The morning breeze through Oakhaven carried more than the scent of damp moss and woodsmoke. It carried murmurs.
News of the rejection of Lord Cedric’s proposal had traveled with unnatural speed across the mountain ridges. By midday, three distinct messenger falcons had dropped dispatches at the outer boundary stones. The northern lords, the southern merchant barons, and the neutral frontier elders were all scrambling to decipher the same impossible truth: the wolfless exile who had once vanished into the mud was not only alive, but commanding the ancient, pureblood magic of House Crescent Moon.
Inside the clinic’s ground-floor dispensary, Elena measured dried valerian root onto an iron scale.
Her sleeves were rolled neatly to her elbows, her dark hair woven into a thick braid that fell
