The Heir / Coming Home

Dawn came, and the pack gathered in the great hall. Not the room where Ronan had paced as a boy, where his father had ruled from a carved oak chair, but the old stone chamber beneath the pack house. The one with claw marks on every wall. The one where oaths were sworn and broken.

I stood in the center of a circle of salt and ash. My feet were bare. The stone was cold as a river bed.