The guest corridor door opened at eleven p.m., and Wren knew before turning that whoever had entered did not belong in her kitchen.
Not at this hour.
The communal kitchen after dinner was a different room from the one the pack saw during service. The noise was gone. The runners were gone. The ranked wolves who treated meals as something that appeared because kitchens existed were gone too. At eleven, the kitchen belonged to heat, stock, clean counters, and the people who stayed behind long enough to understand what kept the compound fed.
Tonight, that person was Wren.
She was at the stock station, skimming the overnight pot, when the door handle moved. Not the service door Caelum used from the administrative corridor. The guest corridor door. A lever, not a push bar. A smoother mechani
