Maren explained the mechanics with the same plainness she had used for everything else that morning.
The seal she had placed in Crane thirty years ago was Vayne bloodline construction. Ancient. Precise. Built to last. But built things still required maintenance, and a seal of that complexity required renewal. A living bloodline holder, periodically, feeding the architecture from the inside.
Sera had been the anchor.
I had inherited it from birth. Unknowingly carrying the weight of it alongside everything else my mother had given me. Two jobs my wolf had been doing since before I could walk, and I had spent twenty years believing she was simply broken.
"When your wolf activated on Mating Night," Maren said, "the anchor came fully online. The seal blazed back to full strength for twenty-
