Chapter 28 The Council's Interest

• "The elders looked at me as if I were a puzzle to be solved."
• The Headmaster's chambers were colder than the night outside, and it wasn't just the winter air seeping through the ancient stone walls. This was the kind of cold that came from centuries of power, from decisions that had shaped the fate of entire packs. The room itself seemed to breathe with authority-tall windows stretched toward the star-scattered sky, their glass so old it warped the moonlight into strange patterns across the floor.
• A massive oak table dominated the space, its surface polished to a mirror shine by decades of elbows and forearms, of treaties signed and alliances broken. The wood was so dark it looked almost black in the candlelight, carved with intricate wolf heads at each corner, their eyes set with amber stones that seemed to watch everything that transpired here.