Chapter 49

Valerie's POV

I'm in the archives with one of the pack scribes, a wiry man named Corbin whose spectacles keep sliding down his nose. The air is thick with the scent of parchment and dust, the shelves lined with decades of council records.

We worked in silence for a while, pulling cases that set precedent for bond dissolution and the limits of Alpha authority to better prepare for my proposal—the b