The morning after felt unreal, like the world had woken with an easier breath. The courtyard hummed with the soft noises of a pack making itself right again—muted conversations, the clink of metal as weapons were tended, the distant laughter of children who did not yet know how close they had come to never laughing again. I lingered at the edge of that small, fragile peace, watching Kai sleep in the crook of Elista’s lap and Mai curl around a pillow with the kind of tiredness that ages too young.
Dimitri moved through the hubbub like a shadow that belonged to the light. He was all command and quiet attention, half-leader, half-father—every part of him holding an intent that both soothed and unnerved me. When he looked my way, he didn’t just see me; he catalogued, protected, remembered. Th
