Pip turned out to be small and serious and entirely unbothered by the fact that she was visiting the home of the Alpha King and the Luna of Shadowmere, a detail that her parents — who dropped her off with the specific careful formality of people aware of exactly whose house this was — seemed considerably more aware of than she did.
"This is a big house," Pip observed, standing in the entryway, looking around with the frank assessment of a four-year-old conducting an inspection.
"It's not really a house," Rowan said. "It's a compound. There's lots of buildings."
"Oh," Pip said, apparently satisfied with this distinction. "Where are the rocks?"
Rowan led her to the nursery with the specific urgency of someone who had been anticipating this moment for two weeks, ever since the leaf conver
