(Kaelen)
Lara doesn't call first.
That's the first thing — no warning, no text, no carefully worded message giving Kaelen time to prepare an answer. Just a car in the Silver Crescent drive on a Thursday afternoon, and Sora at the study door with her professional face on and the specific quality of someone delivering news they've already decided how to frame.
"Your sister is at the gate," Sora says.
Kaelen looks up from the council correspondence she's been working through. The stack has been thinning since the submission — responses arriving, the formal machinery of pack governance moving the way it does when it finally has enough to act on. Slow. Thorough. Satisfying in the particular way of things that take a long time and matter.
"Is she," Kaelen says.
"She's alone. No vehicle I r
