#Chapter 186: Not Again

DEREK Today was going well. Which, lately, felt like a miracle. The meeting room was warm with early sunlight, and the Stormfang delegation finally looked less like they wanted to skin me and more like they might—possibly—listen. The Icelandic pack had been guarded since our arrival, especially with the presence of so many foreign wolves, but today, there had been something different in the air. A shift. A breakthrough. I leaned forward as Rurik, the Stormfang Beta, gestured to the map spread out across the table. “If your ships can make the northern route in under twelve days, and we time the cargo runs with the melt season,” he said, tapping a stretch of sea between Greenland and Iceland, “we can clear a path to port without icebreakers. Barely.” “It’s tight,” I admitted, tracing the trade route with my eyes. “But if we start with limited cargo—salted fish, obsidian, volcanic ash for the alchemists—it’s manageable. We’ll need cold storage on our end. And customs coord