Whispers in the Fog

The morning council meeting at the Great Longhouse was an arena of bare fangs and unsheathed hostility. Beneath the soaring cedar beams of the ancestral council hall, fifty pack elders, warrior captains, and clan matriarchs sat along tiered benches. In the center of the flagstone floor, standing before the council dais, was Alpha Lucian Thorne, dressed in full ceremonial leather armor, his molten-gold eyes burning like twin suns. Beside him,…