~Caden’s POV~
He tells Rhys on a Thursday evening that he will be absent from Pack Hall on Friday and does not offer a reason.
Rhys does not ask for one. He says: "I'll manage the border rotation reports." Which is either the response of a Beta who trusts his Alpha's judgment or the response of a man who knows exactly where Caden is going and has decided that some things are managed best by being left alone. Caden does not examine which interpretation is accurate because the outcome is the same.
He drives south at six in the morning.
It is the first time he has left Cresthaven since the rejection, and the specific quality of crossing the territory's southern boundary line registers as a physical thing — not supernatural, simply the accumulated fact of months inside the same borders, at
