LYSSARA
Kaelrith arrived at the southern boundary on a Thursday morning. No escort beyond the two wolves he traveled with everywhere now, not the Alpha's ceremonial guard, just two reliable wolves who asked no questions about why their Alpha made a monthly journey north to stand in a room for twenty minutes and then rode back without staying for the midday function.
I knew he had arrived before the border report reached me.
Not the bond. The bond was gone, and its absence was clean and permanent. Something else. The specific weight that settled in the governance study whenever the month's end approached, and that I had been carrying for four months without finding a way to lighten.
Not hatred. Not grief. The specific thing that existed in the space between what someone had done to you
