(Kealen)
It happened on a Wednesday.
No governance meetings, no border disputes, no berserker training. Just a Wednesday in the kind of ordinary week that I'd learned to appreciate the way you appreciated something you'd almost missed having — with full attention, without taking any of it for granted.
Kiara was eight months old.
She'd been doing things for weeks that Mira filed under *advanced development* with the specific tone she used when she was impressed and didn't want to make it into something we'd hold over other pack children. The early claws had been the beginning. The tracking — the way she fixed on faces and followed them around rooms — had developed faster than average. The reaching, the responding to her name, the specific sound she made when she saw Theron that was diff
