LYRA
Lucius didn't rush.
That was the first thing I noticed, with the way he settled into the chair like a man who had made a decision and was at peace with the timing of it. No preamble. No careful arrangement of words before he began. He simply looked at me and started talking, and something about the directness of it, after so many conversations that had circled the truth without landing on it, made me lean forward without meaning to.
"The Godfather," he said, "is not a name. It's a designation. A title used inside a network that has been operating beneath pack politics for longer than either of us has been alive." He held my gaze steadily. "They don't claim territory. They don't sit on councils or hold formal rank. They move through the existing structures of power, through alliance
