Lyra’s POV
Dawn came slow and uncertain, the light spilling pale and cautious over a world that had been torn and stitched in the dark. I sat on the pack’s low outer wall with Kai and Mira cocooned against my chest, their small steady breaths a prayer against the chaos of the last night. Each time one of them shifted or murmured in sleep, a piece of me, ragged and raw, smoothed back into place.
Elista moved like a ghost around the little house where the children slept, checking doors and windows, humming a song old women used to sing when the moon was kinder. Her hands were steady, but her face told of a night that had been harder on her than she let on. When she finally sank to the step beside me, she didn’t look at the rising sun; she looked at my face, as if trying to read what the wi
