Chapter Eighty-Six: "Caius Arrives With Documentation and the Crew Has Feelings About That"-1

NEVA POV --- Caius arrived at first light. He had a bag. He had Lera beside him. He had a folder — physical, thick, the kind that meant someone had been building something carefully over time and had finally had occasion to produce it. He handed the folder to Mitch before he'd fully crossed the compound yard. Mitch took it. Read the first page. Looked up. "You've been building this since the acknowledgment filing," Mitch said. It wasn't a question. "Since before," Caius said. "Since I understood what the acknowledgment filing was going to mean politically." He looked at me. "I knew Orvain would contest. He's been opposed to anything that links the Vrel pack to outside arrangements since before I was Alpha. The acknowledgment was always going to be the thing he moved on." He paused.