AYLA — POV
My boots sank into the soft black loam, damp with dew and memory.
The forest had changed since my awakening. Not in a way anyone else might notice. The trees still groaned in the wind, the sky still swam with pale clouds. But beneath my skin, everything hummed. As if the very roots whispered in a tongue I was only just starting to understand. Ancient. Patient.
Kael walked a step behind me, silent but not distant. He had learned to let me move first. To let me lead. There were no more claims between us, no more commands. Just gravity. That quiet tether between two wolves who had bled and burned for each other.
But even now, even with that bond steady and thrumming, I couldn't ignore the scent on the wind.
Smoke and blood.
I crouched near the edge of the ridge where the land dropped into the eastern valley. The place the emissaries had called "unsettled territory." As if the earth needed their blessing to belong.
