NEVA POV
---
Garrick Vane's name landed in the room like a physical blow, and I felt every old wound this man had opened across the entire span of my life reopen at once — the packmaster who'd sent me to Caius's house like furniture, who'd forged a path through my life, who I'd forced myself to extend a complicated, hard-won mercy to when it came to his daughter Pria.
"He's under supervision," Mitch said quickly, reading the shock on my face. "Stripped of standing, contained, exactly as the Aris council determined months ago. This entry predates that entirely."
"It doesn't matter that it predates it," I said, my voice shaking despite every effort to keep it steady. "It means he — or someone in his branch — wanted me eliminated before I was even born. Before I ever became inconvenient t
