"Dr. Ellis," he says. "I believe this is what they call a community partnership."
"That's exactly what it is," I say.
He takes the scissors for the ribbon, cuts it without ceremony, and hands the scissors back. "Keep me in the loop on any camera activity that looks like organized trespass," he says. "My deputies are better deployed when they have advance notice."
"You'll have it," I say.
The deputies take photographs of the station foundation for the county files, and I hand over their access codes to the trail cameras.
Alden watches from the perimeter with his hands in his jacket pockets. This is my show, and he’s not going to steal it.
The first steps toward coexistence are sealed.
Brynn's packlaw sessions move to afternoons, which suits the rhythm of everything else. I take notes in a notebook to keep everything straight.
"Most Lunas don't annotate," she says. "They memorize."
"I'm a scientist," I say. "I annotate."
She looks at my margin notes for a moment. "Keep doing it," she says, and continues the session.
The bloodline chapter takes two full afternoons. Extended pack lines—the families that trace ancestry back through founding wolves, the obligations and protections that come with that lineage, the way the web of connection distributes authority and responsibility through the pack structure.
I knew, abstractly, that this was complicated. The binders make clear that complicated is an understatement.
"Every pack member carries a bloodline designation," Brynn says, on the second afternoon. "The Luna's role in bloodline mediation is significant. Disputes over lineage seniority, matingrecognitions, inheritance of pack roles—these come to the Alpha and Luna jointly."
“How many bloodlines exist in the pack?” I scribble away with my pencil.
“There are twelve distinct bloodlines in the Blackmoore pack. New bloodlines transfer in from time to time, and some transfer out.”
“Wait, there are other packs!?” I stare at her, pencil and notebook forgotten.
“Of course. The world is full of shifters.” For the first time, Brynn’s face cracks into a smile, like she made a joke.
My inner scientist realizes I barely scratched the surface of my shifter study, but now I was part of their world, and the world had hardly opened up to me.
I write a few more notes in the notebook margin and underline them. There was so much more to learn.
The first timea pack member calls me Luna outside of a formal setting, I'm in the east wing corridor with a stack of patrol schedule revisions and an armful of binders, and the young enforcer who holds the door open says it so naturally I almost don't register it.
"Thanks," I say, and keep walking, and then stop in the hallway because the word is still landing.
He held the door and said, “Luna” the way you say a name.
I stand in the corridor for a moment with my binders and think about what it means to be recognized as something by an entire community of people whose existence was a secret, and whose safety I've spent the last several weeks working to protect.
The scientist part of me notes it as a data point—integration accepted, role acknowledged, community adoption proceeding on schedule.
The rest of me is less clinical about it and doesn't have precise language for what it is. Something that has to do with purpose, and belonging, and the specific satisfaction of contributing to the survival of a thing that deserves to survive.
I file it and keep walking.
By the end of the week it's stopped being remarkable, because three or four pack members do it every day, and by the end of the second week I've stopped noticing the individual instances and started noticing the pattern, which is that it's consistent across age and rank and prior political alignment, and that tells me something about what the Luna vote actually signaled to the pack that no formal declaration could have communicated.
I tell Alden that evening.
"I know," he says.
