DWYN'S POV
They summoned me before the council at noon, but the world had been moving on a different clock all day—an ocean-tide clock that kept dragging me farther from sleep and closer to the edge of everything.
The council room smelled of old cedar and resin. It was smaller than I remembered from childhood visits—the stone circle beneath the old oaks felt like a tiny arena when grown men and women sat like statues around it—but the air inside was heavy with the kind of expectation that makes your teeth ache. Sunlight cut through the windows in hard, sure lines, engraving the dust motes so that they looked like a slow, turning galaxy.
Elder Mira was up first, her voice like gravel wrapped in silk. Beside her, Councilor Varun kept his hands folded like a man who'd practiced restraint until it was the only thing he knew how to do. Others watched—faces I'd seen as a child, faces that had folded me into packs-of-one with smiles and expectations.
Dawn slid low under my skin the moment I crossed the threshold, a dark, warm presence that kept brushing at Anubis like a worried hand. He's sick, she whispered. He's not himself. Move fast.
My throat tightened. I kept my hands curled around the straps of my bag because if I let them go they might start to shake. The triplets were home asleep, curled under my blanket earlier like a memory I could hold. Cecil had left them with me before the council called; her little press of the fingers against my wrist had felt like an anchor. I clung to that.
"Dwyn," Elder Mira said, and the single name carried the weight of a thousand pack nights. "We are grateful you are here."
They wasted no breath with pleasantries. That was the first thing I noticed—the way the council skipped the slow, polite thread of "how are you," because in packs you either had a problem that needed solving or you didn't. There was no room for small talk in the middle of a crisis.
"You're Alpha Duskthorn's daughter," Councilor Holt said. He spoke like a man trimming away extraneous things until only bone remained. "And by law, he named an heir. In his absence, the mantle should pass to the next of kin to hold until he can return to it."
My mouth went dry. For a moment my mind only held the image of Papa's hands—callused and sure—clenched at his hospital bed. Anubis's scent was thin, a thread of faded pine and smoke that tugged at Dawn like a noose.
"You want me to lead," I said, because saying it out loud made it more real than the cold that had started in my stomach.
"Yes," Elder Mira replied. Her eyes were softer than I expected. "Only until Duskthorn recovers. Only until he is able to reaffirm his position or name otherwise. But the law is the law, and the pack cannot be left untended. The warriors will need direction, the pups need certainty, the healers require sanction to act without constant council approval."
She looked at me in the way someone measures a glass before pouring—practical, precise. "We ask you to accept the mantle, Dwyn. Temporarily. For the safety of the pack."
I could feel Dawn stuttering inside me—old instincts sharpening into claws. Leadership wasn't a costume I'd tried on before. I've planned my current life in harmonies, in choreography, in the track list of a stage. An heir by name but not by practice yet. I thought of Papa teaching me the right way to stand, the cadence of rulings, the sound a pack makes when its leader speaks and everyone listens. I thought of Papa's laugh in the woods, and how the laugh was now a small thing tucked under machines and beeping monitors.
"I don't even—" I began, and my voice cracked like a twig under foot. "I—my life is in Seoul. I have responsibilities. Contracts. My group—my sisters—my whole team depends on me."
Elder Mira's expression didn't soften but it didn't harden either. "We know, child. We know what you carry. No one asks you to abandon the life you've built. We ask you to carry this for as long as you must. To be the presence they need. The council will work with your company's representatives. We will... make arrangements."
There was something carefully bureaucratic in her words, but it was threaded with relief—like someone who'd been holding their breath and finally could let it out.
"Why me?" I asked. The question was not indignation so much as a thin, pleading thing. "Why not Beta Parker? He's Beta—traditionally he's the one who steps forward."
Elder Mira exchanged a look with Councilor Holt—small, weathered gestures of old alliances. "Kael is the current Beta, and normally he would be first to rise. He will be part of the council's leadership," she said. "But you, Dwyn, are the legal heir. Pack law names kin before rank when the Alpha is the one incapacitated. We cannot make this call without you."
It sounded right and impossible at once. I felt the world narrow to the size of the stone circle. Dawn hummed like a thing standing on a cliff, every hair on her back alert.
"Do you want me to—formally accept?" I asked, the word heavy like a key. A small, very mortal part of me hoped I could say no and they would laugh and send me back to the airport and to Jaerin's arms. That was ridiculous. I knew that. But hope is a wicked, persistent animal.
"A formal acceptance, yes," Elder Mira said. "You will be given the mantle of acting Alpha. You will have a council to advise you. You will command the warriors, and you will be recognized publicly so long as you desire the council to maintain the safety and continuity of leadership. It is not forever. It is only until Duskthorn can return. Will you accept?"
My mouth was dry. My hands were a fist around Dawn that I couldn't unclench. The triplets' faces flashed in my mind—scrubbed cheeks, knobby knees, the way Liora always tried to hide her missing tooth—small, living proof of why I could not run anymore.
"I'll do it," I said, the words surprising me with how steady they came. "For Papa. For the pack. For the triplets." Saying it made the room tilt. "I'll accept."
A murmur ran through the elders like wind through leaves. Elder Mira inclined her head. "Then it is decided."
They moved with the ceremonial slowness of people used to making decisions that ripple. Someone produced a small leather band—an old symbol of temporary authority—and an elder laid it on the stone between us. It was simple, worn, the kind of thing that had been passed between hands that had to do hard things. I lifted it like an offering and slid it over my wrist. The leather fit like a promise I hadn't yet tasted.
Dawn exhaled inside me, small and steady. Anubis's scent thinned then sparked like a line in a poem—the wolf was still there, still held in a fragile place. But something in the pack shifted. Men and women straightened. The air took on the taste of direction: patrols to be arranged, ration lists to be updated, nurses to be given authority to act without a dozen signatures.
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket and for a moment the world became very small and very bright and the rhythm of my heart turned into one question: who did I tell first?
Jaerin's name flashed on the screen like the only real thing in the room.
My fingers were clumsy. I thumbed the green and brought the phone to my ear. Dawn pressed close, as if she could offer my voice steadiness she could not furnish otherwise.
"Dwyn?" His voice came—soft, surprised. In the background I could hear the muffled trace of music, the cadence of a life in Seoul. "You okay? I—did you read my message from earlier? I—"
"I'm... at the council," I managed, and my voice shook, small and brittle. "Jaerin. They—Papa is alive but weak, and they asked me to take the mantle. I'm going to be acting Alpha until he recovers."
There was silence on his side long enough to make me think the call had cut. I felt my stomach flip.
"Dwyn," he said finally, and there was that little catch in his voice that always clattered at me like wind on glass. "Do you understand what that means? Are you—do you want to do it? I can come—"
"No," I said immediately. The word came out harder than I meant. "No, you can't. Jae, you can't drop everything. You have a group. You have contracts. You can't—"
"I don't care about contracts if you're asking me to come," he said. His voice was too quiet to be pinched by planes or studios. "I'll go. I'll book a flight. I'll... Dwyn, say the word and I'll be there."
I felt suddenly that I might break into pieces if he said it. Not because I needed him physically there—though my knees wanted it—but because the calm in his voice had a way of knitting me back together. Dal hummed inside him, and even across an ocean I could feel that ghost of warmth that meant he was near.
"You promised," I said, and the memory of him promising to try, to be honest, to not run—how could it be that those small, ordinary promises were the thing I clung to like a lifeline? "You promised and we've talked about this."
"I did promise," he answered. "And I'll keep that promise. I'm not going anywhere, I just want to be with you."
"I don't want you to lose your job," I said, because I loved him, yes I said it, I love him enough to be selfish in a different way. "You know what this will do to your team if you vanish. I can't have you lose everything because I—because my father got poisoned."
"You come first," he said, and his voice wavered for the first time with a shame I could feel in my teeth. "If you need me—if you need me there—I'll find a way."
I squeezed the edge of the leather band on my wrist until my knuckles whitened. "I need you to tell me you'll stay put," I said. "You don't even know where I am. Just tell me you'll be here with me."
There was a long breath, like a man gathering all the courage he hadn't known he had. "I'll be here," he said. "I don't know where here is yet, Dwyn, but I'll be here for you. When you leave, when you return—when you fall apart and when you put yourself back together. I'm your mate. You don't get to do this alone."
The word—mate—slid into me and I felt it like a warm hand on the small of my back. Dawn sighed as if in relief. I laughed, short and wet.
"You're ridiculous," I said, but it was one of the fondest things I'd ever said to him.
"You gave me permission," he replied. "And I don't waste permission. Now: do I get details? Order? Will I need to write a song in your honor? Or—"
"You're terrible at logistics," I said, and the laughter cracked brighter through him. "You can help me the way you always do—by not taking over. By letting me lead because I need to learn. By reminding me to breathe."
"I can do that," he said. "I'll be your idiot alarm clock if you need one."
"You're my idiot alarm clock," I said, and the way he breathed then—the pleased, astonished inhale—made the council room seem far away and unimportant for a delicious, dangerous second.
"Promise me one thing," he said quietly.
"Anything."
"Come back," he said. "You don't get to go and leave me in Seoul. Come back to me. Promise."
"I promise," I whispered, the word a binding made of salt and wood and a million tiny beats. "I'll come back. And when I do, we'll have the stupidest, most awkward date to celebrate."
"You better," he said, and his voice cracked just a little—human and raw. "You better be ready for my terrible ramen choices."
I let out a real laugh then, the sound breaking like sunlight through trees. "I'll be ready."
We traded the small comforts of almost lovers—silly challenges, whispered assurances, the kind of language only two clumsy people who'd nearly ruined everything once could speak—and it steadied me in a way the leather band could not.
When the call ended, I sat in the circle with the elders watching me like a fledgling, and I felt simultaneously too large and too small for what lay in front of me. The mantle on my wrist warmed with the weight of it. Dawn curled tight and listened for Anubis's breath.
My voice didn't falter after the call; Jaerin's warmth had become a small, steady ember inside my chest.
When the meeting adjourned, Elder Mira rested her hand on my shoulder. "You carry a heavy thing, Dwyn," she said. "But you are not carrying it alone."
"No," I said. "I won't be."
Outside, the world was the same as it had been when I'd arrived—trees, scrubbed air, the low thrum of a pack settling in for a long night. The triplets would wake in the morning, and Cecil would hand them over into my arms like the smallest, fiercest weapons. They did not know yet how much we were all standing on the edge of.
I touched the leather band,and thought of the temporary crown, and of Jaerin's promise—of his voice across an ocean, of Dal's steadying warmth—and for the first time since I'd landed I let myself breathe a little easier.
Dawn nudged Anubis's scent again, small and worried. We had work to do. We had to keep Papa alive. We had a pack to steady. We had a battlefield that smelled of rosemary and deceit. We had to find who did this and fast.