Mara’s POV
The list is shorter than I expected.
That’s the first thing that hits me.
I’m standing in Declan’s study, tablet in my hands, scrolling through names I recognize too well—faces I grew up with, voices I learned to read before I could read words. Hunters. Healers. Elders. Wolves who once shared food, blood, and territory.
Twenty-three.
That’s how many the intelligence team could confirm as alive and unclaimed by another pack.
Twenty-three out of nearly eighty.
My fingers curl around the edge of the tablet until my knuckles ache.
“They scattered fast,” Declan says quietly from behind me. “Some hid. Some assimilated. Some stopped shifting altogether.”
I swallow. “Any who joined Kieran?”
His pause is answer enough.
“One,” he says. “That we know of.”
Of course there is.
“
