I moved. Fast. Not running — a controlled walk, the kind that covered distance without creating alarm. I put myself between Lily and the delegates in four steps.

"Lily, go inside."

"But I was drawing—"

"Now."

She looked at my face. Read whatever was on it. Gathered her charcoal and her paper and the wooden wolf and went. The obedience of a child who'd learned to read her mother's emergency voice and knew that arguing wasn't an option.

The two younger delegates watched her go. The woman's face was still holding that expression — the loosened, opened look of a wolf who'd felt something shift inside her. She touched her own chest with one hand. An unconscious gesture. Like checking that something was still in place.

"What did your daughter just do?" the woman asked.

"She waved at you."

"No." The woman shook her head. Slowly. The head shake of someone processing an experience that didn't fit into any category she had. "No, that wasn't — my wolf. Something happened to my wolf when she looked at me. Like it woke up. Not awake-awake. Like part of it that was asleep — a part I didn't know was there — just... opened."

I looked at Callum. His face was careful. The deliberate neutrality of a diplomat who'd seen something he didn't understand and was deciding how to frame it.

"Alpha Rhea," he said. "I think we should continue this conversation in private."

* * *

The conversation was short.

Callum sat across from me in the command room. His two wolves waited outside — still shaken, still touching their chests like they were checking for something. Kieran stood at the wall. The stone tablets from the First Hall and the Ashford archives were locked in the cabinet behind him, out of sight.

"I need to understand what happened," Callum said.

"My daughter waved at your wolves."

"Your daughter did something to my wolves. They're both experienced, stable, mid-rank wolves with no history of unusual wolf behavior. And both of them just had a reaction that neither of them can explain." He paused. "I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm asking."

I chose my words the way you choose steps on a narrow trail. What I said now would reach Brennan. What reached Brennan could reach other neutral packs. And what reached other neutral packs could reach Council.

"My daughter has an unusual wolf," I said. "It's been documented since she was an infant. She doesn't control it — it's instinctive. And sometimes her wolf interacts with other wolves in ways that are unexpected."

"Unexpected how?"

"She can sense emotional states in other wolves. She can feel bonds — whether they're strong or broken or absent. And sometimes, when she's near unfamiliar wolves, their wolves respond to her presence."

"Respond how?"

"The way your wolves just responded."

Callum was quiet. I could see him working through it — the diplomat's mind, sorting information into categories: risk, opportunity, unknown.

"The thing my wolf felt," the woman said from the doorway. She'd come back in without being invited. Her voice was quiet but certain. "It wasn't a command. It wasn't control. It was like — have you ever been cold for so long that you forgot what warm felt like? And then something warm touches you and you realize you'd been cold your whole life?"

She looked at Callum. "That's what it felt like. Like my wolf remembered something it didn't know it had forgotten."

The room was very quiet.

Callum stood. The movement of a man who'd gathered what he needed and was ready to leave. Not angry. Not hostile. But shaken in the way that careful people get shaken — deeply, quietly, in the parts that don't show on the surface.

"I'll report to Alpha Brennan," he said. "Truthfully. What I saw and what your wolves experienced."

"And what will you say?"

He paused at the door. Looked at me. Then past me, toward the yard where Lily had been sitting in the sun, drawing wolves, waving at strangers with the casual friendliness of a child who had no idea that her wave had just changed the shape of a diplomatic meeting.

"I'll say that your daughter isn't a weapon," he said. "But I don't know what she is. And my wolves haven't felt that way in their entire lives."

He left. His wolves followed. The younger woman looked back once — not at me. At the yard. At the empty patch of grass where Lily had been sitting.

* * *

Sera found me within the hour.