(Rhea POV)

I briefed Lily at nine. Kept it simple.

"A man is coming to talk to you. He's tall. He might seem serious, but he's here to listen, not to hurt you. I'll be in the room the entire time, and Torren will be at the door. If you want to stop, you say stop, and we stop."

"Okay."

"You don't have to be brave. You just have to be honest."

She nodded. She was wearing a clean shirt — one of mine, cut down by Isla, who turned out to have the sewing skills I clearly lacked. Lily's hair was in the caterpillar braid because she'd asked for it specifically, and I wasn't going to argue with the one hairstyle I could produce.

At ten, I walked to the guest quarters and collected Kieran. He'd dressed down — no Council insignia, no formal jacket. Simple clothes. Smart. A child would read the uniform as authority. Without it, he was just a tall man.

"Ground rules," I said as we crossed the compound. The morning was clear, frost burning off the grass, the smell of woodsmoke from the mess hall. Two wolves in human form were hauling firewood near the gate; they looked at Kieran, looked at me, and kept hauling. "She's five. She speaks like she's older because she had to be. Don't mistake articulation for resilience — she's been through things no child should process, and she's holding it together with spit and habit. If she goes quiet, you wait. If she wants to change the subject, you let her. And if she cries, we're done."

"I've interviewed abused children before," he said.

"Not mine." I looked at him. "And that's the point. Every other interview you've done, the child wasn't yours. You could be objective. I can't. I'm warning you now so you don't mistake my interference for obstruction."

He took that in. "Fair enough."

He looked at me. Whatever he saw made him nod once, without comment.

The room was my quarters — familiar territory for Lily, which mattered. I'd cleared the small table and set out water and the almond cookies Isla had baked that morning. Lily was on her bed, legs crossed, the oversized shirt making her look even smaller than she was.

Kieran walked in and stopped. I watched him see her — really see her. The dark hair. The sharp chin. The wide-set eyes that were my eyes, copied perfectly into a five-year-old's face. He glanced at me. Back at Lily. The resemblance was a physical fact, and it hit him the way it hit everyone who saw us together.

Then he did something I didn't expect.

He knelt. Not crouched — knelt. One knee on the floor, bringing himself below Lily's eye level. A deliberate choice to make himself smaller. To give a child the higher ground.

"Hi, Lily," he said. His voice was different. Not the measured Alpha King voice from the war room — something with the edges filed off. "My name is Kieran. Rhea told me you'd be willing to talk to me."

Lily looked at him with her assessment face. The one that was too careful, too practiced, for someone her age.

"Are you the important person?" she asked.

"Some people think so. I think I'm mostly just busy."

The faintest twitch at Lily's mouth. Not a smile, but the place a smile would grow if it decided to.

"Can I sit here?" He pointed to a spot on the floor, a few feet from the bed. Not the chair I'd placed by the table. The floor, where he'd be lower than her, where she could look down at him instead of up. It was a good choice. I noted it the way I noted everything — as data, as evidence of what kind of person was sitting on my floor asking my daughter questions.

She nodded, and he settled there cross-legged, unhurried. His long legs folded awkwardly — the Alpha King of the pack system, sitting on a rogue's floor with his knees up near his chin. He didn't seem to notice.

"Rhea says you came here from a place called Silverpine," he said. "Can you tell me about what it was like there?"