The council chamber had been built into the oldest part of the pack house, stone walls that predated even Silvain's grandfather's rule, and Marina had stood in it dozens of times over three years without ever quite losing the sense that the room itself was listening, weighing, deciding whether she belonged inside it.

Vael sat at its center now, unshackled but flanked by two of Ragnar's wolves, his posture the careful stillness of a man who understood exactly how thin the goodwill keeping him unshackled actually was. The council had assembled faster than protocol technically allowed, elders and territory heads pulled from beds and breakfasts by the specific urgency in...