The council chamber had quieted to a delicate, trembling silence—one that felt as if even a single breath might shatter it like thin ice. The tension clung to every surface, to every heartbeat, to every inhale. Somewhere in that silence, fate seemed to hold its breath too.
Michael knelt at the center of the hall, shoulders hunched, head bowed. His hands lay open on his thighs—empty hands, stripped of authority, stripped of the strength he once wielded with certainty. His wolf lay quiet inside him, curled into itself like a wounded pup. No snarl left. No righteous justification. Only shame. Only regret. Only the aching sting of consequences he could no longer outrun.
Across the chamber, little Nathan shifted in his mother’s arms, big dark eyes moving between adults who seemed impossibly t
