Mara presented the coven inquiry as intelligence.
Not as a proposal. Not as a request for authorization. She walked into the council session with the inquiry in her briefing folder and read it aloud as if she were reporting the contents of an intercepted communication — something received, analyzed, and now being placed before the council for their awareness. The framing was deliberate, and I had suggested it, because I had learned over the previous months that the council's resistance to anything unfamiliar was lower when they could first process it as information rather than as an ask.
"The Vethara Coven sent an indirect inquiry to Northbridge fourteen days ago," Mara said. "The inquiry was not addressed to the Alpha or the Luna. It was addressed to the pack's strategic operations func
