Lena's POV
The fallout arrived exactly as I expected it to, which was to say slowly, and from multiple directions at once, the particular way consequences arrive in a world governed by pack politics rather than open declaration.
Among the Crestfall contingent, the reaction settled into a specific, uneasy quiet. I had expected outrage, or at least loud discomfort, the kind of reaction my father would have produced if he had witnessed the moment himself. What I found instead, in the days that followed, was something quieter and more complicated. Several of the senior Crestfall families, the ones who had spent the engagement negotiations treating me with the careful, minimal courtesy owed to an obligation rather than a person, began to adjust their behavior in small, visible ways. A senior
