The final days did not feel like days.
They felt like a single held breath stretched across the territory, thin and bright and trembling at the edges. Five became four. Four became three. The Alpha house moved with the contained precision of a place that had already survived one catastrophe and refused to invite another. Every corridor carried the low hum of vigilance. Every window looked out on patrol routes that had been walked so many times the grass was beginning to remember the path.
I woke on the morning of the third day before the ceremony with Tristan’s arm locked around my waist and his face buried against the back of my neck. For a long time I did not move. I catalogued the ordinary miracles of the moment—the weight of him, the steady rhythm of his breathing, the absence of sil
