The first time Derek ever bowed to me, it was in front of the entire council.
It was strategic. Politics. Measured.
This was not that.
This was private.
The fire in our chambers had burned low, casting slow gold light over stone walls and heavy wood beams. Outside, the mountains were silent under nightfall, and the pack house had settled into the deep quiet that comes after patrol rotations change.
Jax had not returned yet from the southern border. The air still carried a faint thread of him, distant but steady. Not strained. Not fractured. Just there.
Derek stood near the window, his back to me.
I watched him in silence.
Since the split on the training field, something inside him had sharpened. Not fear exactly. Awareness. As if he had finally understood that whatever I was becomi
