Chapter 74

Aria's POV

The new year brought with it an unexpected gift: peace.

Not the fragile, holding-your-breath kind we'd learned to navigate in the early days of the alliance. This was something steadier. The kind that settles into the bones of a community when it starts to believe in itself.

I noticed it first in small things. The way teachers at the Shadow Peak school lingered after hours, trading ideas without anyone asking them to. The way students from the two newest alliance territories arrived for an inter-pack learning summit with curiosity instead of guardedness. The way Drogo stopped bracing slightly every time a message arrived from an alliance...