POV: Jessie Walker
The smell of ozone and rot was finally losing its grip on the valley. In its place was something I hadn’t smelled in Wildfire for two decades: wet earth, pine resin, and the sweat of men and women who weren’t working out of fear.
I stood on the edge of the training grounds, my arm in a sling and my chest wrapped tight enough to make every breath a deliberate negotiation. The doctors from the Diamond Moon Pack—skilled healers who used tech I’d only ever heard of—had told me to stay in bed. But they didn’t understand. I had spent eighteen years watching this pack crumble from the inside out. I wasn’t going to miss the first day it started to grow back.
The recovery effort was a sight that still made my throat tight. For ninety years, since the fall of the last High King
