NEVA POV
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It happened on an ordinary Tuesday, which was, I was learning, exactly how the most significant things in this compound's life tended to arrive.
Ren was eighteen months old now, walking steadily, talking in short determined sentences that had grown considerably beyond her early collection of single words. She was in the yard with Ziko, who was narrating something about cloud shapes with his usual enthusiasm, when my wolf went suddenly, sharply alert.
*Something's happening,* she said. *With Ren.*
I was moving before I'd fully processed the warning.
I found the yard in a specific hush — Ziko crouched beside Ren, his usual brightness replaced by careful stillness, and Ren herself standing very still, looking at her own hands with an expression of confused wonder.
Her nail
