The northern pack waited at the edge of a territory that felt colder than the distance alone could account for.
The young Alpha's name was Taya. Twenty-two years old, the same age my mother had been when she left Ironpeak, the same age I had been on Mating Night when everything in my life had quietly reorganized itself without my permission.
She had been Alpha for six months. Her pack was frightened and confused, and she was doing nearly everything right, and almost none of it was working, because the pack had never once governed itself from genuine consent and simply did not know how to begin.
I met with her privately.
I did not offer strategy. I did not offer political guidance or walk her through the formal dissolution protocol Rowan had refined across forty-three packs. I sat acros
