Lulu had never known quiet like this.
Not the stiff, suffocating silence of Silver claw ,where every breath was measured, every move watched, every misstep remembered.
This was different.
The forest beyond Northern Ridge didn't hush because of fear instead it quieted out of reverence. For the snow that fell in steady flakes each morning. For the wolves that passed like shadows between the pines. For the wind, which howled low but never mournfully.
It had been four days since she woke in Ryker's territory. Four days of healing in a thick-walled chamber tucked beneath the main lodge. Four days of listening to the distant rhythm of a pack that did not speak to her but very much saw her.
They called her the new blood.
She heard it in the halls. In the training fields. At the edge of the mess hall, where she sat alone, eating bland broth while warriors clinked their bowls and shared loud stories of hunt and patrol.
"Alpha took her in himself, didn't he?"
"Didn't even shift when she crossed the boundary."
"Bet she's some runaway rogue."
"No ,she's got Silver claw scent. Old blood. Something happened down there…"
Lulu tried to ignore it. She focused on stretching her still-stiff limbs, strengthening her ankle, coaxing her wolf back from whatever dark corner it had retreated to.
But it wasn't easy.
Some nights, she dreamed of Kael. Not the Kael who stood beneath the moon and told her she wasn't enough but the boy who once held her hand beneath a summer waterfall. The boy who whispered promises during border runs. The boy who said ours with a look that burned through her.
She woke from those dreams with clenched fists and teeth marks in her pillow.
On the sixth morning, she found her way to the training yard.
No one greeted her. No one asked what she was doing there.
But Ryker's wolves lean, strong, scarred in all the ways ,watched her and kept watching as she stood in the center of the ring, flexing her fingers, breathing in the bite of cold air, and waiting.
The first to step forward was a woman named Nyra. Towering. Dark-haired. Bladed eyes. She didn't offer her hand just nodded once, then struck.
Lulu barely dodged the sweep of her leg.
But something in her chest lit up.
It wasn't her wolf at least, not fully. It was instinct. A rush of muscle memory and buried hunger. She wanted to fight. She wanted to feel again.
Their match lasted five minutes.
Lulu didn't win. But she didn't crumple either.
When it ended, Nyra offered a curt nod and murmured, "Not bad, new blood."
That night, the whispers changed.
Ryker leaned against the edge of the upper balcony, overlooking the training field. Snow drifted through the gaps in the beams. Below, the fire pits hissed. His second-in-command, Bram, approached without a word and passed him a steaming mug.
"She's stubborn," Bram said, glancing down to where Lulu sat alone, wrapping her knuckles with rough linen.
"She's healing," Ryker replied.
Bram arched an eyebrow. "You planning to keep her?"
"I haven't decided yet."
"She's not pack."
"No," Ryker agreed. "But she's not nothing."
Bram grunted. "Half the den's buzzing with questions. Some say she's your mate. Some say she's a cursed witch. One even said she's the ghost of the Winter War's last seer."
Ryker's mouth quirked. "They'd believe anything if it was wrapped in a pretty enough lie."
"She's different," Bram said. "Not just her scent. She doesn't move like a broken thing."
Ryker didn't answer at first. His eyes stayed locked on Lulu.
She was struggling but not shrinking.
She was bruised but not bowed.
"She's figuring it out," he said finally. "And that's more than most of them ever try."
Bram nodded and left him there alone with the cold wind and the hum of something he couldn't yet name burning low in his blood.
Lulu returned to her room that night to find a parcel folded neatly on her bed.
New clothes. All black. Fitted for movement. Stitching that suggested quality, not charity. And beneath it, a note in slanted handwriting:
"Rest's over. Let's see what you are.
- R"
She stared at it, fingers tight around the fabric.
He wasn't wrong. The rest was over.
Let the whispers come. Let them say her name like it was a rumor or a warning.
She was no longer Kael's Luna.
She was no longer Silver claw.
But she was here.
And she was not done.