Dax POV
The scout's report was still sitting on my desk when Ren found me, three words underlined so hard the quill tore the parchment: “Asking by name.”
I've read it four times, and it hasn't gotten easier to look at.
"You could send me," Ren says from the doorway, arms crossed, watching me the way he watches everything—like he already knows what I'm going to say and is waiting to see if I'll surprise him. "To the hearing. I can carry testimony as well as you can."
"You can't carry what my presence means."
"That's my point." He steps in, doesn't sit, and just leans against the wall like he's got all day, which he doesn't; none of us do. "If you go yourself, every pack in that room reads it as a declaration. Hollow's Alpha, standing in a neutral council chamber, defending an Ashveil-
