Rennick’s horn changed everything.
Not because of what it meant militarily — a single Alpha’s arrival, even with six hundred warriors, was not the decisive variable in a fortress like Blackstone. It changed everything because of what it meant symbolically, and symbols, Kael had learned in fifteen years of rule, were frequently more powerful than armies.
The Moon Council’s authority rested on a single premise: that it was inevitable. That it had always existed and would always exist and resistance to it was therefore not merely futile but irrational. The moment another Alpha King crossed into Blackstone in open defiance of a First Seat operation, that premise cracked.
Asha knew it too.
He could see it in the way she rose from the floor — controlled, unhurried, using every year of her au
