Brooks:
The scent of ash lingered in everything.
It was in the wooden beams of the dining hall, in the linens soaked with smoke, and in the grain of my skin no matter how many times I scrubbed it raw. We’d spent the entire morning dragging debris, hauling bodies, and repairing broken walls until our hands bled.
But now... there was quiet.
Day had broken, slow and golden, spilling across the fields like mercy itself. No alarms. No screaming. Just birdsong and the low murmur of pack members shuffling through the remnants of a long, brutal night.
I stood in the center of the mess hall, sleeves rolled up, forearms streaked with soot and blood. The windows had been blown out during the second wave of the attack, and we’d just replaced the last of the shattered glass. Ivy was already beginn
