( Kael's POV )
The first breath of dawn bled slowly through the forest canopy, brushing pale gold against the blackened trunks. Mist curled like smoke through the clearing outside the Hollow, softening nothing, only shrouding what had already been broken.
Kael moved through the remnants of the night’s battle with a silence that felt carved rather than chosen. Wolves from the pack knelt beside the fallen, wrapping bodies in linen stitched with thread soaked in wolfsbane and ash. A ritual. A promise. The dead would not rise where shadow had touched them.
Storm stirred in Aria’s arms, a soft sound too fragile for the world that waited beyond these trees. Kael’s gaze found his son without effort, pulled like a tide. That single, small heartbeat had already shifted the world around them. He
