The clearing chosen for the challenge was older than Grimridge's councils, older than seals and advisory chambers and the careful language men used when they wanted power to look softer than it was.
It lay between two ridges where the forest opened into a natural basin of stone and packed earth, the ground marked by old scars that rain and seasons had never fully erased.
No torches were lit. None were needed. Moonlight spilled cleanly across rock, fur, and the gathered wolves who stood along the perimeter at measured distance, not as a roaring crowd hungry for spectacle, but as witnesses to something the pack understood had become necessary.
Adrian had forced the gate, spilled pack blood inside Grimridge's own borders, and come back not in shame but in argument. He had been given exile and answered it with breach. There was no softer path left after that.
He stood unbound.
Cassian had ordered it that way.
