Seven days since Aldric arrived at the gate.
Seven days since the board's emergency session and the administrator in custody and Riven in the east annex talking and the ridge and the alarm transmission and Darius at the window.
The compound on the seventh morning had the specific quality of something that has been through significant weight and is not pretending the weight didn't happen but is also not being crushed by it.
Just — here.
Continuing.
The pack bond at its morning register. Five hundred wolves doing their ten thousand ordinary things.
Riven had been transferred to the board's custody on day three. He had given everything — the contacts, the research files, the personal network, the names of every person who had been feeding him information about the compound in the months
