The pack gathered at sunrise.
Blackthorn wolves assembled the way they did everything — efficiently, without ceremony for ceremony's sake, in the wide stone courtyard at the compound's center that served as the pack's formal gathering space. Word had gone through the compound the night before — not an announcement, not a summons, just the quiet movement of information through a community that had learned to read its Alpha's decisions in advance.
They knew what this was.
I stood at the edge of the courtyard in the morning light and looked at them — all of them, the pack that had watched me arrive as a half-starved rogue three weeks ago and had been cataloguing me ever since. Gregor, who had sparred me and rearranged his understanding. Finn, who had simply decided from the beginning. Lyra
