Nine days after Cassian burned the east watch house, Grimridge learned how to live with a threat that refused to show its face.
That was harder than open fighting.
A clean attack gave wolves something to strike back at, a direction to run, a wound to bind, a body to bury if it went badly. Rowan's kind of war was worse. It lived in pauses, in wrong scents, in objects placed where they should not have been, in the knowledge that every routine could be turned into an opening if the wrong hands touched it at the right moment.
The pack house had not become quiet in those nine days. It had become disciplined. Doors opened when they were supposed to. Patrols changed without chatter. Clerks lowered their voices. Servants kept their heads down and their hands visible.
And Sable kept moving.
That mattered more than anyone outside Cassian's inner circle understood.
