Chapter 80. A World Without War

Lotus’s POV

The world moves on faster than it should. It’s been three days since Alister fell, and already the newsfeeds look like something out of a dream. Every screen in the palace, every phone, every broadcast, shows the same words in bold:

“The War Is Over.”

They make it sound so clean, like it wasn’t built on blood, or magic, or a curse that nearly devoured us all.

When I walk through the recovery wing, the televisions drone on in the background. Anchors sit in glass studios hundreds of miles away, trying to explain what happened in terms that sound rational.

“Sources within the Winter Pack confirm that Alpha Alister of the Autumn Pack is dead. Medical officials report that the so-called plague has lifted across all territories…”

“Experts suggest a psychic element to the phenomenon…”

“Survivors claim they were under a kind of collective hypnosis…”

“The first lycan female was born in a Summer Pack hospital this morning…”