The first week of my rule was controlled chaos.

I woke before dawn every morning, trained for an hour alone in the manor's courtyard, shadow and moonlight in alternating sets until my bloodlines hummed in steady equilibrium, then went to work dismantling everything Silvermere used to be.

The training grounds were unrecognizable.

Under Cassian, morning drills had been a warriors-only affair.

Forty or fifty wolves running the same formations they'd used for a decade, supervised by the same instructors who'd been teaching the same techniques since before I was born.

Now the field was packed by six AM.

A hundred and thirty wolves the first morning.

A hundred and sixty...