I called the whole pack together three days later. Not the council. The pack everyone, high and low, the nobles and the servants and the families, the same wolves Vale's whispers had been turning against me. I called them into the great hall, and I stood where Cain had stood the day it knelt to him, and I did the thing Damien would never do.
I told them everything.
"You've been hearing things about me," I began, and I did not soften it, because softening was hiding and hiding was the whole problem. "That your Luna watches you. Hunts the halls at night. Keeps lists. Suspected old Harrow for months and smiled at him the whole time. That she rules by watching, in secret, the way the last Alpha did." I let it sit. "Every one of those things is true. I'm not here to deny them. I'm here to tel
