The message was from the Southern territory.
Alpha Dessa’s pack had been deliberately neutral in Vael affairs for forty years. No alliances, no conflicts, no involvement in the political machinery of the surrounding kingdoms, no delegates at ceremonies, no participation in the Northern Council or the Southern Trade agreements or any of the formal structures through which the wolf world conducted its business. Complete, sustained, deliberate isolation by choice.
Nobody knew why. The Vael records did not say. The Northern Alphas had mentioned it once, in passing, as a curiosity they had stopped trying to understand a territory that had simply decided to exist outside everything and had been left to do so because it caused no problems and made no demands.
Jasper read the message. Then he r
