Aaron
I don’t notice what’s missing.
Not consciously.
The packhouse settles into evening with the same quiet precision it has carried for weeks now. Doors close. Voices drift. Whatever tension once lingered has been absorbed into structure and discipline.
The kind that doesn’t ask for attention.
Wolves acknowledge me without breaking stride. No one straightens. No one recalibrates their behavior around my presence.
That’s how I know things are working.
And yet...
I pause just inside my office, one hand resting against the doorframe, with a faint sensation under my ribs that I can’t immediately name.
Not threat.
Not alarm.
Absence.
Like a sound that stops too suddenly. Like a pattern interrupted mid-beat.
I review the day without effort.
Reza checked in.
Brianna was accounted
