DYERI do not give the order aloud.

I turn, and the den responds.

Bodie falls in beside me without a word, his presence a familiar anchor as I lead the way from the inner hall toward the old passageways carved into the mountain’s spine. Wolves part instinctively, curiosity checked by discipline. I feel eyes follow us, feel questions bloom and die in the same breath. No one challenges the choice. No one asks why the stranger walks unbound between us.

That, more than his arrival, unsettles ...