Aria’s POV
The gathering took place at neutral ground three weeks later — a wide clearing near the border between four territories, chosen specifically because no single pack could claim it favored their own interests. Kael had spent considerable diplomatic effort arranging it, calling in favors accumulated over years of careful relationship-building that I was only beginning to understand the scope of.
Five Alphas attended, along with their respective advisors, all of them watching me with varying degrees of skepticism as I stood before them explaining a threat most had never heard of until my messengers reached their territories weeks earlier.
"You're asking us to commit resources toward searching for ancient fragments based on rumors and a single confirmed confrontation," said Alpha
