Josie
My chest still felt tight from the tension the stranger had brought into the house — that frail shape at the doorway, the hush that had fallen so fast it felt like an accusation. For a moment I had thought the nightmare had followed me in, and now here she was, standing small and shivering as if she could disappear if we all just stopped looking.
Two guards hovered nearby, faces flushed with that embarrassed kind of guilt that people get when they know they messed up. One of them stepped forward with a bow that was too formal for the situation. "Alpha, we're sorry. We— we did not realise who she was. She came in under a false name and we didn't check—"
