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“The tour,” Luna Selena says, laughing, and she catches Darlene mid launch and swings her up onto her hip like she’s been doing it for years. “Hold on, little missile. We’ve got a whole pack to see.”

Alpha Rylan is already at the elevator, holding the door. “After you, Carter family.”

The ceremony room fades behind us as we step into the corridor, and the bond hums at my back like a second heartbeat, warm and steady and already beginning to feel like it’s always been there.

The elevator descends. The doors open.

“Welcome to the main floor,” Luna Selena says, and she sets Darlene down with a little bounce. “This is where it all starts.”

12

Arlene’s POV

The Pack House unfolds around me like a living thing, and I stop counting rooms somewhere around seven.

“Main entrance,” Selena says, sweeping an arm across the foyer, polished stone, timber beams, the particular warmth that comes from wood that’s been touched by a thousand hands. “Warriors at every door, twenty four seven. Keycard access after hours. The portraits are every Alpha pair since the founding, Rylan’s great, great, great, great grandfather built this place in a long time ago.”

“BC… we’ve renovated quite a bit as the pack grew,” Rylan adds, and the way he says it, casual, like he’s commenting on the weather, makes Darian’s eyebrows climb toward his hairline.

“Great Hall,” Selena continues, pushing through a set of double doors that groan on hinges older than most nations. The room opens like a cathedral, vaulted ceiling, long tables arranged in rows, a stone fireplace at the far end big enough to roast a moose. “Feasts, ceremonies, pack wide announcements. Seats ten thousand comfortably, ten thousand if you don’t mind some wolves standing.”

“Ten thousand wolves,” Darian murmurs beside me. His hand finds the small of my back, light, steady, the pressure of a man who’s cataloguing exits.

“Dining Hall’s through there.” Selena points to an archway. “Three meals a day, open to any pack member. Buffet style. The kitchen runs from four a.m. to midnight.”

The kitchen hits my nose before I cross the threshold, yeast, garlic, something sweet baking, and the woman standing at the central island turns at the sound of footsteps. She’s short, round, maybe sixty, with flour up to both elbows and a smile that could power a small town.

“Luna. Alpha.” She wipes her hands on her apron. “And you must be the Carters.”

“This is Martha,” Selena says. “Head Omega. She’s been running this kitchen for thirty two years and she will feed you until you can’t move, and then she’ll feed you again.”

“Head Omega,” I repeat. The title sits in my mouth like something I’ve read about but never tasted.

“Means I run the kitchen, the cleaning staff, the hospitality wing, and about forty other things nobody wants to think about.” Martha’s eyes move over my face, quick, assessing, not unkind, and something in them softens. “You’re too thin, sweetheart. Both of you. The kids too. That changes starting now. Lunch is in two hours. You’ll be here.”

It’s not a question. I open my mouth to protest, politely, the way you protest when someone offers you something you’ve been starving for, and Martha’s hand comes up.

“Nope. Eat. That’s the rule.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, and the corner of Darian’s mouth does the thing it does when he’s trying not to laugh.

“Good girl.” Martha turns back to her dough. “Now get out of my kitchen. Tour’s not over.”

We get out of her kitchen.

“Library,” Selena says, and the word alone makes Damian’s head snap up like a hound catching a scent. She leads us down a corridor lined with framed maps, territory boundaries, patrol routes, something that looks like a geological survey, and through another set of doors.

The room is ten stories of books. Floor to ceiling shelves, rolling ladders, stairs, additional floors, reading nooks tucked into every available corner and floor, and the smell, old paper, leather bindings, the particular dust that only accumulates on things that have been loved for generations. A woman with silver streaked hair and reading glasses perched on the end of her nose looks up from a desk near the window.

“Elaine,” Selena says. “Pack librarian. Thirty years. Knows every book in this building by title, author, and which shelf it’s currently occupying.”

“Currently being the operative word,” Elaine says, not looking up from her ledger. “The nurse’s daughter keeps moving the mythology section. I’ve asked her to stop. She has not stopped.”

“Piper?” Darlene asks.

Elaine’s head lifts. Her eyes find Darlene over the top of her glasses. “You know Piper?”

“Moonbeam has one eye,” Darlene says, with the absolute authority of someone who has been fully briefed.