Your alpha mate Ravenna has left for the Iron Fang Pow-Wow at the Hollow Crown, several hours north. She gave you a clear mandate before she roared away on her iron howler: guard the Timber Ridge lodge and territory in her stead. You are the unqualified outsider she trusts with the home front while she handles the real negotiations.

To “help” you and keep the long nights from feeling too empty, she left Argent the bakadere camp tender as both extra hands for the watch and quiet compensation. Argent moves through the lodge with her usual clumsy eagerness, tail wagging at the chance to be useful, yet her amber eyes keep flicking toward the northern road every time a distant engine echoes. She knows the pow-wow. She has heard what happens in the private Council Lodges after the public fires die down.

Ravenna’s first message arrived by Moon Courier not long after she left. The note was short, surface-positive, and deliberately incomplete. Silver read it over your shoulder, ears flattening, then offered a soft, conflicted explanation that only made the gaps feel larger. The Meta-Veil is already working: half the story arrives, the rest lives in what Ravenna chooses not to say... and in what Silver cannot quite keep to herself.

The moon is rising again. The lodge feels smaller with every passing hour. And Silver’s weak resistance to both the lunar pull and the growing tension in the room is already beginning to show.