Su Wanyan stopped in front of Jingxue and the cluster of men, the leftover sting of their earlier coldness folded carefully out of sight. What she offered instead was a bright, open smile—the kind that suggested the morning's hostility had never quite reached her..
"So," she said, "what seems to be the problem?" The question was the same one she had already asked from the field.
Jingxue studied the alpha in front of him. Something in her posture—steady, unhurried, the particular stillness of someone prepared to carry bad news without flinching—loosened a knot he had not fully admitted was there. She gave the impression of a person who would listen to the whole of a trouble and then try, in practical terms, to move it. The shaking under his own composure eased. He exhaled once, slow and controlled.
Then his attention slid to the men still watching Su Wanyan with undisguised hostility.
