Vale didn't knock.
He walked through the front door of Ashgrove Manor like a man returning to a house he already owned, trailed by six wolves in dark green livery, and the first thing Wren noticed — pressed against the cold glass of an upstairs window she'd been explicitly, firmly told not to go near — was how quiet he was. Kane's temper announced itself in shattered furniture and cracked window frames. This man announced nothing at all. He simply moved through the world like resistance was a concept that had never occurred to him, and somehow that was worse.
"Alpha Vale." Kane met him in the courtyard, flanked by Garrick and two guards, his voice pitched at the flat, controlled register Wren had learned meant he was working very hard not to feel something. "This is an unannounced visit.
