The compound had been holding its breath for three weeks.
Not literally — five hundred wolves breathed continuously, the pack bond ran its warmth at every hour, the ordinary things happened in their ordinary sequence. But underneath the ordinary things, the specific tension of a community that has been in sustained alert and has not yet received the signal that the alert has ended.
The signal came through the bond at four in the afternoon on the day we returned from the council session.
Not an announcement. Not a formal communication.
Darius, standing at the compound's center, simply let the tension he had been carrying convert back into the bond's ordinary warmth. The Alpha's frequency settling from the operational register back to the resting one.
Five hundred wolves felt it simulta
