The assembly hall hadn't changed since the last time I stood in it under circumstances that mattered, which was itself a kind of cruelty I hadn't fully accounted for until I was standing in the doorway with Mia's hand no longer in mine, watching the room fill with faces that remembered exactly what had happened here three years ago.
My father was already at the front, standing rather than seated, which was its own message. Marcus Crestwood did not sit and wait. He stood and let the room arrange itself around him, the way he'd done for thirty years as Alpha and hadn't fully stopped doing since.
The six council members flanked him in a loose arc. I recognized the calculation in it immediately — not a united front exactly, but the appearance of one, enough to make any objection from me look
