The pack will not break all at once.
It will slowly start to c***k,quietly, the way ice does when winter is ending and no one notices until it finally makes the cracking sound.
I started to feel it in the silences.
Conversations stopped when I walked into a hall. Laughter lowered. Eyes slid away from mine, then back again, measuring. Some bowed too quickly, too stiffly. Others did not bow at all, choosing instead to acknowledge Derek first, as if I were only standing beside him by mistake.
Authority, I was learning, was not just given. It was tested every day.
Derek spent most of his time in council chambers now. Meetings ran long. Voices carried through the stone walls late into the night. Politics, alliances, borders, threats from other packs. All the things a King was meant to hand
