{"The strongest storms make the best leaders"}
The battlefield was heavy with silence, the kind that settles after the roar fades, leaving only the distant crackle of fire and the soft drip of seawater from fur and skin. Around me, the Bay Shifter pack and the vampires from Paradise Bay Coven gathered in ragged circles, tending wounds, sharing quiet words, nursing the exhaustion that clung like a second skin. The Rogourau beasts stood back, watchful but wary, their sharp eyes still on the dark horizon where Ashanai and the Leviathan had disappeared.
Freyr and I stood slightly apart, shoulders still slick with salt and blood, the sting of the fight still humming beneath our skin. "We held the line," Freyr murmured, voice low but steady.
