The Silver Creek pack house felt like a powder keg wrapped in morning politeness.
I walked down the main corridor toward the dining hall, noting how conversations stopped mid-sentence when I appeared, how pack members suddenly found urgent reasons to study their coffee cups or examine wall fixtures that had been there for decades. The kind of artificial normalcy that meant serious shit was brewing under the surface.
"Morning, Aria," Jenny Reeves called out with forced brightness, her voice carrying the particular strain that came from trying to pretend everything was fine when everyone knew it wasn't.
"Morning, Jen." I grabbed coffee from the sideboard, noting how she glanced around nervously before approaching me like I might explode without warning.
"Listen," she said, lowering her voice to barely above a whisper. "About the council meeting yesterday, about the Vancouver operation..."
"What about it?"
