Chapter Fifteen
The storm did not end with the night.
Rain lingered into morning, thin and cold, turning the valley roads into dark ribbons of mud and stone. Lyra stood at the narrow window of the upper corridor, watching riders depart in opposite directions—some returning to their territories, others vanishing into neutral paths that led nowhere clean.
No one left unchanged.
She felt it through the bond: the tightening threads, the new fractures, the places where loyalty had formed and where resentment had hardened into something sharper. The gathering had drawn lines, but it had not settled them.
Cain found her there before dawn fully broke.
“They’re already moving,” he said without preamble. “Three packs pulled their emissaries overnight. Two more fortified their borders.”
Lyra n
