Chapter 297

Author’s POV

The pack had seen too much death to ever take a moment like this lightly again. Even the wind felt different, softer somehow, as it moved through the rebuilt clearing where the ceremony was to take place. Fresh wood still scented the air from hastily repaired structures, flowers had been gathered from every corner of the territory and arranged with care, and white cloth draped across the arch like a promise that something good could still exist after everything they had lost.

People arrived quietly at first. Warriors with scars not yet healed. Omegas who still flinched at sudden sounds. Children clutching their parents’ hands a little tighter than before. But as they gathered. There was a fragile kind of hope threading through the crowd

At the center of it all stood Valerie. She Just stood there beneath the arch, fingers lightly curl