Caelan POV:
Morning breaks pale and cool, mist clinging low to the forest floor as though the land itself is reluctant to let the night go.
I don’t wake with intention. I wake with pull.
Vaelor is already pacing beneath my skin before my eyes open, a low, steady insistence that has nothing to do with patrol routes or pack movement and everything to do with direction. East, toward the border. Toward the place where lines blur and choices carry weight.
I don’t fight it.
The shift comes smooth and familiar—bone and muscle folding into power as fur replaces skin, the world sharpening into scent and sound. Damp earth, pine sap, old stone. And beneath it all, faint but unmistakable—
Elara.
Not alarmed, not threatened. Just… unsettled.
Vaelor moves through the trees with silent confidence
