(Kaelen)
I wait until he's in the northern meeting.
Not because I planned it that way — or maybe I did, somewhere below the level of conscious decision, the part of me that's been running calculations since before I learned to stop. He told me at breakfast that the northern border representatives were coming at ten, that it would run through lunch, that he'd be in the formal meeting room all morning. He said it the way he says things, plainly, no awareness that I was filing it.
I filed it.
Now it's eleven-thirty and the house has its meeting-morning quality — staff moving quietly, voices from the formal wing, the particular hush of a pack respecting its alpha's work — and I'm in the corridor outside the study with my hand not quite touching the door.
Lara's voice in my head. A locked
