Aurora's POV
The mountain did not sleep that night.
Neither did I.
Deephowl carried sound the way a bottle carries sound, every footstep echoing too loudly, every whisper finding its way through stone corridors. Even the fires burned lower than usual, their flames subdued, as if they understood what we had lost in the forest.
We had brought the wounded home before dawn.
Three dead.
Seven injured.
And one taken.
The pack did not howl for victory. They did not howl for the fallen either. They moved quietly, eyes lowered, voices hushed, fear creeping in where confidence had lived only days before.
Fear was more dangerous than any enemy.
I stood in the war room long after the others had left, staring down at the maps spread across the table. Red markings tracked Cassian's remnants. Black charcoal marked unclaimed territory. And now, carved into the eastern woods, I had added a single symbol of my own.
A crescent.
Incomplete.
