The same neutral hall that had hosted our earlier plea for recognition now filled to capacity, representatives from every coastal pack gathered to witness what promised to be the most consequential judgment any of them had presided over in decades, and I stood beside Ronan near the front of the chamber with a tension coiled tight through every muscle in my body.
Callahan stood at the center of the room, restraints binding him with a security that left no room for the kind of escape Vesper had orchestrated at the estate, and his expression, for the first time since I had encountered him, carried something that looked almost like genuine fear rather than calculated calm.
The evidence against him had been laid out meticulously over the previous two days, Rowan's testimony, the recovered pap
