Wren knew it was the wrong morning to sit there before she had fully set down her cup.
Not wrong in a way that required correction. Wrong in the way small things were sometimes wrong in the Alpha wing—timing displaced by a few minutes, distance narrowed by accident, a door opening from the other side at the exact moment someone reached for the handle. No fault. No announcement. Only the brief adjustment both people pretended not to make.
The breakfast hour in the main wing ran later than the kitchen’s internal rhythm. Seven-thirty to nine, with the communal space open from six for early risers. Wren had been eating at seven on the mornings her shift allowed it: early enough to take the table before the room filled, late enough to have the first service push behind her.
Today, the kitche
