War had begun.
Or at least that was what the council believed when Thessian gave the order for two thousand elite to mobilize.
Runners sprinted from the chamber with commands. Horns sounded through the lower barracks. Armed wolves poured into the preparation yards beneath a sky already darkening to iron. Yet Thessian remained standing before the Alpha seat, unnaturally still, as though part of him had already moved somewhere the others could not follow.
Because something inside him had caught.
A thought.
A pattern.
Not about Valeria. About the wolves gathering to march.
His gaze slid toward Marcus and the first ranks assembling below the dais. At first he had not understood what had unsettled him since the council purge—only that the change inside him had refused to stay contained. It was moving outward now. Subtle. Persistent.
