Wystan arrived early enough that Hazel was still adjusting to the weight of Aldrien’s shoulders when he started listing her schedule for the day.
An Alpha council meeting.
A warrior briefing.
A border report.
A dispute between two pack families that had apparently been simmering for weeks.
A training inspection to close out the afternoon.
“All today?” Hazel asked.
Wystan nodded, entirely unbothered.
“That’s a light day.”
Hazel looked toward Aldrien, who was standing nearby wearing her own body and looking far too pleased with himself.
She mouthed help me at him.
“Good luck,” he said instead.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“A little.”
Before she left, he gave her a rushed briefing, rattling off names and positions and old disputes faster than she could hold onto them.
He knew which council members would push back on a decision before they’d even opened their mouths.
He knew which families were struggling and why.
He knew which warrior’s child had been sick for the past week and which border needed extra patrols before the frost set in.
“How do you remember all of this?” she asked, genuinely startled.
He looked at her like the answer should have been obvious.
“They’re my people.”
That landed somewhere she hadn’t expected it to.
The council chamber felt entirely different from the day before, when she’d been running on pure panic and improvisation.
This time she understood, walking in, that this was simply Aldrien’s actual life, day after day, and everyone in that room expected her to carry it without stumbling.
Everyone stood when she entered.
She took the seat at the head of the table and felt the whole room shift into something serious around her.
Wystan began the reports.
A border patrol had spotted suspicious movement near the eastern line.
A supply shipment was running behind schedule.
Two families were fighting over a strip of land that apparently neither had a clear claim to.
Every problem in the room landed at her feet, and every face in that room was waiting for her to solve it the way their Alpha always did.
One of the older council members pushed back on a decision from weeks earlier, something about the land dispute, and Hazel felt the pull to guess at whatever answer Aldrien would have given and simply repeat it.
She decided against it almost immediately.
Instead she asked questions.
Why had the decision been made in the first place.
What evidence supported it.
What would actually happen if they reversed it now.
The council member seemed a little surprised by the line of questioning, clearly used to something more direct, but Hazel worked through it her own way and eventually proposed a compromise that split the difference between both families’ claims. Get faster updates on g.com.
Wystan watched her the entire time, quiet and attentive.
The council accepted it without argument.
Afterward, Wystan fell into step beside her.
“That was a clever way to handle it.”
Hazel felt a small rush of relief at that, something close to pride settling where the panic had been sitting all morning.
The warriors greeted her with the same respect she’d have expected on any other day.
One young warrior fumbled a move during a sparring drill, and Hazel corrected his footing without thinking twice about it.
He adjusted immediately and thanked her for it.
Another warrior approached her afterward about an injury, favoring one shoulder in a way that told her it hadn’t fully healed.
“You told me I could stay off patrol until I healed,” he said.
“I did?” Hazel asked, then caught herself.
“Of course. How’s it coming along?”
“Better.” The warrior smiled, easy and genuine.
“You always remember these things.”
Something in that sentence stuck with her longer than it should have.
Aldrien wasn’t respected because people feared him.
He was respected because they trusted him to remember the small things that mattered to their lives.
That trust got tested directly during the training inspection, when one of the younger warriors lost control mid-shift and the whole training ground erupted into panic around him.
Hazel stepped forward before she’d fully decided to.
She didn’t shout the way half the onlookers were shouting.
She kept her voice low and steady instead, talking the young man back into himself, though she had no real proof this was the right method at all.
It worked regardless.
When the warrior finally settled, he bowed his head toward her.
“Thank you, Alpha.”
Hazel realized, standing there, that the intimidating reputation she’d always resented wasn’t just posturing.
It was discipline built over years, something people could actually lean on when things went wrong.
Wystan walked beside her again as they left the training grounds.
“The pack had a good day today.”
Hazel felt oddly proud hearing that, more than she expected to.
“They did all the work. I just showed up.”
Wystan glanced sideways at her, something thoughtful in his expression.
“Showing up matters more than people admit.”
She wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that, so she said nothing, and they walked the rest of the way in comfortable quiet.
By the time she made it back to the Alpha’s office that evening, she was completely wrung out.
Stacks of documents covered the desk, reports and requests and problems that had clearly been waiting on him for days.
She found a note tucked among them, a warrior thanking him for helping his family through a hard winter.
Beneath that, another request.
Beneath that, another.
“How do you do this every day,” she muttered to the empty room.
“You survived,” Aldrien said from the doorway.
She looked up at him.
“Barely.”
He smiled, and she told him everything, the council, the warriors, the injured wolf who’d been quietly protected without being asked, the young warrior who’d lost control and found his footing again because someone had stayed calm.
“They really respect you,” she said finally.
He went quiet at that.
“They’re supposed to.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“I mean they actually respect you. I thought they were afraid of you.”
“Sometimes they are,” he admitted.
“But that’s not why they follow me.”
She looked at him for a long moment and gave him a smile she hadn’t planned on giving.
“You’re a good Alpha.”
He didn’t answer right away, because coming from her, it clearly meant more than it would have from anyone else in that chamber.
“You’re a decent one yourself,” he finally said.
“Decent?”
“Don’t get ambitious.”
She threw a crumpled report at his head, and he caught it without even looking.
That night, lying awake in his body again, she thought back through the whole day, the council and the warriors and the families and the way everyone had looked at him, trusted him, leaned on him without a second thought.
She’d been wrong about him, not entirely, because he was still arrogant and infuriating and, unfortunately, still far too attractive for his own good.
But he wasn’t the heartless Alpha she’d spent years building in her head.
I told you, her wolf said quietly.
Told me what?
You don’t hate him as much anymore.
Across the room, Aldrien sat reading a report in her own body, completely unaware of what she was thinking.
For once, looking at him, she didn’t see her enemy at all.
She saw a man carrying an entire pack on his shoulders and somehow still standing upright.
She looked away quickly.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told her wolf.
But she already knew her wolf was right.