Chapter 57. The Wolf’s Lament

The camp pulsed with the aftershocks of battle—laughter and sobs crashing together like opposing waves on the same storm-tossed shore. Around the clearing, wolves shifted back into flesh, bodies dissolving from fur to skin with the raw exhaustion of victory. Some of them leaned on each other, cradling torn limbs. Clothes were torn, blood darkened the earth, and smoke from dying torches hung heavy in the air.

Kaelen walked at the center of it all, still in his wolf form, his dark fur streaked with crimson both his own and others’. He still bore the stony focus of an Alpha still in motion, still thinking in terms of threat and duty even as the battle behind him had ended. The great weight of what had just transpired hadn’t settled on him yet—it would, but not now.

To either side of him padded two wolves—one dark as a storm-swollen river, the other pale with a dusting of silver across her coat like morning frost. Raymond and Lyssa. The parents of Mira. Of Ismeria. Of the gi