26. Gracie
Gracie
Three weeks had passed since Northgrove fell, and slowly Thornfell was remembering how to breathe.
Borders around Cold Moon Pack and Grimfur Skulk that had stayed closed for a decade began reopening, one by one.
Cautious caravans of trade and aid crossed into the territories, and community leaders—figures who’d spent years quietly holding what little semblance of order they could—started making themselves known by reaching out to connect with the allied forces.
Everything was fragile, healing, and people were still learning what safety felt like.
But it was happening.
I was sitting on the balcony on the upper floors of Ironsun’s palace, Basir and Thornar a few feet away looking over the plans for today, but Ravik was beside me as we watched the sun set over the familiar mountains.
His arm was heavy and warm around me, the tension gone from my muscles. About a week after the blood moon, my brain had finally realized we were safe. Really safe. I leaned against his shoulder and looked up at him, appreciating just how handsome he was. Almost unfairly so.
“I talked to Waylon today,” he said.
I turned to face him fully. “About?”
“My father.” He let out a breath, slow and steady. “I told him everything. Deegan’s decline, how long it’s been happening, how I’ve been covering for him without telling anyone outside of the family.”
“How did he take it?”
“Better than I expected.” A hum of amusement escaped him. “He didn’t ask why I hid it. He just asked what Deegan needed. Physicians. Connections to healers outside our usual circle. Resources I honestly didn’t even know Stark Flight had access to.
“He offered all of it without hesitation, Gracie. I know I need to tell the others, especially if I am taking over more and more responsibilities, but his reaction gave me hope. Maybe there’s something out there that can help him.”
“If there is, we’ll find it,” I promised.
“Little flame,” Thornar called out. “What did you say we’re doing tomorrow?”
“We’re going to Owen and Nori’s new place. Dinner and maybe a bonfire.”
Thornar looked at Basir. “I knew I was forgetting something.”
The two of them went back to their conversation as Ravik kissed the top of my head. In the three weeks since the war ended, things in Ironsun Pack had been good. So good it was impossible to remember what my life had looked like less than two months ago.
Now that we’d survived Ivan Rivers, we’d all started to contribute to fixing and finding solutions for the problems that came after the violence.
Basir had moved into leading reconnaissance efforts alongside many of the allied forces’ strategists, using everything he knew about Cinder Ring’s old routes to help track down the last scattered remnants of Ivan’s network still hiding in the territories.
He also slept more now, no longer keeping half an eye on every doorway, even from his own bed.
He laughed more too, quiet but more unguarded than ever before.
He was softening, and I loved every bit of it.
Thornar had pitched an idea to the Council that I thought was brilliant: a rotating program that sent soldiers to train across allied territories instead of staying confined to their own packs, learning each other’s fighting styles, each other’s people, so that if something like this ever happened again, no one would face it as strangers.
He still made some objectively rash decisions, most of which made me laugh or smile.
But there was a steadiness underneath it now, as though he felt more settled.
Ravik had taken on more of the day-to-day leadership of Ironsun Pack.
His father was still Alpha, but the allied forces had done more than just win us a war.
They had opened up opportunities we hadn’t accounted for—ones that could not only help his father but expand the territory as a whole.
When he wasn’t doing that, he was helping me reorganize the kitchen and trying the food I made.
He was relaxing, allowing other people to take the burden from him sometimes.
As for me, I still didn’t fully know who I was outside of the decade of survival that had shaped nearly everything about me.
That question had only grown louder over the past week, ever since the territories formed the new Thornfell Allied Council—a body meant to hold the fragile peace together and act as a guide for whatever came next for the country as a whole.
As expected, Alphas from every allied territory sat on it.
What I hadn’t expected was the seat they’d offered me alongside them as a non-Alpha advisor.
A voice, they’d said, for the survivors.
For the people who’d lived through Ivan’s cruelty firsthand and needed someone in that room who understood exactly what balance and healing actually required.
To say I’d been honored was an understatement.
“You don’t have to decide today,” Thornar had told me when the offer first came. “But I think you already know you’re going to say yes.”
He wasn’t wrong. I did know. I just hadn’t figured out yet what saying yes was actually going to mean for the rest of my life.
We had time. I had to keep reminding myself of that—that I had an endless expanse of it in front of me now. An expanse that included warmth and love.
A knock sounded on the door frame of the balcony before I could dwell on it further, and I turned to see Solenne standing there in white robes, a soft smile on her face. “They’re ready for you.”
We followed her down through Ironsun’s halls, past gold-lit corridors and stone floors stamped with the pack’s crest, and out into the central courtyard.
A crowd had already gathered, much larger than I’d expected.
My mates fell into step around me: Ravik leading us, Thornar’s hand finding the small of my back, and Basir close on my other side.
Deegan stood at the center of it all, leaning heavier on his cane than he had weeks ago but present all the same, a warm smile softening the lines of his face.
Waylon and Lacey flanked him on one side, and Haiden and Kaliyah on the other, the five of them forming a loose half-circle around the fire.
Beyond them, the courtyard broke into loose clusters, each one marking a territory that had lived through the largest upheaval and change Thornfell had ever seen.
Family.
Friends.
Leaders standing shoulder to shoulder with the people they’d fought beside.
Near the edge of the Blazefur delegation stood a young man I didn’t recognize, his stance stiff and unsure of himself, like he hadn’t expected to be here.
I’d heard only that morning that Chace Wall had been found dead in his own territory days ago—no explanation, just a body and a scramble for who came next. This had to be his son.
A little apart from the rest, arms crossed, stood Edie. Her presence was the only nod toward Grimfur Skulk at all. Not Graeme Sharp. Not anyone claiming to speak for him. Just the rebellion leader who’d spent months undermining her own Alpha from the inside.
And where the Cold Moon Pack Alpha should have stood, there was only empty ground.
Dozens of others—soldiers and survivors and leaders from territories that had once been strangers to each other—all turned toward the space where I now stood, the mountain wind cutting cold and clean through the open courtyard.
“Gracie Holloway.” Deegan’s voice, though weathered, carried easily across the stone. “You freed a people. You broke a god’s hold over this territory.”
My chest tightened despite knowing what was coming.
“The Alphas have met, and the decision is unanimous,” he continued, glancing to the four leaders gathered around him.
Each nodded in turn. “Cold Moon Pack, as it existed under Ivan Rivers, is dissolved tonight. What rises from this territory next will be built anew, by the people who survived it, not dragged down by the crest that marked them for slaughter.”
The courtyard went utterly silent, every eye fixed on the small fire burning at the edge of the stone.
“We’d be honored,” Deegan said, softer now, “if you’d be the one to end it.”
I felt my mates’ presence at my back, solid and unwavering, and beneath that was the full weight of everything the past decade had made me.
The girl who’d been marked for sale and then sacrifice.
The woman who’d clawed her way back, choice by choice, until she’d become someone capable of burning down the thing that had once been a symbol of her oppression.
“I’m honored,” I said, my voice steadier than I expected. “Truly.”
Solenne stepped forward from the crowd, the old Cold Moon Pack flag folded over her arms, its black wolf crest faded and travel-worn.
She held it out to me without a word, and I took it from her, the fabric heavier than I expected.
I crossed to the fire and knelt before it, the stone cool beneath my knees even through the heat of the flames.
I held the flag above the fire.
I let it fall into the flames.
It caught fast. The old fabric curled and blackened, Ivan’s crest dissolving into ash and smoke that rose up into the night sky.
For the first time in ten years, I felt entirely free.