The first horn was Soren’s.
He knew her signature — three long calls, descending, the Northern Reaches’ tradition for announcing peaceful approach. She’d pushed her convoy hard to arrive this early, which told him everything about the intensity of what she’d felt from the moment the seal broke.
He was in the main hall when she came through the gates, and she was exactly as he remembered from the last summit — tall, iron-haired, carrying the particular authority of an Alpha who had ruled her territory longer than most and had no interest in impressing anyone about it.
She stopped when she saw Lira.
Not a dramatic stop. Just — Frozen. The involuntary pause of someone whose body has processed something before their mind has.
“That’s her,” Soren said. Same words as Rennick. Different qual
