Cassandra's POV
The walk back from the elders' hall was the longest of my life, and not because of the distance.
The main house was barely five minutes from the council building on the east side of the pack grounds, but every step felt weighted, as though I were carrying what had just happened in that room with me in a physical way, the reality of it pressing down through my shoulders and into my feet.
Sebastian walked beside me and neither of us spoke and the silence between us was not uncomfortable exactly, but it was full, crowded with everything that needed to be said and everything neither of us had words for yet. Pack wolves moved out of our path as we crossed the courtyard, and I noticed the way they shifted aside without being asked, the way their eyes came to Sebastian first an
