#Chapter 152: The Game

JACOB The rogue girl surprised me. I’d expected someone wild, sharp-edged. Maybe hollow-eyed with hunger or scarred from a life lived too long in the dirt. That’s how rogues usually showed up—half-feral, eyes darting like cornered animals. But Maggie Thorn didn’t flinch. She didn’t posture or plead. She sat straight-backed on the witness stand, voice steady, and told a room full of powerful wolves that she would do it all again if it meant her people had a shot at something better. Her people. Not “my faction.” Not “the rogues.” Her pack. And she said it like she believed it. Like that fractured, lawless sprawl of wolves living on the edge of our territories was a real pack, not a mess of survivalists clinging to the scraps of what our world refused to give them. It stirred something in me, watching her. Maybe because I’m used to rogue excuses sounding like, “I needed food, so I took it,” or “He looked at me wrong, so I snapped his neck.” Not this girl. Not Maggie Tho