A year passed. It was a year of steel and stone, of rebuilding and redefining. Under Caleb’s strategic command and my medical and logistical reforms, the Bloodmoon pack did not just recover from the long war; it thrived. We forged new trade routes, established a healers’ academy that valued knowledge over bloodline, and rewrote ancient laws to reflect a single, unyielding principle: strength was measured not by the dominance you commanded, but by the loyalty you earned.
I earned it. Not through a fated mark or a divine right, but through long nights in the infirmary, through fair counsel in the war council, and through the quiet, unwavering resolve of a wolf who had seen the abyss and chosen to build a fortress at its edge. The pack no longer saw me as Silverwood’s castoff. They saw me as
