Rourke POV:
The council’s scent lingers long after they’re gone.
It clings to the edges of the pack grounds like smoke after a fire — sharp, old, intrusive — and it takes restraint not to bare my teeth at the empty road where they vanished. The land itself feels quieter now, watchful in the way only territory does after it’s been tested and found unwilling to bend.
I remain at the edge of the training ring long after the others begin to move again, hands clasped behind my back, posture steady, letting the weight of the encounter settle where it belongs.
They saw her.
Not fully, not clearly, but enough.
That’s the danger.
Rowan joins me without a word, his presence steady at my side. My son has always moved like this — quiet when it matters, loud only when it counts. His gaze tracks
