She didn't offer me a seat.
I noticed that. She stood on one side of her father's kitchen and I stood on the other side and the table between us was covered in papers I recognized as pack records and a letter in handwriting I didn't recognize.
Ten minutes.
She had given me ten minutes and I was not going to spend any of them on things that didn't matter.
"There's a faction," I said. "They've been operating at the edges of pack society for a long time. My father calls them the Hollow." I watched her face. Nothing moved on it. "They're looking for something specific. A bloodline. One that carries a kind of power that the standard pack hierarchy doesn't have a category for."
She looked at me steadily.
"They've been patient," I said. "They've been monitoring. Your father's death would ha
