Caelan
Night settles differently now.
It isn’t the sharp-edged quiet that follows vigilance, the kind that keeps me half-awake even when my body demands rest. This is deeper than that, it’s heavier. Like the land itself has decided to exhale, releasing the tension it’s carried all day.
I don’t go straight to my room.
Instead, I take the outer corridor of the packhouse, boots quiet against old stone, letting the sounds move through me, low voices fading as wolves turn in for the night, the distant creak of timber as the building settles, the quiet certainty of a pack that knows where it stands.
And beneath it all, something new. Elara.
Not just her scent, though that’s there now, unmistakable, woven gently into the fabric of the place, but the absence of tension around it.
I stop nea
