I had been gone five weeks.
The pack looked different from the outside. Not physically. Nothing about Clearwater's stone halls or training grounds had changed in any way I could point to and name. It looked different in the way places look different when you are no longer the person who lived inside them, when the version of you that walked these paths every day has been quietly replaced by someone the place has not yet had the chance to recognize.
I had come here three days after Mating Night with a mark I did not understand and a stepfather who had issued an ultimatum and one friend who had insisted on coming along uninvited. I remembered standing at this same gate then, my whole body braced for whatever Gerald intended to do with the information he had found on my neck, certain that w
