Emily Rosewood’s Point of View.
Raven Hollow, nine weeks after the gate closed
The Hollow had known many rulers. Alphas who ruled by fang and claw. Council heads who governed by ancient law. Spirit-bound keepers who spoke for the moon itself.
But none like me.
I felt it in the way the pack looked at me now. Not with the open adoration they’d once offered, nor the wary respect they’d given when I first carried the Flame.
They looked at me the way mortals look at storms: beautiful, necessary, and terrifying.
Because the Flame no longer danced only in my veins.
It coiled with something deeper. Eliryn’s forgotten rage, her centuries of loneliness, her memories of a world that had called her broken and then tried to burn her for it. Those memories were stitched into my heartbeat now. I w
