"Power does not whisper. It roars, and those who refuse to hear it are forced to kneel beneath it."
The slam of the chamber doors still echoed when silence reclaimed the room. Elias, Taemin, Juno, Kael, Nyra, and Riven were swept back toward the Eastern Chambers under my protection. Their absence left the air different, thinner, as though the tension had lost its distraction and now every eye was forced back to me, to the corpse cooling on the stone floor.
Tovik's body lay where I had dropped it, his neck bent at an angle no wolf could survive. The weight of what I had done lingered like smoke. Not shame. Not regret. Just inevitability.
