I did not leave the Hollow of Roots the same way I entered it.
No one stopped me. No one challenged me. Yet every step I took through the stone corridors felt heavier than the last, as though the earth itself was measuring my weight, deciding whether I deserved to walk freely beneath it.
Whispers followed me.
Not loud. Not careless. Just enough for my sharpened senses to catch fragments unfinished thoughts, cautious speculation, unease dressed as curiosity.
“She spoke against an alpha.”
“Unaligned, yet bold.”
“Did you feel that? The way the chamber shifted when she spoke?”
I kept my head high and my pace steady. Fear would have been easier than this quiet awareness crawling up my spine. Fear was familiar. This being watched, evaluated, remembered was something else entirely.
The gi
