I found Gregor the next morning.
Not to confront him. I want to be clear about that — I had not survived six years of systematic dismissal by my own pack by walking into avoidable conflicts with wolves twice my size. I found him because I wanted to understand what exactly he thought he knew, and the fastest way to understand what a person thinks they know is to watch them when they don't know you're watching.
He was at the weapons rack when I arrived at the training yard, running maintenance on equipment with the particular economy of someone who had done it a thousand times. Third-ranked. Six years in the pack. The kind of wolf who had earned his position through accumulated loyalty rather than any singular gift — steady, reliable, deeply invested in the way things had always been done.
