"It's already inside the Pack."
The words remained suspended in the war room after the communication crystal went dark, and Alessandro stood with his fingers closed around the cold stone while the others watched him in uneasy silence. The lamps along the walls burned steadily, casting long shadows across the map, yet the room felt strangely colder than it had moments before, as though the warning had carried something more than information across the distance and left a trace of the fear felt by whoever had sent it. Elara studied Alessandro's face and recognised the change immediately; he was no longer deciding whether he should visit the rebellious territories, because the message had transformed the journey from a political obligation into something much more dangerous.
"What do you mean by 'inside the Pack'?" Freya asked.
Alessandro slowly placed the crystal on the table. "I don't know."
