Damien Two days. That’s all it took for the pack to start crumbling like old stone. After my father’s declaration, even though in private, somehow word spread like wildfire about the fallout between the present and future alpha. I didn’t speak of it, didn’t confirm or deny it, but someone must have heard. Or maybe it was written in the silence that followed our argument, in the tension that suffocated the estate halls. It was in the way my mother didn’t meet my eyes, and the way my father avoided even acknowledging my presence. The pack noticed. And the wolves who’d been waiting in the shadows? They stepped into the light. I stood at the training grounds that morning, watching two of our younger fighters spar half-heartedly under the watchful eye of warrior head Marcus. He is one of

