Peace did not arrive like dawn.
It arrived like quiet.
Too quiet.
The rose-gold veins in the moon held steady for seven nights. The valley resumed breathing. Wolves returned to hunting, training, arguing about ordinary things.
But something had shifted in the marrow of the world.
And Selene felt it first.
It was subtle.
A delay.
When one wolf shifted under moonlight, it took an extra heartbeat.
When another tried to summon heightened strength, it flickered before answering.
Not failure.
Change.
Kael noticed too.
“It’s thinner,” he murmured one evening as they watched the new moon rise. “The pull.”
Selene nodded. “Origin dispersed.”
“And that weakened us?”
“No,” she said slowly. “It redistributed us.”
She closed her eyes and reached inward.
The power no longer rushed like
