Dax's POV
We come up out of the temple into late afternoon light, exhausted in a way that feels earned rather than merely depleting, and the walk back to the packhouse is quieter than I expect, both of us still settling into whatever's shifted between us down in that chamber.
The pack notices before either of us says a single word.
I catch it first in Cas's face, some shift in her expression as we cross the yard together, a kind of recognition that has nothing to do with what we're wearing or how we're walking, closer to the way wolves sense a change in another wolf's scent before the conscious mind catches up to what the nose already knows. Pria notices next, then Odessa, then half the wolves working the yard at that hour, a ripple of awareness moving through the packhouse the same wa
