Spring arrived with the kind of beauty that felt almost deliberate.
The hard edge of winter softened first at the margins of the territory—water moving again under thinning ice, the earliest green pushing through the dark soil of the inner gardens, light lingering longer across the upper windows of the Alpha house. The planning horizon Tristan and I had agreed to in the deep cold began to take on practical shape: transition schedules, staged transfers of specific administrative categories, the slow formal preparation of a territory that would eventually follow a new Alpha pair. None of it was rushed. All of it was real.
For a brief stretch of days, the beauty of the season and the quiet density of the work were enough to make the world feel settled.
Then the invitation arrived.
It came
