Ronan
Leadership is a muscle and if you stop using it, it goes soft.
Mine isn’t soft yet, but it’s been pulled in the wrong direction for days, and I can feel the difference.
Too much of my focus wrapped around one wolf. My wolf. And if I let myself think about the way he smelled this morning, stretched out under me with his pulse still hammering, I’ll forget why I came here.
I shove the thought down hard enough to make my jaw ache.
The war room smells of paper, candlewax, and old wood. Patrol maps cover the table, each marked in charcoal where the scouts spotted movement. None of it’s random.
I trace a finger along the eastern boundary, where the markers run through marshy ground. The prints there were wide-set, deep in the mud. Not a lone wolf, but a pair traveling light. Too heavy
