The first pack came at dawn.
Not with teeth bared.
With heads bowed.
Luna felt them before she saw them.
She was in the courtyard, hands on the rough stone of the Moonstone pillar, letting her awareness drift through the den—checking for fractures in the walls, strain in the wards, restless dreams in the pups—when a new thrum rippled through the foundation.
Foreign.
Not hostile.
Like a knock on a door, three valleys away.
Her wolf lifted its head.
Her heart tightened.
"Visitors," she murmured.
Orion, standing near the gate, straightened, eyes flicking toward the forest.
He had not felt the approach as soon as she had, but through their bond, the awareness passed.
"How many?" he asked.
"Not enough for war," she said. "Enough to matter."
Elia, walking by with an armful of herbs, snorted.
"Everything matters," she said. "That is the problem with being important."
Luna gave a faint smile.
"Will you come?" Orion asked her.
"Of course," she said.
They moved together toward the main gate, Kerran, Rhea, and a few senior warriors falling in around them as naturally as shadow to light.
The morning air was crisp, washed clean by the night's coolness.
As they stepped out onto the outer wall walk, Luna saw them emerging from the trees.
A line of wolves.
Not rogues.
Not Moonshadow.
Their scent carried strange notes—wet stone, river moss, pine heavy with fog.
Their formation was disciplined.
Two flanks of warriors.
At the center, a smaller group in human form, cloaks drawn, heads bare.
Leading them, a tall she-wolf with iron-grey hair braided tight against her skull, eyes sharp and assessing even at a distance.
"They are from Mistveil," Orion murmured, recognition flickering across his face. "Their Alpha is—"
"Rhia," Kerran supplied. "Hard as the rocks in her mountains. Her word is as straight as her spine. If she is here, it is not for gossip."
The Mistveil wolves halted a respectful distance from the wall.
The iron-haired Alpha stepped forward, lifting her chin.
Her voice carried like a horn over the field.
"Moonshadow!" she called. "I am Rhia, Alpha of Mistveil. We come under the open Moon, with no banners of war. We seek audience."
Orion leaned on the parapet.
"I am Orion," he answered. "Alpha of Moonshadow. You are welcome at our gate."
Rhia's gaze flicked up, cool and measuring.
Then shifted.
To Luna.
The change in her eyes was almost physical.
A tension.
A flicker of something like... awe?
Rhia dropped her gaze a fraction, exposing the curve of her neck in a gesture that was not quite submission, not quite reverence.
"Goddess-touched," she said. "We greet you as well."
A rustle went through the Mistveil ranks.
Some wolves dipped their heads lower.
Some looked up at Luna with open curiosity, as if she were a story they had never expected to meet in flesh.
Luna's stomach clenched.
Goddess-touched was one thing.
She had carried that name like a mantle and a weight for some time now.
But beneath Rhia's words, she felt something else building.
A title the wind itself seemed to be testing on its tongue.
Goddess.
Not in prayer.
In presence.
Orion felt her stiffen.
His hand brushed her elbow, a subtle grounding.
"We will open the gate," he called down. "You and those you trust may enter."
Rhea slid her a sideways glance as they descended.
"Ready to be sniffed by strangers?" she asked.
"Is that what we are calling diplomacy now?" Luna muttered.
Rebel, limping slightly from an old wound, grinned.
"If they bow too low, I am going to start charging for the show," he said.
Luna elbowed him.
It did not erase the knot in her chest.
As the gates creaked open, Mistveil's Alpha stepped through, flanked by three of her wolves—a lean male with a scar over one eye, a young she-wolf with a bow slung across her back, and an older male whose eyes were clouded but whose posture was still feline and alert.
They crossed the yard until they stood before Orion and Luna.
Rhia's gaze moved from Orion's face to the scars at his wrist.
Then to Luna's.
Her nostrils flared.
Her chin dipped further.
"In our mountains," she said, "we watch the sky as much as the stone. The night the Blood Moon rose and storms danced in the south, we saw your light."
Luna's heart skipped.
"Our light?" she echoed carefully.
Rhia nodded once.
"We saw lightning flash without clouds," she said. "We felt the ground shake as if the mountain itself were waking. And then..." She paused. For a瞬, the hard lines of her face softened, awe peeking through. "We smelled Her."
The older male beside her bowed his head, lips moving soundlessly.
"We thought it was omen," Rhia continued. "Warning. Or blessing. We argued. We watched. Days later, rogues passed near our borders with stories of a wolf who stood in flood and fire, who spoke with the Moon as if She were kin. Nexus, they called you. Goddess-wolf."
Her eyes met Luna's, steady.
"We did not believe," she admitted. "Not at first. We have seen too many false prophets. Too many Alphas dress themselves in borrowed stars."
A faint, derisive sound escaped Kerran.
Luna kept her face still.
"But then," Rhia said, "the storms came softer. The cracked rock in our western pass, where pups had slipped for generations, healed smoother. The sickle-Moon rose above Mistveil three nights ago with a ring of ice around it, and our seer woke screaming with Her name on his tongue."
She took a breath.
"We come," Rhia said, "because the air smells different. Because our wolves feel a tug when they howl. Because the Goddess is moving, and She is moving around *you.* We come to see if these stories are blasphemy... or truth."
Dozens of eyes watched Luna.
Not just Mistveil's.
Moonshadow's, too.
Her throat felt dry.
She had never asked for this.
She had begged the Moon for help, for purpose, for strength.
She had never asked to become a symbol.
Or worse.
An incarnation.
The Goddess' presence brushed her mind, cool and amused.
*You are not Me,* She said. *Stop looking like someone just shoved you onto a throne you did not build. You are My echo. My channel. My chosen. That is enough to make their fur prickle.*
Luna exhaled.
Out loud, she said, "I am Luna. I am a wolf. I bleed. I err. I am not your Goddess."
A flicker of relief crossed some Mistveil faces.
Disappointment in others.
Rhia's expression remained unreadable.
"And yet," the mountain Alpha said quietly, "when you howl, the Moon answers. When you strike stone, it sings. When you call water, rivers rise."
She inclined her head.
"You wear Her touch more clearly than any we have seen," she said. "Whether you call that divinity or madness is your choice. We are here to see what you do with it."
Kerran made a small noise of approval.
Rhea's mouth tilted.
Luna appreciated the bluntness.
Better than flattery.
Worse than indifference.
"Come," Orion said, breaking the tension slightly. "You must have travelled far. We can talk better over food than in the yard."
He gestured toward the inner hall.
Rhia hesitated.
Then nodded.
Inside, under the smoother light of torches and the pale gleam of the Moonstone, Mistveil's wolves seemed to relax a fraction.
It made their glances at Luna stand out even more.
They were not quite sneaking looks.
Not quite staring.
Something in between.
Elia shoved bowls of thick stew into their hands before they could object, tsked at Rhia's closeness to the fire with such authority that the mountain Alpha actually took a step back, and then retreated to a corner to watch.
When the first hunger was taken off, Rhia set her bowl aside.
"We saw your walls crack," she said. "Even from afar. We heard of your curse. Your trials. Mistveil has kept to itself for many seasons, but stone speaks. What happened here does not stay here."
Orion nodded slowly.
"What happened here," he said, "was the result of our own choices. Our own denial. The Goddess forced us to face it. Luna pulled us through it."
Rhia's gaze flicked between them.
"She did not just pull you through," Rhia said. "She pulled the land. The rivers. The sky. We watched from our peaks. The world moved when you did, Luna of Moonshadow."
The way she said her name made Luna want to flinch.
As if it were a prayer, not a person.
She forced herself still.
"I am a conduit," she said carefully. "The power that moves is the Moon's. The stone's. The elements'. I aim it. It answers. That does not make me a Goddess. It makes me... responsible."
The older Mistveil male spoke for the first time, voice rough as gravel.
"But are you *Her?*" he asked bluntly. "In flesh?"
Luna met his gaze.
In his clouded eyes, she saw fear.
Not of her.
Of the idea.
"I am not the Moon," she said. "I am Her daughter, in a sense. Her chosen. Her... reflection. You do not worship a reflection. You use it to see yourself more clearly."
Rhia's head tilted.
"And what do you see," she asked, "when you look at us? At all of us?"
Luna let her awareness widen.
Not just to the room.
The world.
The packs scattered through the forests and mountains.
Some sleeping.
Some waking.
Some arguing around their own fires.
She felt threads.
Some bright.
Some frayed.
All tethered, in some way, to the Moon's great arc.
"You are afraid," she said softly. "All of you. Of change. Of curses. Of each other. Of Me. You are proud. You are tired. You are capable of more kindness than you have allowed yourselves. You are capable of more cruelty, too."
Rhia's eyes did not waver.
"And us?" she pressed. "Mistveil. Moonshadow. The rogues. Where do we stand in Her design?"
Luna glanced, instinctively, inward—toward the cool presence that had sat in the back of her mind since the first night she had cried out in the forest, rejected and alone.
*You answer,* the Goddess murmured. *With your own eyes. That is what I gave you this for. Not so you could parrot Me.*
Luna's chest rose and fell.
"Mistveil," she said slowly, returning her gaze to Rhia. "You stand on old bones. You have watched more winters than you admit. You have been content to let the world burn as long as your peaks stayed white. That will not be enough, soon."
Rhia's jaw tightened.
"But you are also..." Luna continued, "steady. Unmoved by fads. If you choose to step into this, you will not flee at the first sign of discomfort."
"And Moonshadow?" Kerran asked dryly from his corner, quill paused over a page.
Luna smiled wryly.
"Moonshadow stands at the crossroads it should have faced generations ago," she said. "It has hurt many. Helped some. Clung to its own importance like a pup to a teat. It is trying to be better. It will fail, sometimes. It will try again."
She felt the pack bristle at the words.
Then, slowly, ease.
Truth.
It stung.
It healed.
"And the rogues?" the young Mistveil archer blurted, eyes wide. "Where do they stand?"
Luna's heart clenched.
"In the cold," she said softly. "At the edges. In places we pushed them. They are gathering. Hurt has made them sharp. Some will break against us. Some will stand with us. If we are brave enough to offer anything but our teeth."
Then, because she could feel it, throbbing at the edges of every thought in the room, she spoke the next truth.
"And Me?" she asked, voice very quiet. "You wonder where *I* stand."
Silence dropped heavy.
"Yes," Rhia said simply.
Luna did not look up at the Moonstone.
Did not look inward toward the Goddess.
She looked at her own hands.
Scarred.
Stained.
Steady.
"I stand between," she said. "Between packs and rogues. Between stone and storm. Between the Moon's will and your choices. I am not here to replace your Alphas. I am not here to demand altars. I am here to make sure that when the world cracks—and it will—you have another path besides tearing each other apart."
The older Mistveil male gave a rasping chuckle.
"That," he said, "is a very Goddess thing to say."
Luna shot him a look.
"I also trip over my own feet at least once a week," she said. "Is that Goddess enough for you?"
A ripple of reluctant laughter eased the room.
Even Rhia's mouth quirked.
Humor.
It did not erase the fear.
It made space for something else alongside it.
Respect.
Caution.
Hope.
"We did not come to throw ourselves at your feet, Luna of Moonshadow," Rhia said after a moment. "We came to see if the stories were true. To decide whether to treat you as threat... or as... ally."
"And?" Orion asked, tension thrumming under his words despite his calm posture.
Rhia studied Luna a long, long moment.
"You are dangerous," she said. "More than any Alpha. More than any seer. To pretend otherwise would be foolish."
Luna inclined her head.
"I am," she agreed.
"But you are also..." Rhia's eyes softened a fraction, "young. Mortal. You could have demanded that we kneel the moment we walked through your gate. You did not. You could have claimed the Moon's voice and ordered us in Her name. You did not. That counts."
She dropped to one knee.
Not in full prostration.
In formal recognition.
She bowed her head.
"Luna of Moonshadow," she said. "Nexus. Moon-touched. We do not name you Goddess. That is a word we reserve for Her in the sky. But we name you—formally, as Alpha of Mistveil—as Her chosen in flesh. Her favored. Her hand. We will not raise claw against you without cause. We will listen when you speak of omens and storms. We will... consider alliance."
The words felt heavy.
Not with worship.
With *weight.*
With potential.
With responsibility.
The wolves behind Rhia echoed the motion, some awkwardly, some with obvious relief, some with wary hesitation.
They bowed heads.
Exposed throats.
Not to a deity.
To her.
To what she represented.
Luna's pulse raced.
Her wolf pressed close against her ribs, unsure whether to bristle or preen.
The Goddess whispered, amused and proud.
*They name you hand instead of heart. Good. Less tempting to break you like a toy. Take it.*
Luna stepped forward.
Her voice, when she spoke, sounded strange to her own ears.
Larger.
Filled with threads of something that was not entirely hers.
"Rhia of Mistveil," she said. "I accept your words. I will not ask you to name me what I am not. I will not make myself small for your comfort. I will call on you when storm breaks and I need mountains. I will answer when your seers wake screaming and you do not know if it is curse or change."
She reached out.
Rhia's eyes flicked to her hand.
After a心beat's hesitation, the mountain Alpha placed her forearm in Luna's grip.
Luna's power stirred.
Not in a flood.
In a brush.
A taste of river over stone.
She let a thread of it unspool, curling around Rhia's wrist like cool moonlight.
It sank in.
Rhia's eyes widened.
Her pupils blew.
For a瞬, she gasped, seeing—
Her own pack, from above, from the Moon's view.
Their sturdy halls.
Their narrow passes.
The cracks only she knew of.
And beyond, rogues huddled at their borders, watching with hollow eyes.
Then it was gone.
She staggered.
Caught herself.
Stared at Luna with something new in her gaze.
Not divination.
Experience.
"You... showed me," she whispered.
"What you needed to see," Luna said simply. "Nothing more. Nothing less."
Rhia drew back, flexing her fingers as if testing the feel of her own skin.
"I believe you," she said quietly. "Not as Goddess. As Her... agent. It will take time for my wolves to understand. To trust. But Mistveil will begin. We will send scouts to your moot. We will open our passes to share news. When rogues gather, we will not pretend we do not see."
She glanced at Orion.
"We will speak more of territory and trade another day," she said. "For now... we return to our peaks with new stories."
Orion nodded.
"Safe travels," he said. "Our gates will be open when you come again."
Rhia's gaze flicked once more to Luna.
"In our songs," she said slowly, "there is a line: 'When the Moon walks, wolves must choose.' We have been ignoring it for a long time. Perhaps that is foolish."
She inclined her head.
Then turned, leading her wolves out of the hall.
As they departed, whispers rose in their wake.
"Did you see the light around her hand?"
"She smelled like rain and snow at once."
"She is just a wolf. She laughed at Rhia. No one laughs at Rhia."
Kerran sidled up to Luna, scratching his beard.
"You did not call fire down on their heads," he said. "I am impressed."
"I considered it," she said dryly. "But then Elia would complain about the scorch marks."
Elia snorted.
"Flatter yourself less," she said. "I would complain about having to mop up their melted boots."
The hall relaxed.
A little.
But the air had changed.
Word would spread.
Not just of Moonshadow's survival.
Of the way other packs had begun to speak of Luna.
Not as rumor.
As fact.
Chosen.
Hand.
Favored.
Goddess' wolf.
That evening, as the sky deepened and stars pricked through, more visitors came.
A trio from Greenwood, shy and soft-spoken, bearing herbs and questions about healing runes.
A lanky young male from a coastal pack, smelling of salt and fish, sent by his Alpha to "see if the stories about the storm-witch are exaggerated."
Even a small knot of rogues, hovering at the border, who did not cross but did not flee when Luna walked to the line and spoke to them in low tones.
Each encounter tugged the web of the land tighter.
Threads converging on Moonshadow.
On her.
By the third day, Luna was exhausted.
Her power, once used only in battle or trance, now had to be turned carefully, delicately, toward tiny, daily miracles.
Clearing a fever from a Mistveil pup's lungs with a breath of chilled air.
Laying a hand on a Greenwood wolf's shoulder and helping her grow a single tendril of vine from dead soil, just to prove it could be done.
Sitting in the courtyard at night and letting a group of wide-eyed adolescents from three different packs—Moonshadow, Mistveil, Greenwood—ask her question after question about the Moon.
"Can She hear us all at once?" "Does She get angry when we do not pray?" "Why did She choose you?"
For that last one, Luna always had the same answer.
"She did not choose me because I am better," she said. "She chose me because I would say yes and then keep asking Her why."
On the fourth night, the packs who had come to visit gathered in the courtyard.
The Moon hung full overhead.
Not Blood.
Not sickle.
Whole.
Rhia had returned, bringing with her a stony-faced seer.
Greenwood's representative had coaxed climbing ivy over one corner of the courtyard wall.
The coastal wolves had carved small tokens of driftwood and shell, which now hung from the beams like unpolished jewels.
Moonshadow's pups darted between strangers as if they had always known them.
The air smelled of many scents, mingled but not clashing.
Orion stood at Luna's side.
Through their bond, she felt his pride swelling, laced with a thread of unbelief.
He had not imagined this, when he took the Alpha stone.
He had imagined battles.
Borders.
Treaties.
He had not imagined his courtyard filled with wolves from across the land, looking to his mate—not him—for signs and stories.
He did not resent it.
He marveled.
Maera sat with the elders, watching it all with narrowed eyes, as if measuring this new shape of the world against some old chart.
"You are pulling them into your orbit," she said quietly to Luna as the young ones settled and the murmurs died.
Luna shook her head.
"The Moon is pulling," she said. "I am just not stepping aside."
Maera's mouth twisted.
"Do not let them make you infallible," she warned again. "Or you will shatter under the first mistake."
Luna nodded.
She had no illusions about that danger.
Already, she could feel it in the way some Greenwood wolves looked at her when she spoke of the Moon.
As if her words were scripture, not experience.
As if any crack in her would mean a crack in their faith.
She drew a breath.
"Tonight," she said, letting her voice carry, "we do not speak of war. Or curses. Or debts. Tonight, we... share."
She gestured around.
"You have all come with stories," she said. "Of how the Moon has moved in your lands. Of omens. Of miracles. Of times you cursed Her name in private. I will tell you mine. Then you will tell each other yours. No one wolf holds Her whole story. Not even Me."
A murmur of interest.
Some skeptical.
Some eager.
She stepped closer to the Moonstone.
Laid her palm on its cool surface.
"I was a runt in a kitchen," she began. "I thought the Moon hated me. That She watched me suffer and did nothing. I prayed for Her to make me bigger. Stronger. To make Selene kind. To make Orion see me. She did none of that."
A faint, embarrassed sound from Orion.
She squeezed his hand.
"What She did," Luna continued, "was crack the stone when I cried. Put power in me that did not fit in the old stories. Let me be rejected... so that when I found Her in the forest, I was ready to hear Her when She said: 'You are not made for their boxes.'"
She told them, then.
Not the polished version.
The messy one.
Of leaving.
Of nearly dying.
Of the first time she summoned lightning by accident and set a bush on fire and had to beat it out with her cloak, cursing and laughing and crying all at once.
Of the first time the Goddess spoke clearly in her mind, not as comfort, but as challenge.
Of the times She had been silent.
Of the day Luna had called storms not to save herself, but to save wolves who had once spit at her feet.
And of the moment—only days before—when she had sealed her bond with Orion under the open sky and felt, truly, that the Moon had not trapped her in that destiny.
Had offered.
She had accepted.
When she finished, the courtyard was very quiet.
Then the Mistveil seer, eyes rolling white for a瞬 as if listening to something distant, spoke.
He told them of a night when the northern lights had danced in unnatural colors above their peaks.
Of how, the next day, a long-frozen pass had opened, revealing an old, buried den where bones lay tangled with silver ore.
Greenwood's representative spoke of a summer when every tree had refused to bear fruit until a forgotten shrine had been cleared of rubble.
A coastal wolf told of a storm that had inexplicably turned aside from their harbor, leaving their old boats intact while a newer, shinier fleet down-shore had been smashed to kindling.
Each story was different.
Each carried the same thread:
The Moon moved.
Not always kindly.
Not always in ways they understood.
But always with some deeper, stubborn intention.
As the tales wove together, Luna felt something settle in the group.
Not uniform belief.
Not agreement on doctrine.
A shared sense that they were seen.
That the strange wolf standing at the pillar with light in her veins was not stealing their Goddess.
Was not claiming to own Her.
Was pointing.
Upward.
Inward.
Outward.
"You are not Her," Rhia said finally, when the last story faded. "But you... carry Her current. Stronger than most. When you speak of Her, my fur stands up. When you listen, the air hums. I will not kneel to you. I will, however, call you when our passes crack again."
Luna inclined her head.
"I will answer," she said.
A young Greenwood wolf, barely out of her teens, piped up, eyes shining.
"Can we... pray to you?" she blurted. "If the Moon feels too far sometimes?"
Her Alpha hissed her name, mortified.
Luna's heart lurched.
She crouched, bringing herself more level with the girl's gaze.
"You can talk to me," she said gently. "You can ask me for help. For advice. For rain. I will do what I can. But if you *pray,*" she touched two fingers lightly to the wolf's forehead, "aim it there. At Her. Not at me. I am closer. I am still not the one who hung that light."
The girl nodded slowly, eyes wide.
"But can I... thank you?" she asked.
Luna smiled.
"You can," she said. "A stew. A letter. A flower. Your feet on the path when I ask for help. Those are prayers I know what to do with."
Behind her, Orion's amusement and affection slid through the bond like warm honey.
"You will have them building kitchens in your name," he murmured.
"Better kitchens than altars," she murmured back.
As the night wore on, wolves drifted into smaller circles, talking, eating, laughing.
Moonshadow's pups fell asleep with their heads in Mistveil wolves' laps.
Rogues at the edge of the light listened, faces hard but eyes softened by the shared songs.
Luna stepped back for a moment, letting it all swirl without her voice in the center.
She watched.
She listened.
She felt.
They were not worshipping her.
They were adjusting around her.
Treating her presence as a new constant in their sky, like a star that had suddenly brightened.
They told stories about her now.
In every pack, in every den.
Some exaggerated.
Some truer than she liked.
Storm-caller.
Curse-breaker.
Goddess' hand.
She could not stop them.
She could shape them.
With each conversation.
Each choice to deflect worship upward.
Each decision to step fully into her power without using it as a club.
"You are doing well," the Goddess murmured, softer than the rustle of leaves.
"I am tired," Luna admitted.
*Of course you are,* the Moon said. *You are mortal. That is the point. When they look at you and see Me, they need to remember the way your shoulders ache. The way you bleed. Otherwise they will make the same mistake they made with your forebears. They will forget that My power in flesh always comes with limits.*
Luna's gaze drifted to Orion, laughing quietly with a Greenwood warrior about the absurdness of trying to teach pups from three different territories the same game.
Her chest warmed.
"He reminds me," she said.
*Good,* the Goddess replied.
A small group of rogues at the very edge of the firelight caught her eye.
They stood apart.
Did not sit.
But they did not turn away when Luna approached.
"Goddess-wolf," their leader said, wary. "We do not bow."
"I am not asking you to," Luna said. "I am asking if you need food. Or bandages. Or a place by the wall, if not yet inside it."
He studied her.
"You are their goddess," he said scornfully. "Not ours."
Her lips quirked.
"I am no one's goddess," she corrected. "I am a wolf who remembers what it feels like to sleep in the cold. Take the food. Take the bandages. Take nothing else, if you do not want it."
He hesitated.
Then jerked his chin.
One of his wolves stepped forward, taking the offered bread.
Suspicion still burned in their eyes.
But beneath it, something like confusion.
Why is she doing this?
Luna did not answer it for them.
She would, if needed.
For now, she let the question sit.
Questions changed packs.
Not proclamations.
As the night deepened, as wolves drifted to nests and the courtyard emptied, Luna finally let herself lean into Orion's side.
He wrapped an arm around her waist, steady, solid.
"How does it feel," he asked softly, "being seen like that? By so many?"
She was quiet for a long moment.
"Like standing in front of the Moon with no fur," she said finally. "Exposed. Warm. A little burned."
He huffed.
"And inside?" he pressed.
She turned her face into his shoulder, voice muffled.
"Inside," she admitted, "it feels... right. Not the being-worshipped part. The being... used. As a bridge. As a voice. As proof that She listens."
His arm tightened.
"You are proof of more than that," he said. "You are proof that a runt from a kitchen can become... this. Whatever 'this' is."
She smiled against his tunic.
"Goddess among wolves?" she suggested, half-mocking.
"Wolf among gods," he countered.
"Too much," she grumbled.
"Exactly enough," he said.
The Moon watched them.
Her chosen, her hand, standing in a den that had once turned away the very girl who now anchored half the land's hope.
Around them, throughout the forests and mountains and coasts, wolves lifted their eyes when they howled.
Some whispered Luna's name along with the Goddess'.
Some only thought it.
It did not matter.
She heard.
The Moon heard.
Between sky and stone, a new kind of divinity had taken shape.
Not distant.
Not perfect.
Flesh and fur.
Scarred.
Flawed.
Glowing faintly with borrowed light.
Goddess among wolves, yes.
But also—and just as importantly—
Wolf among wolves.