Word spread the way things always spread in a pack compound — not through announcements or formal declarations, but through the specific, unstoppable current of five hundred wolves who share a bond and have opinions about it.
By the time Darius and I walked back through the compound gates with pine needles in our hair and his hand still loosely around mine, approximately forty percent of Shadowmere already knew something had shifted. I could feel it in the pack bond — a warmth that was different from the baseline I'd been learning, brighter at the edges, curious rather than cautious.
The remaining sixty percent figured it out from the way Luna was standing on the front steps with her arms crossed and an expression that could only be described as vindicated.
"You have a leaf," she said,
