Camille

The courtyard smells like iron and rain.

Blood and storm.

I stand in the center of it with my hood shadowing my face, the pack ringed around us in a broken circle. Their eyes glow in the dark—gold, blue, green—but none of them step forward. They can’t.

They wear her collars.

Black iron bands etched with sigils I memorized as a child.

I lift my head slowly.

Across from me, my grandmother waits in her beast form.

Her form towers above my human height, spine arched, fur silvered like moonlight caught in frost. Her eyes burn an ancient amber.

The glint of the collar on the wolf packs whose...