Sylven Voskrane was leaning on the kitchen counter with both hands flat on it and his shirt open, which is how he does his best thinking, when Taurin told him the word on the file.

he said.

He laughed at that, loud, the way he laughed at everything that was going to be true later, and he kept laughing until the bike came up the gravel and stopped.

He did not say anything while you walked the path, and both of his brothers noticed, because he is not a quiet man.

What he saw was not someone who was afraid. A uniform new enough to have been bought for you, one bag with everything you owned in it, three alphas' worth of aura coming at you in a line, and you did not look at any of them once, not out of fear but out of decision, and that is a different thing to walk through.

The joke had stopped being funny somewhere between the gravel and the office door. He noticed that too.

he said, and turned his glass a quarter turn on the counter and left it.