~LYRA'S POV~
The training field was empty at that hour. The sky was still dark blue, not quite night but not morning either, that in-between stretch where everything felt suspended. My breath came out in small white puffs and the grass under my feet was damp and cold through my boots.
Ryland was already there when I arrived, standing in the centre of the cleared ground with his arms crossed. He'd changed into simple training clothes, dark trousers, a plain shirt with the sleeves pushed up. No Alpha armour. No performance. Just him.
"You're on time," he said.
"You sound surprised."
"I'm not." He gestured for me to come stand in front of him. "I just appreciate it."
He walked me through it slowly. Breathing first. Long and even, he said, from the stomach not the chest. He told me to close my eyes and just listen inward. Try to feel something beneath the surface, the way you feel warmth through a wall, you don't touch the source directly, you just sense it's there.
I tried.
I stood in the dark with my eyes shut and my hands loose at my sides and I reached inside myself the way Elder Mira described, looking for that locked thing, that presence I'd felt stirring in the hall two nights ago. For a minute, I thought I caught it. A flicker.
Something that moved when I breathed.
Then it was gone.
I tried again. And again. And the fourth time I opened my eyes and the sky was starting to grey at the edges and my hands were clenched into fists without me even realising it.
"Nothing," I said.
"That's fine. It takes…"
"It's not fine." I heard the edge in my voice and didn't pull it back. "I've been reaching for this my whole life. Every birthday, every full moon, every time someone looked at me like I was broken. And now I'm told the wolf is actually there, it's just locked, and I'm standing in a field at dawn trying to breathe correctly and it still doesn't move. So no. It's not fine."
Ryland didn't flinch. He just waited until I was done.
"Maybe your healer was wrong, Maybe there's nothing in me to unlock."
"There's something in you," he said.
Completely calm, like the possibility of being wrong hadn't even registered as a real option.
"I felt it in that hall. So did every wolf in that room. Kael felt it. Eren felt it. That's not something you imagine."
"Feeling it and having it are two different things."
"No," he said. "They're not. Not with wolves." He took a step closer.
"What you felt that night was real. What Mira found is real. The lock is the problem, not you.
Those are different."
I looked at him for a moment. He didn't look like he was managing me. He looked like he genuinely believed what he was saying, and somehow that was worse than being managed, because it left me with no argument.
I exhaled. "So what now?"
"Now we do something else, Come here."
—
What he taught me instead was how to move.
Not fight. Not shift. Just move. He had me walk across the field and watched, then told me to do it again differently.
"Your eyes are down," he said. "Not all the way, but enough. When you enter a space, you check exits before you check people.
That's survival instinct, and it's kept you alive, but it signals something to everyone watching."
"It signals that I'm paying attention."
"It signals that you're expecting an attack," he said. "Which tells the room you don't feel safe. And a Luna who doesn't feel safe in her own pack makes everyone else feel unsettled."
"So I'm supposed to just pretend."
"Half of leading is showing up like you already own the space," he said. "Chin level. Eyes forward. Like you walked in because you meant to, and the room is lucky you did."
I stared at him. "That sounds like lying."
"It sounds like survival, You already know how to do that. You've been surviving in rooms that didn't want you for years. You just didn't know you were allowed to own them at the same time."
I thought about that. "Walk across the field again?"
"Walk across the field again."
I did. Head up this time. Eyes level. I felt ridiculous, like I was performing something I hadn't earned. But when I reached the far side and turned around, Ryland was watching with a different expression than before.
"Better," he said.
"It felt fake."
"It'll feel real when you've done it enough times."
—
We moved to the small library off the main hall after breakfast. Ryland pulled a chair to the table across from mine and set out a rough map of the pack territories and a ledger of what looked like dispute records.
"Pack structure first," he said. "Alphas make decisions, but a Luna's job isn't to agree out loud. It's to advise in private, absorb what the pack can't bring to the Alpha directly, and translate between."
"Translate between what?"
"Between power and people," he said.
"Alphas can be hard to approach. You won't be. That's not a weakness, that's a function.
People will come to you with things they'd never say to me."
"And what do I do with those things?"
"Decide what I need to hear and how I need to hear it." He tapped the dispute ledger. "Read that. Tell me what you notice."
I pulled it toward me and read. Three pages in, I looked up. "The same family name keeps appearing. Different disputes, different years. But always them."
Ryland's expression didn't change.
"What does that tell you?"
"That the disputes aren't actually about what's written in the ledger. There's something older underneath it. A grudge, or a resource problem that never got properly addressed."
He was quiet for a beat. "Most people read that ledger and count incidents. You read the pattern."
"Is that the right answer?"
"It's the better one," he said. He was hiding something at the corner of his mouth. A smile he didn't let fully happen.
I went back to the ledger. I asked questions for the next two hours, most of them about things that didn't seem to have obvious answers, the kind of questions where you could feel him recalibrating each time. Like he'd prepared for a slower pace and had to adjust.
He never said that out loud. But I noticed.
—
Dinner was formal that evening. Ryland's inner circle around the long table, six of them.
Cade, his Beta, who I already knew was cautious. Two warriors who introduced themselves with firm handshakes and direct eyes. A woman named Sera who ran the pack's supply chains and looked me over with a measuring expression that wasn't exactly unfriendly. A younger man, Ryland's cousin Theo, who smiled easily and meant it.
And at the far end, Lord Harlan. Silver-haired, straight-backed, somewhere in his seventies.
He'd been on Silverclaw's council longer than Ryland had been alive, from what I'd gathered.
He looked at me when Ryland introduced me. A full, slow look, the kind that catalogues.
Then he nodded. Short and final.
"She needs time," he said.
Not to me. Across me. Like I was a renovation project someone had started without consulting the original architect.
Nobody responded. The table moved on.
I kept my face even and reached for my water glass. Under the table, without looking, I found Ryland's hand and pressed it once.
Steady. Brief.
He went still beside me.
I didn't look at him. I was looking at Lord Harlan, who had already turned to speak to Cade and clearly considered the matter settled.
Ryland turned his head just slightly, enough that I caught the movement in my peripheral vision. I gave him a small nod. Not reassurance exactly. More like: I've sat at worse tables than this. I know how to wait.
I heard him let out a slow, quiet breath.
Theo, across the table, caught my eye and lifted his cup a fraction, the smallest possible version of a toast. I didn't smile back. But I noted it.
One ally. Maybe two if Sera's measuring look had landed where I thought it did.
The rest would take longer.