Brooks:
The reports were starting to blur together. I had stacks of them scattered across my desk, each one more alarming than the last. The rogue sightings. The attacks. The strange shifts in behavior, like the wolves were being controlled, manipulated. Every page I turned felt like a weight added to my already overburdened shoulders. Every new detail only made the knot in my gut tighten.
I should have been with my pack. I should have been out there, hunting down these rogues, gathering intel. But instead, I was trapped behind this desk, surrounded by half-finished papers and unanswered questions.
The day had been long—too long. I hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the past few days, and the exhaustion was creeping in. My head was pounding from too much thinking, too much focus on
