The great hall devoured them whole—a living thing with a gullet lined in centuries of accumulated power. Ancient timber groaned overhead, beams thick as tree trunks that had been felled when Spanish missions still dotted the coast, when wolves ran without fear of silver bullets or government oversight. The wood had drunk deep of pack essence: testosterone-soaked challenge fights, the copper tang of birth blood, the musk of mating seasons, grief and joy and rage all seeping into the grain until the very air tasted of primal memory.
Heat radiated from stone fireplaces that gaped like hungry mouths, each one a monument to excess—massive enough to roast three elk simultaneously, or incinerate enemies if tradition demanded. Soot-blackened stones still held the ghost-scent of flesh both animal
