Kaden walked the eastern line the next morning.
I knew because Garrett told me, with the particular expression of someone reporting something they found both surprising and significant. And I knew because when I arrived at the border myself at mid-morning to check on the reassignment deployments, three of the newly stationed sentinels mentioned it without being asked — the way pack wolves mention things that matter, casually and with the careful understatement of people who feel something deeply but have no cultural framework for expressing it directly.
"Alpha came through at dawn," said one young wolf, a girl barely past twenty with sharp eyes and frost on her collar. "Walked the whole northern corridor. Stayed at each post long enough to actually talk to everyone."
"He know our names,
