The thrill of intergalactic approbation was a fragile bubble and broke within a month. The shining promise of the stars quickly soured into prosaic, chilling paperwork, politics, and profound cultural whiplash. Lupus Haven was now the de facto interstellar embassy, and Kael Fenris, a man who enjoyed the soft hum of a DNA sequencer, was now buried under slates of data of trade proposals, first-contact protocols, and philosophical treatises from seventeen disparate alien species.
The Great Hall, where packs once gathered, was now a humming command post. Human diplomats in tidy suits labored alongside lupine analysts whose noses twitched in puzzlement at the strange, chemical odors of off-world technology. A holographic sphere that floated around the room on a pedestal glowed with a brillian
