Anna's POV
I saw them across the square. Luca. Ralph. And between them, low enough that Luca had crouched to put something into his hands, Elias—red truck gripped in both fists, face tipped up with that open curiosity he gave anything new.
I was moving before I'd decided to move.
I didn't run. Running pulls eyes, and this festival was all eyes—pack representatives, council members, delegates from three territories, the kind of people who read a room in one pass and never forgot what they'd read. So I walked, fast, cutting through a knot of arriving guests, wearing the face I wore in boardrooms when something was on fire and I needed no one to know it yet.
By the time I reached the edge of the square, Nina already had Elias up on her hip and was carrying him toward the residential wing.
