(Isla)
The hall was full when we walked in.
Every wolf on the land the way I'd asked for. Every rank, every household, every person who had ever lived on this territory and made their choices about what they saw and what they ignored. They filled the space from wall to wall and when the doors opened every head turned toward us and the silence that followed wasn't the kind that came from discipline.
It was the kind that came from fear.
I felt it before I saw it. Vaela moved beneath my skin, quiet and certain, and my senses spread through the room the way they did now without me asking them to. Fear in layers, different in each wolf, shaped by what they'd done and what they'd allowed. Guilt in the front rows. Shame further back. A few faces near the far wall that carried something closer
