Chapter 63: Chapter 63
I slipped out of bed before sunrise, careful not to disturb Christian. He was still out, his face peaceful in sleep—something I hadn’t seen much of lately. The dark circles under his eyes told me everything I needed to know about the weight he was carrying.
The bond between us hummed with his exhaustion even in unconsciousness. I felt him stir slightly as I left, his wolf protesting the separation, but he didn’t wake.
The training grounds were already alive with activity when I got there. The female warrior program had grown exponentially over the past few months, and watching them move through combat drills made something fierce bloom in my chest. These were girls—young women—who would have been told five years ago that they didn’t belong here.
Elena was in the middle of the group, all sharp angles and determination. Seventeen years old, angry at the world in that specific way that came from being told your dreams weren’t acceptable. She caught my eye and broke formation, which wasn’t protocol, but I waved Marcus off before he could correct her.
"Luna," Elena said, slightly breathless.
"Join me for breakfast?" I asked.
Her eyes widened like I’d just offered her the moon.
Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in the training facility’s small kitchen, and Elena was tearing into eggs like she hadn’t eaten in days. I let her eat for a minute before I asked the question I already knew the answer to.
"Are your parents still giving you grief about this?"
Elena’s fork stopped mid-bite. "How did you—"
"Lucky guess."
"They think I should focus on finding a mate instead of ’playing warrior,’" Elena said, her voice dripping with bitterness. "They’ve been going to these gatherings. Family meetings, they call them. About pack traditions and values and how things used to be better."
There it was. Harold’s fingerprints all over the old guard.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I want to be a fighter," Elena said immediately. "I want to prove that being female doesn’t make me weaker. I want—" She stopped, like she was afraid of wanting too much.
"You want to matter," I finished.
She nodded, her jaw tight.
"You do," I said. "You already do."
With that, I walked away.
The communal dining hall at lunch was packed. I grabbed a tray and made my way toward the elder’s table, which was probably not smart but definitely necessary.
Grandmother Iris smiled when I sat down. She was in her eighties, had seen three generations of pack leadership, and had one of the sharpest minds I’d encountered in Shadow Ridge. "Sophie, dear. How are you managing all of this?"
"All of what?" I asked, though I knew exactly what.
"The whispers," Iris said simply. "The concerns about Christian’s leadership. Harold’s been quite busy, hasn’t he?"
I looked at her carefully. "Are you concerned?"
"No," Iris said firmly. "But Martha and Thomas are." She gestured to two older pack members sitting a few seats down. "They’re good people, but they were young in Harold’s time. They remember things a certain way."
Martha caught my eye and looked away quickly. Thomas deliberately turned his back.
"Change is scary," Iris continued, eating her soup with methodical precision. "Especially for people who’ve built their entire identity around the old ways. But I’ll tell you what I see—I see a pack that feels alive. I see young wolves with hope. I see tradition being honored while also making room for progress." She patted my hand. "That’s not easy to accomplish. Don’t let the complainers make you think it is."
The medical facility was my next stop. Maria was in her element, overseeing three new healers—two women and one man—working on inventory. She looked up when I walked in, and her face went carefully neutral.
"Sophie. Good timing. I wanted to talk to you about something."
We stepped into her office, and Maria closed the door.
"Stress-related ailments are up," she said without preamble. "Elevated cortisol, tension headaches, sleep disruption. I’d estimate about thirty percent of the pack is experiencing stress symptoms that aren’t injury-related."
"That’s not good."
"It’s worse than that," Maria said, pulling up her notes. "The stress is concentrated among two demographics—younger pack members who’ve invested in the new structures and older members who feel like their values are being threatened. It’s like the pack is splitting into factions, and they’re stressed about the split itself."
I sat down in her office chair. "Harold’s doing this on purpose. He wants us fractured."
"Then you need to unfracture us," Maria said. "And quickly, or this pressure cooker is going to explode."
The unmated wolves’ gathering was held in the pack house’s common room that afternoon. I’d sent out invitations casually—no formal summons, just an open invite to anyone who wanted to hang out. About thirty showed up, ranging from eighteen to early thirties, all of them still searching for their place in the pack hierarchy.
I sat on the arm of one of the couches, trying to figure out how to approach this without sounding like I was recruiting soldiers.
"I wasn’t born into Shadow Ridge," I said, jumping straight into it. "I was rejected by my first mate. I was told I was worthless, that I’d never amount to anything."
