**Kael's Point of View
The change in the pack didn't happen all at once. It was a slow, quiet thaw, like the first warm breath of spring on a frozen landscape. People told each other about what happened with Liana, and the story grew softer with each telling. *The Bridge made her tears stop hurting. It wasn't a story of judgment; it was one of comfort.
Before, people had looked at Kenny with wary glances. Now, they looked at him with hesitant curiosity and, at times, a flicker of desperate hope. The facade of perfect harmony that I had worked so hard to keep up began to feel less like something I had to do and more like a prison we were all slowly, gratefully, getting out of.
The change in me was the most important. The constant, grinding pressure to be the perfect Steward, the heart of
