THALRIC
I woke and she was already gone. Not the absence of someone who had left. The specific absence of someone who had chosen to go somewhere and the choosing had been deliberate and the deliberateness had a quality I recognized without being able to name at the moment of waking.
I lay still for a moment and attended to it. The space where she had been was not cold yet which meant she had not been gone long and the pack house was quiet in the specific way it was quiet before the boundary shift change when the night wolves were still at their posts and the morning wolves had not yet replaced them. Early. Before the ordinary function of Ashfen had begun its resumption.
She had gotten up before the pack house woke. I understood what that meant before I understood why I understood it. Si
