of gray counted as one.
By the time the stars burned sharp and cold overhead, the pack had gathered around the central pit. Someone had hauled out a drum; someone else produced a battered stringed instrument that might once have been a guitar. The music that grew from them was rough but infectious.
Aria found herself on the outer edge of the circle again, cup of something warm between her hands, watching wolves drift in pairs and groups through the firelight. It wasn’t a formal dance, nothing like Silvercrest’s choreographed swirls and rehearsed bows. This was more like a moving argument with gravity — stomping, spinning, laughing when someone inevitably slipped.
Lio planted himself at her knee, cheeks flushed. “You’re
