Chapter 436: When the Night Broke Open
Midnight had settled over the pack compound like a held breath.
Snow lay thick and untouched across the compound, smoothing every path and rooftop into soft silver lines. The houses were dark. Fires burned low behind shuttered windows. Even the restless wind had gone quiet, as though the forest itself had decided to sleep.
Only the gate remained awake.
The great Nightshade gates stood sealed beneath the wall, their ancient wooden slabs reinforced with iron bands that gleamed faintly beneath the moonlight. Frost clung to the hinges and the heavy crossbar, turning the metal pale and brittle with cold.
Above the gates, built directly into the outer wall, rose the pack's timber lookout structure—an old wooden sentry tower, narrow and weather-beaten, anchored into the stone like an afterthought that had somehow endured centuries of storms.
Quentin stood at the top of it, boots planted wide for balance against the cold.
