The morning mist clung low to the ground, turning the training fields and the great hall into something soft and new, yet every step I took felt heavy with the weight of centuries. For as long as this pack had stood, its laws had been carved in stone and blood—rules written by Alphas who feared weakness, who equated mercy with cowardice, who believed that power was something you seized and guarded with your life, never shared. Today, we would begin to break that stone and build something different in its place.
I stood at the front of the great hall, looking out over the gathered crowd. Every face was turned toward me—warriors, elders, children, healers, those who had once cheered my exile and those who had wept in silence as I was led away. Kael stood at my right hand, his presence stead
