I found out about the decision the same way I found out about everything significant in this compound — through the sound of a conversation reaching me when it wasn't meant to.
But this time it was not an accident.
Caden was in the meeting building with his three senior wolves — Lyra, Gregor, and a broad quiet man named Rook who ran the pack's border operations — and the window was open because it was the first warm afternoon in weeks and someone had made the reasonable decision to let the air in. I was passing on the path below, not deliberately listening, and I heard my name and stopped.
I am not proud of the stopping. I stopped anyway.
"The formal claim," Lyra was saying. "It changes the legal standing. If the Ashborne move against the pack to extract her, a formal claim makes her r
