The forty-eight hours without Ashina in the council room were instructive in ways Ryker hadn't anticipated.
Not because things fell apart. Things didn't fall apart. The machinery of the pack's decision-making functioned exactly as it was designed to function, the processes that Ashina had spent months building holding the weight of the current situation without straining. What was instructive was how visible her specific contribution became in her absence, the way a load-bearing wall became most apparent when you were working around it.
