The funeral lasted three days.
Kael's pack gathered in the forest where the settlement had once stood, their howls echoing through the trees like a collective scream of grief. Twenty-three pyres burned through the nights, their flames reaching toward a sky that offered no answers. Twenty-three families wept. Twenty-three holes remained in the fabric of the pack that could never be filled.
Lena stood at the edge of the ceremony, watching. She wasn't pack—not really, not yet. Not in the way that mattered to these wolves who had lost their own. So she stayed back, respecting their space, letting them mourn without the complication of her presence.
But she felt every sob like a knife in her chest.
"They blame themselves," Caspian murmured beside her. They'd kept their distance too, knowing
