The northern ridge carried a different kind of silence than the forests surrounding the pack house. It was not the calm quiet of wolves at peace within their territory, but the alert stillness of open ground where every movement could be seen from far away.
From the top of the ridge, the land stretched outward in layered valleys and distant tree lines that belonged to no single pack. It was a place where borders blurred and attention traveled easily. Cassian had chosen it deliberately. Sable understood that the moment they reached the rocky crest.
The patrol had moved without announcement. No one in the pack had been told where they were going until they were already walking through the forest paths leading north. Cassian had changed the route only minutes before they left the pack house, shifting direction in a way that would have confused anyone trying to predict their movement.
