Darius
The compound at rest was a different creature than the compound in crisis.
He knew this the way he knew most things about Shadowmere — through the soles of his feet, through the particular quality of the air at different hours, through the sounds the building made when it was carrying weight versus when it was setting it down. He had learned this place by living in it, by being responsible for it, by waking in the quiet and feeling the pack's collective breath against the edges of his awareness.
He had run this territory since he was nineteen years old.
He had never run it with a mate in it.
He stood at the window of his study — the room above the wine cellar, the room nobody came to without being summoned — and listened to Shadowmere settling. The Summit delegation was quietin
