The compound at rest had a different smell than the compound in crisis.
I noticed this standing on the eastern terrace with a cup of tea I'd made myself in the kitchen at an hour that didn't need a name, wearing Darius's borrowed coat again because it was the warmest thing in my room and also — if I was honest with myself, which I was attempting to be — because it still smelled like him and my wolf found this arrangement deeply satisfying.
The terrace overlooked the compound's eastern grounds — the training ring, the herb garden that Maren accessed for her wards, the tree line beyond which the territory proper began. In the quiet, with the Summit's crisis in its managed aftermath, I could feel the pack clearly. Not the overwhelming flood of the bedframe morning — something steadier now,
