**CHEYENNE**
The notice comes midmorning, passed along with the same careful casualness everything else has taken on lately, framed as a routine gathering scheduled for late afternoon, nothing formal, nothing urgent, just a discussion that would benefit from my presence. The word routine sits wrong immediately, because nothing has been routine for weeks now, and the lack of specifics sets my nerves humming before I even finish reading the message.
Not a council meeting. Not a ceremony. Just a discussion.
Vagueness has become a tactic, and I recognise it for what it is even as I fold the notice away and force my breathing to stay even, because ambiguity gives people room to manoeuvre without accountability, and lately the pack has been moving almost exclusively in that space.
I prepare
