The Fortress of Moirai never felt like home.
It had always been stone and silence—walls meant to keep people like me out. But as I walked through the gates with Kael barely able to stand beside me, it wasn’t silence that greeted us.
It was fear.
And reverence.
Pack members lined the path like statues, their gazes locked on me. Not him.
Me.
Their eyes burned with questions.
Their hearts with doubt.
Their knees, some of them—touched the ground.
“Nyra,” Kael rasped.
I kept my eyes forward, one hand steadying his weight. “We’re almost there.”
The council chamber doors opened before we even reached them.
And that’s when I saw them.
The Elders.
Council heads from every high bloodline. Men and women who ruled through law and legacy. All of them dressed in ceremonial black, marked wi
