GIDEON
The council chamber was designed to be uncomfortable.
My father had overseen the renovation himself; cold marble floors, no natural light, chairs built for authority rather than ease.
A room that reminded every wolf inside it that power was not meant to feel warm.
That sentiment was expressed in every architectural choice: the height of the ceiling, the specific weight of the silence it produced, the way the marble reflected sound back at you slightly wrong, slightly cold.
I had sat in this chamber for seven years as the Apex and never once found that philosophy inconvenient.
Today it felt like something I had built against myself.
I took my seat at the head of the table and did what I always did before anything else: read the room before it read me.
Kael was to my left.
