The Halcyon Alpha was a woman named Brynn.
She received us in the main hall of her pack's compound — smaller than Shadowmere, organized differently, the specific configuration of a territory that had been expanding across three decades and had not yet found its final shape. The buildings had the quality of things added at intervals rather than planned as a whole. The pack bond carried the warmth of a community that functioned but had an underlying tension I felt the moment we crossed the border.
The tension of people who were not entirely sure what they were allowed to be.
I had been feeling it since the gate.
Brynn was perhaps forty. Direct in the way of Alphas who had earned their authority through demonstration rather than inheritance — the specific quality of someone who had fought
