Rejected Luna: Royal blood
The understanding that the bond was prior to the power itself, that it was one of the primal ties the First Power was made - or had developed - to know and maintain.
Marcus listened without interrupting.
At the time I finished he was silent a long time.
Then he said, "The archive describes the First Power as connective. It reaches toward pack bonds, toward the biological pull between wolves, toward anything that makes wolves recognize each other as the same thing." He paused. "The mate bond is the strongest version of that. The clearest, most undeniable recognition that exists between two wolves."
"So it turned toward it," I said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "Because that is what it does. It finds t