Maren listened to everything I told her without interrupting.
That was its own kind of gift — the full, unhurried attention of someone who understood that the first telling of a difficult thing needed room to find its shape before anyone started responding to it. I sat across from her in the herb garden and I told her about the east gate and my father and the conversation and the three minutes by the creek, and she listened to all of it, and when I was done she was quiet for a moment before she spoke.
"He said things older than this pack," she repeated.
"Yes."
She was still for a long moment. The kind of still that meant something was being decided about what to say next. I had learned to wait through Maren's stillnesses.
"There is a faction," she said finally. "Old. Older than most c
