What Power Looks Like
Chapter One: What Power Looks Like
Reagan’s POV
The front door slammed open hard enough to rattle the frame, and I was on my feet before the sound finished registering, instinct ahead of thought, fists already curling, until I recognized the shape filling the doorway and let my hands slowly unclench.
"What the hell, Taylor?" My pulse was still coming down from wherever it had jumped to.
"It's barely five in the morning."
He didn't apologize for the noise, and one look at his face told me why.
"We've got a problem," he said. "Got to go. Now."
"What kind of problem?" I was already moving toward my room.
"An Alpha and his Beta are at the northern border. Demanding to speak to the Alpha of Stormhowl."
I went still for half a second. "And if we don't show?"
"They said they'll kill every last one of us."
The words landed the way words like that always did, clean the first time, and then again, slower, as some part of my mind insisted on replaying them until I was certain I'd understood correctly.
They weren't the first hard thing I'd faced that night. That distinction belonged to something smaller, quieter, hours earlier, back when the silence of an empty house had forced me to sit still with exactly who I was, and who I wasn't yet sure I could become.
❧FLASHBACK - THE NIGHT BEFORE
The woods were quieter than usual that night. Even the wind seemed to be holding its breath, like the whole forest was waiting to see what I'd do with it.
I stood at the edge of the training field, sweat cooling at the back of my neck, knuckles still aching from an hour of drills I hadn't needed to run. Truth is that I should have been asleep by then, but sleep hadn't come easily in weeks. Not since my father left on another one of his so-called important business trips and set the weight of the pack down in my lap like it was nothing heavier than a shift schedule.
The moon hung low and heavy over the tree line, close enough to touch, or so it felt some nights.
A twig snapped behind me.
"Figured you'd still be out here," Taylor said quietly.
I didn't turn around. "Of course, I am. I'm the one everyone's betting against, remember."
He came to stand beside me, arms crossed, his presence quiet and familiar, more grounding than intrusive. "Not everyone."
"Most," I said, wiping my palms against my leggings. "The pack still sees me as a placeholder. A girl wearing a title she hasn't earned."
"You've earned it, Reagan."
I laughed, and there wasn't much humor in it. "Tell that to the Elders. Tell that to the wolves who still whisper the position should have skipped me on account of what I was born as."
"Their pride was never yours to protect," Taylor said. "Your father handed you the pack and then made you build your own leadership under it, on purpose, to see if you'd cave to the comfortable choices or make the right ones, no matter how hard. You didn't cave."
"Doesn't mean everyone forgave me for it. Half the wolves I promoted still get side-eyed in the mess hall. The ones I passed over hold a grudge against me and everyone I've entrusted to lead.
Taylor didn't offer easy comfort, and I'd always respected that about him more than I let on even when his honesty was hard to take.
"I don't think they'll ever see me as enough," I admitted, quieter now. "Even after my coronation. They'll say it's because I was born into it. Not because I deserved it."
"Want my advice?"
"Sure," I said, though I wasn't certain I meant it.
"Stop telling them who to believe in and show them why it should be you."
I clenched my jaw against the bitterness climbing up my throat. "I've been showing them since I was ten."
"I know," Taylor said. "I was there for most of it."
"Then you know it's not for lack of trying."
"It's not," he agreed. "But being seen and being respected aren't the same thing, and respect takes time to grow, I think some part of you already knows that. Therefore, you keep being seen until you earn the level of respect you deserve."
As usual, Taylor's wisdom struck me like lightning. I didn't have an answer for that, so I let the silence stretch instead, the two of us watching the tree line like it might offer something neither of us had.
"Bram still thinks the position should have gone to his son," I said eventually interrupting the silence. "He doesn't say it to my face anymore. Doesn't have to. I can feel it every time we're in the same room."
"Bram's son couldn't track a scent through fresh snow. You know that as well as I do."
"Doesn't matter what I know. Matters what they believe."
"It matters what you do next more than either." Taylor's voice had gone quieter, steadier. "You keep waiting for the moment everyone finally agrees you've earned it. That moment's not coming any time soon Reagan. Not because you haven't earned it. Because belief like that doesn't arrive all at once. It accumulates, person by person, one decision at a time, usually so slowly you don't notice it happening until you look back and realize half the pack already trusts you, without even remembering exactly when that started."
He spoke with his head held high and a sense of confidence. “It’s all going to pay off one day.” He seemed so sure.
Silence settled between us, thick enough to lean on.
"Do you think he's proud of me?" I asked finally. "My father."
Taylor hesitated. "I think your father respects power. Which means he probably hasn't figured out yet what kind you're carrying."
"Yeah. That's what bothers me."
We started back toward the house, pine needles soft underfoot. It felt like a longer walk than it was, fatigue settled in parts of me that weren't even near my legs.
"He's wrong, though," Taylor said, just before we reached the porch.
I glanced at him. "About what?"
"About what power looks like."
He didn't explain further, and I didn't ask him to. Some things were better left felt than said outright.
We stood there a moment longer, neither of us in any hurry to go back inside where the walls seemed to close in tighter than the night air.
"You're going to be fine tomorrow," Taylor said, quieter now. "Whatever tomorrow brings."
"You don't know that."
"No," he admitted. "But I've watched you stand your ground when most people would've backed down, and you've never once let anyone make you feel smaller than you are."
"You're supposed to say that. It's practically your job description." A small, teasing smile tugged at my lips.
"Maybe." He laughed, his expression softening with it. "Doesn't make it less true."
I let the words settle, grateful for them even as some part of me refused to fully believe them yet. That was the trouble with fear, it rarely cared how much evidence stood against it.
Inside, the house held itself too still, like the silence of being alone created shadows that were following me in my peripheral vision, but whenever I looked, nothing was there.
I went up to my room, sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled my boots off without bothering to untie them first.
Even the familiar creak of the third stair sounded louder than usual in the dark.
Across the room, my reflection watched me from the mirror, shoulders tight, eyes sharp, braced for a blow I couldn't name yet. Or maybe this was exhaustion talking, and it was all in my head.
I made myself hold my own gaze a moment longer than was comfortable.
The math of it was simple enough to recite in my sleep, and some nights I did. I was the only living child of the current Alpha. By blood, I should have been next in line. But Stormhowl had always passed the title to a son. When an Alpha had no son, the pack looked to another male relative. Now they were being asked to accept me. The older members hadn’t given their approval, and my age was only part of the reason. I would be the first female Alpha Stormhowl had ever considered.
According to the Seven Elders, that wasn't an accident; they told me about a prophecy in which a female wolf would rise to lead our kind through a war none of us could see the shape of yet, and due to the events surrounding my birth, they believe I am her.
Most of the pack didn't share that faith. To them I was a placeholder, tolerated because the alternative, admitting I am the female wolf the prophecy speaks of, was harder to swallow. Regardless of what they believed they wouldn't dare deny it, it was a prophecy from the Grand Seer, a member of the Seven Elders.
However, if I ever found my mate, the universal law, now updated with a stipulation applied for my special circumstance set by the Seven Elders, left no room for interpretation: he could challenge me for the title in front of the entire pack, and they'd vote on which of us they trusted more to lead. It was now law regardless of my birthright. It didn't have to be fair to be binding, only voted upon.
I could recall it all forward and backward, every branching consequence of failure mapped out so thoroughly it had stopped feeling like fear and started feeling like arithmetic, cold and exact.
If I failed at this, it wouldn't only cost me. It would cost every female wolf who'd ever let herself believe she could lead but was put down because she wasn't male. Every woman who had to fight twice as hard just to be considered half as capable. I know that doing this right means opening the door for other female wolves to have the opportunity to fight for their birthright.
I let myself feel that, just for a moment, not surrender, just acknowledgment, like a wound you have to feel before you can properly close it.
Then I put it away again, folding it carefully back into the same place I kept everything else I couldn't afford to carry openly.
