Dorian's pov
The first snow of the season fell the morning we sent out the messengers, and I stood at the lodge's threshold watching six riders vanish into the white, each carrying the same folded parchment, the same careful words Wren had spent three days refining.
"You look like a man watching his own strategy ride away from him," Ophelia said, coming to stand beside me, breath fogging in the cold.
"I am. That's exactly what I'm doing."
"It's a good strategy."
"It's an untested one." I watched the last rider disappear over the ridge. "We're asking proud alphas to admit their packs carry unspoken grief. Some of them will burn that parchment before they finish reading it."
"Some will. Others won't." Ophelia pulled her cloak tighter. "I burned a version of that message in my own head
