She listened to it on a Thursday.
Nobody knew she was going to do it that day. She had not announced it — Maren did not announce things that belonged entirely to her. She had simply been in the library since before dawn, when the compound was still in its deepest quiet, and by the time the morning registered in the pack bond she had been alone with the device for two hours.
I felt it through the bond.
Not the content — the quality. The specific warmth of something significant happening in the library at an hour when the library was usually empty. The particular frequency of Maren's presence in the compound's bond network doing something that required the full weight of her attention.
I came to the library door at seven.
I did not go in.
I sat in the corridor outside it on the floor —
