Ivy did not go back.
She stood at the treeline until the sound of Yara's retreat had thinned into nothing, until the dark between the trees stopped holding the shape of another person, and then she stayed a while longer, because some part of her was still listening for it to change its mind.
It didn't.
Loss of border-assignment authority. She turned the words over the way she'd turn a stone found in a riverbed, checking every face of it before deciding what it was. Roan would not choose patrol routes now. He would not sign off on where the pack's strength went, or didn't. Small, on its surface. She knew better. She'd sat in enough Council sessions to know what authority looked like when it was being taken rather than given — the careful language, the unanimous vote that wasn't unanimous
