(Rhea POV)

The delegation arrived on a Tuesday.

Three wolves. Neutral pack — not Council-aligned, not rogue. The kind of pack that had watched the siege from a distance, weighed the outcome, and spent the months since then making no decisions about anything. Their Alpha, a woman named Brennan, had sent them to "assess the viability of the Ashenmoor alliance as a potential trade partner."

Diplomatic language for: We want to see if you're real before we risk anything.

I received them at the main gate. Formal. Controlled. The version of myself that I used when the stakes were political and the audience was undecided — measured words, steady eye contact, the posture of a woman who ran a territory and wasn't auditioning for the role.

The lead delegate was a man named Callum. Tall. Quiet. The kind of wolf who listened more than he spoke and catalogued everything he heard. His two companions were younger — a woman and a man, mid-rank, the type that Alphas sent on fact-finding missions because they were observant without being threatening.

I gave them the tour. The walls — rebuilt, reinforced, better than before the siege. The housing rotation — organized, functional, every wolf with a bed and a schedule. The supply stores — low but managed, the kind of lean that came from economic pressure rather than incompetence. The training yard where Kieran ran drills. The medical station where Isla treated everything from patrol injuries to the respiratory infections that came with overcrowding.

Callum asked good questions. How many wolves. How the leadership structure worked. Whether the alliance had formal agreements or operated on informal trust. How we handled disputes between wolves from different pack backgrounds.

I answered everything. The answers were the easy part. The hard part was the thing I wasn't showing them.

Lily was supposed to be inside.

I'd maintained the restricted movement since Ch13 — inside the compound walls, no perimeter walks, no exposure to unfamiliar wolves. Kieran had explained it to her in terms a seven-year-old could process: there were new wolves visiting, and we wanted her to stay inside while Mommy and Daddy talked to them.

Lily had accepted this with the patience of a child who understood that adults had reasons even when the reasons didn't make sense. She'd stayed in our quarters. She'd drawn. She'd played with the wooden wolf. She'd been good.

She'd been good for three days. And on the fourth day — the day the delegates were touring the compound — she'd gone to the yard.

* * *

I saw it happen from across the compound.

The delegates were walking past the training yard. I was ahead of them, leading them toward the command room for the final briefing. Kieran was behind them, watching their reactions the way he watched everything — measuring, calculating, filing.

Lily was sitting on the grass near the training post. Drawing. Cross-legged, head bent, charcoal in hand. She'd found a spot of afternoon sun and was using it the way cats use warm patches — settling into it like the warmth was permission to exist.

She looked up when the delegates passed.

She waved.

A small wave. The wave of a seven-year-old who saw new people and responded with the automatic friendliness of a child who hadn't learned that not everyone was safe. Her hand came up, her fingers wiggled, and she smiled — the quick, unselfconscious smile of a kid who was being polite because that's what kids do.

The two younger delegates stopped walking.

Not a gradual stop. A halt. The kind of sudden stillness that happens when something you weren't expecting touches a part of you that you didn't know was there. The woman — the younger one, mid-twenties, unremarkable in every way that the surface could measure — turned toward Lily with an expression that I'd never seen on an adult wolf's face before.

Not fear. Not submission. Not the dominance response that wolves displayed when confronted with Alpha authority.

Something else. A loosening. The look of someone who'd been carrying tension so long that they'd forgotten it was there, and had just felt it release.

The male delegate was similar — standing still, his hands at his sides, his wolf visible in his eyes in the way that wolves' eyes showed when something deep was happening. He was looking at Lily the way you look at a sound you've never heard before but somehow recognize.

Callum noticed his wolves had stopped. He turned. Looked at them. Looked at Lily.

"What just happened?" he asked.

Nobody answered. Because nobody knew — not even the two wolves who'd felt it.