Returning felt less like safety and more like a change of battlefield.
The Alpha house stood under the same elevated protocols we had left it with, but the air inside had shifted. Word of the mining complex—carefully sanitized for wider consumption—had moved through the senior ranks. The future Alpha pair had gone into Kael Veyr’s working space and come back out again with the bond intact. That fact alone altered the temperature of every room we entered. Respect deepened in some faces. Calculation sharpened in others. Fear of the unfinished northern threat sat underneath both.
Tristan’s ribs were re-dressed the moment we cleared the medical threshold. The claw score had reopened slightly during the vault fight; the medic sealed it again with tight-lipped disapproval and a warning about t
