The citadel had a different quality in the weeks following the election.
Not quieter exactly. If anything the administrative activity had increased, the machinery of a new Alpha King's formal installation requiring considerable preparation, documentation, ceremony planning, the coordination of affiliated pack representatives who would need to be present for the formal proceedings. The corridors were busy and the council chambers occupied and the kitchens running at a pace that meant something significant was coming.
But the quality of the busyness had changed.
Elowen noticed it in the way people moved through spaces. There was less of the particular tension that had defined the citadel in the months before the assembly, the tightly managed energy of a place organized around image mainte
