"That depends on the guests," Chris said. "Some improve with structure. Others merely become more creative inside it."
Nero did not hear every word.
Not clearly. Not the way a fully manifested adult with mature secondary traits might have. His rut had not come yet. He was still too young for full expression, and whatever he was becoming had not settled into its final shape.
But Nero had never been ordinary.
He caught more than he should have at that distance. Not sentences in perfect detail, but fragments. Tone. Cadence. The dangerous softness in Chris's voice when he was being polite on purpose. The pause before Caelan answered. The tiny shift in his father's body that looked like stillness to everyone else and looked, to Nero, like contained violence.
It was enough for him to know that whatever was happening at the host end of the table was not merely formal.
Beside him, Zion noticed the change at once.
"What?" he asked quietly.
