"What happened with the delegates?"

"Lily waved at them."

"And?"

"And their wolves reacted. The bonding response. Involuntary. Two wolves, both mid-rank, both completely unprepared."

Sera was quiet for three seconds. Which, for Sera, was a long time.

"Did she know she did it?"

"No. She was drawing. She looked up. She waved."

"She waved and accidentally bonded two visiting diplomats."

"She didn't bond them. She — opened something. A capacity they didn't know they had. For a moment, their wolves felt what it's like to bond freely. And then it faded. But they felt it."

Sera paced. Four steps. Turn. Four steps back. The compact movement of processing.

"This is going to get back to Council."

"I know."

"Callum will tell Brennan. Brennan will tell someone. The someone will tell someone else. And within a month, every neutral pack in the region will have heard that Rhea Ashenmoor's daughter can do things to wolves that no one can explain."

"I know."

"You need to figure out how to explain this." She stopped pacing. Faced me. "Because right now, your daughter is terrifying people without trying. And you can't protect her by keeping it secret much longer."

She was right. The restricted movement, the careful management, the strategy of keeping Lily out of sight — it had worked when the threat was observation. But Lily's wolf wasn't content to stay hidden. It reached out. It touched. It opened. Without her knowledge, without her intention, without any of the control that adults expected because adults understood consequences and seven-year-olds did not.

"I'll figure it out," I said.

"Figure it out fast. Because the next delegation might not leave confused. They might leave afraid. And afraid wolves do things that confused wolves don't."

She left. I stood in the command room. The tablets locked in the cabinet. The archives on the shelf. The decoded messages from Nolan in the drawer.

And my daughter in the yard, drawing wolves in the afternoon sun, with no idea that her wave had just accelerated the timetable on everything.

* * *

I found Lily in our quarters. She was on the cot. Not drawing. Sitting. The wooden wolf in her lap, her hands wrapped around it, her face holding the particular stillness of a child who knew something was wrong and was waiting to be told what it was.

"Did I do something bad?" she asked.

"No."

"Then why did you use the emergency voice?"

I sat beside her. Took her hand. The small fingers. The fading scars on her wrist from a collar that her grandmother had designed because she'd known exactly what lived inside this child.

"You didn't do anything bad," I said. "Your wolf did something that surprised some people. That's all."

"The new wolves." She looked at her hands. "I felt their wolves. When I waved. Their wolves were — tight. Like they were wrapped up in something. And when I looked at them, the wrapping loosened a little." She paused. "I didn't mean to. I didn't even know I was doing it until it was already happening."

"I know."

"Mommy?" Her voice was smaller now. The voice of a child who was standing at the edge of a question she wasn't sure she wanted to ask. "Is there something wrong with my wolf?"

"No."

"Then why does it keep doing things that scare people?"

I pulled her close. Her head against my chest. Her heartbeat against mine — fast, the way children's hearts beat, the rhythm of a body that was still growing into itself.

"There's nothing wrong with your wolf," I said. "Your wolf is — it does things that other wolves can't. And sometimes that surprises people. But it's not wrong. It's part of you."

"But people get scared."

"Some people get scared of things they don't understand. That's not your fault."

She was quiet. Breathing against me. The wooden wolf pressed between us.

"I just wanted to say hi," she said.

"I know, baby. I know."

I held her. My daughter. Who'd waved at strangers and accidentally shown them something their wolves had never felt. Who was sitting on a cot asking if something was wrong with her because the adults around her kept using emergency voices when she was just being herself.

Seven years old. Drawing pictures. Waving at people. Carrying something in her blood that terrified an entire civilization.

And she just wanted to say hi.