**LANDON POV**
The pack notices before it speaks.
That is always the rule.
I feel it long before anyone risks putting language to it. In the way reports are delivered slightly faster than necessary, as if efficiency itself might reassure me. In the way details are added that I did not ask for, explanations offered where silence used to suffice. In the way eyes linger a fraction too long before dropping, not defiant, not fearful, just measuring. In the way no one asks me directly, but everyone adjusts their behaviour like they are bracing for a change they do not yet understand.
They are reading patterns.
That is what packs do when something stops fitting cleanly into expectation.
I sit at the long table in the council room, fingers steepled, listening to patrol leaders cycle through
