Chapter 450: New Year Reunion

When Julian called himself the older cousin of my pups, the message was clear enough that it didn’t need unpacking. Whatever bond we had once shared — the complicated, layered, costly thing it had been — he had buried it deliberately and with both hands. A year had passed since I clawed my way back from the edge, and in that time the pack’s balance had shifted in ways I never anticipated and couldn’t have predicted even if I’d tried. I used to believe fate played favorites, that certain people were protected by some invisible preference the universe had for them. Now I knew better. The pack doesn’t forget what’s owed, and it always finds a way to collect, on its own timeline, in its own terms.

Julian had lost his footing in ways that showed clearly if you knew what to look for — not just in status or position, but in his eyes, in the way he moved through rooms. He still breathed, still walked, still occupied space, but the Alpha energy he had once carried so naturally, the kind that filled a room before he finished entering it, had dimmed to almost nothing. He was a shadow moving through spaces he used to own without question, and the awareness of that loss was written into every careful, measured thing he did.

He hadn’t been gone long when Hugo appeared at my side, his voice low and unhurried. "You have guests in the courtyard."

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