“It does that minimally,” Adrian said from the far end.
We looked at him.
He had been quiet for most of the session – unusually so. Adrian was never quiet. He had opinions the way other people had heartbeats, continuous and involuntary.
“Minimally,” he repeated. “Ashford attempted a forced claiming on the Apex’s mate. The Pack world is watching to see how we respond. A six-month suspension of voting rights tells them this council considers a forced bite on a woman to be a moderate inconvenience.” He paused. “Is that what we want them to believe?”
The room was quiet.
He wasn’t wrong. That was the problem with Adrian; he was very rarely wrong about the political optics of a thing. He was only wrong about what to do about them.
“Execution tells them something else entirely,” Kael said,
