Chapter 323

• Lucien’s POV
• The council chamber of Stormridge was heavy with voices, each Alpha speaking over the other, each pack lord from the East straining to make his concern the loudest. The map stretched across the oak table was littered with markers—red for the West, blue for the North and South, green for us. And every time a red marker shifted, I felt the walls of the East close in tighter.
• The Western Pack had been nothing more than a distant power when I first took my throne. They kept to their mountains, traded when it pleased them, fought when it was in their favor. But five years had changed them. They were no longer content to remain a power in isolation. They had devoured the trade routes, starved the South’s markets, crippled the North’s fleets. And now, with both North and South bloodied by their last failed war, the West turned its eyes to us. To the East.