Return of the Nameless Alpha
Somewhere beneath all the exhaustion and the blood and the five long years it took to arrive at this exact fractured, impossible moment, something in her chest finally, quietly settles.
"Alpha-Matriarch." She says the title out loud, testing its weight the way she once tested every word of the Warden's careful, armored register, and finds this one doesn't need armor at all to carry.
Cassian's head lifts from where he still kneels, grey eyes finding hers across the dais, and for the first time since a training circle five years ago, neither one of them looks away first.