The following morning started with silence—not the anxious kind that comes before trouble, but the heavy kind that suggests a pack is beginning to grasp the challenge ahead. The air was cool and misty, the sky soft gray, as if even the clouds above understood that it would be unwise to shine too brightly.
Mia strolled through the old part of the territory where the orchard was located, south of the stone path leading to the Moonstone Tree. The ground was softer here, heavy with moss and rich in history. This was where the founders carved promises into trees and built their dens.
Mia's eye was caught by a hollow stump she used to visit as a child. In it rested bits and pieces of an old world: a weathered strap, a rusted blade, a stone with her mother's initials carved on it. These were relics of a lost past, and now they represent roots.
Not to trap her, but to steady her.
A twig snapped behind her, and the scent caught her first, Lucas.
He patiently waited, standing only a few feet away from her, without invading her personal space.
Mia quickly stood up and looked him in the eye. You previously believed omegas travel here to conceal themselves."
With a light smile, Lucas responded, "I used to believe many things, most of which were incorrect."
She did not smile back, not because she found the situation humorous, but because the time was not right for such joy.
"As I have said before, we are spending too much time preparing for something we don't know anything about," she said. "If we lose ourselves in the waiting, we've already lost something."
Lucas lowered his voice as he moved closer. "Then what do we hold on to?"
Mia started to look over at the stone once more. "The thing that made us wolves in the first place is not merely teeth or strength, it's memory and meaning."
________________________________________________
Wolves came at her call, in no particular arrangements or formations, moving as their true selves and not in armor or titles.
"Later that afternoon," she explained, "Mia held a silent meeting, not in the hall, but in the garden clearing behind the lodge."
Despite the clearing being overgrown with slipping vines, the space maintained sacredness as it was previously used by elders to teach younger members the pack's oath.
Ember brought some broken candles. Cade came with a strip of fabric from the scouts' barracks—their silent homage. Renna brought along a book recording the names. Lucas brought with him nothing tangible, only formality, which, as Mia discovered, was far more than she required.
"The reason I got you all here," Mia started, positioned in the center, "wasn't to scheme for our next strategy, but rather to reflect on the purpose behind it."
In slow motion, she descended, placing a small round stone she had picked up earlier, engraved with the word 'Belonging' on one side.
"Here's to the scouts we lost. The ones that were captured. The ones without the opportunity to etch their name on the stone."
Slowly, the wolves came forward.
Thorn added a feather while Ember contributed a piece of training steel. And Renna, almost as if in a daze, reverently placed the book before everyone.
Mia needed to look twice to realize Lucas was the last participant left. In silence, he took out a tiny wooden figurine, polished smooth from being in his pocket for so long, and placed it down. Noticing it immediately, Mia recognized the figure was the same symbol once used to mark his father's sword hilt.
"First, question later," Lucas said. "That was from someone else's hands. But remember that true strength, as you taught me, is one asking the harder questions."
With the trees swaying softly against the breeze, the group remained quiet for a while.
"In a while, we will likely encounter monsters," said Mia softly. "But so be it. Let them find us surrounded with memory and not fear. Let them witness what we are fighting for, and not why we fight."
_________________________________________________________________________________
Mia recalls sitting on the porch of the lodge and staring into the forest as it changed colors.
She describes it as "Not looking for peace". But as it turns out, she was wrong.
"This truth, and its essence, had to happen away from the sprawling public, the strategy rooms, the idle rituals devoid of armor, and the quiet."
At that moment, wolves of the Silverpine were nothing more and nothing less than a tactical formation residing on the battlefield, and as they sat in the midst of the encroaching ominous danger, their legacy triumphed. Morrison let himself recall.
As it grew, he bought a journal for her, but for some reason she had never heard of.
"First met while openly doubting his muted classroom idea," laughter spilled when he sat beside her.
Mia took the journal in his hands. There was much more to it than skepticism drenching littered pages. "What's this?"
The first page had nothing written on it.
In Lucas' writing, the second page read,
"If we survive this, it will not be because of our strength. Rather, it will be because we remembered what mattered, and chose not to let go."
With a bittersweet sense of closure, she opened and closed the book.
"Not the man who rejected me is no longer," she spoke gently.
Lucas softened his gaze to her. "And you're no longer the girl who waited for any permission to rise."
The two shared a silence that was rich with truth, one that did not need explanations or commitments.
Only company.
Only presence.
__________________________________________________________________
To the north, away from the warmth of the flames and sacred stones, Coren of the Ferrowind stood in his camp and listened to others start about the one that kept silent as they watched the ritual from a distance.
"Another memory," one of them spoke up. "They talk about gathering around unity, and it is indeed a powerful memory."
"It seems," Coren tilted his head, "Then we've struck the right nerve. The deeper they cling to the past, the more fragile their future becomes."
He faced the dead wolves and the wind that howled while looking over the edge of the cliff.
He turned toward the edge of the cliff, where wind howled like wolves long dead.
"Prepare them," he said quietly. "We move on the next new moon."
And when the stars blinked overhead, no light reached his eyes.