Elara’s POV:The sun, a pale, anemic disk, was barely an hour above the eastern peaks when the first of Rhys’s vanguard hit the Echo Ravine.It wasn't a charge. It was a dense, almost reluctant wave of bodies. Five hundred heavy infantry, mostly Beta males, their wolf-senses dulled by the stench of burning pitch we’d laid at the entrance, their human minds clouded by fear. Their formation was tight, but the individual faces, visible even from our perch on the cliffs, were grim. They weren't fighting for glory; they were fighting because Rhys was behind them."Stay low! Hold the line!" Theron's voice, a raw rasp, echoed from the makeshift barricade below.Our position was simple: a narrow, forty-meter-wide chokepoint. The cliffs rose steeply on either side, offering us high ground for fire-arrows and rolling stones. At the base, Beta warriors, some not much older than pups, huddled behind a hastily constructed wall of felled trees and jagged rocks. Their only weapons were short, heavy
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