The words travel through the hall faster than any command, and even though they are spoken quietly they spread like heat through dry timber because every wolf in the room felt the tremor and every wolf is searching for a cause that makes sense.
“It started when she bled.”
The murmur shifts, not louder but sharper, and heads turn toward me in a way that is not openly hostile but not neutral either, because wolves do not ignore patterns and they do not dismiss coincidence when the ground itself moved beneath their feet.
Axel hears it.
Atticus hears it.
I feel it.
Axel steps forward deliberately, and he does not look back at me for reassurance because he does not need it, and when he lifts his chin slightly the room stills out of reflex even though tension continues to coil beneath the
