The waiting stretched into an hour.
Then two.
Sally had long since abandoned pretense of patience, pacing in a tight circle near Granite's massive paws while muttering what Alex suspected were very creative insults under her breath. The snakelings had been left behind, but their absence felt like a physical weight—six small bodies that should have been pressed against his sides, six small voices that should have been asking relentless questions.
Instead, there was silence. The lion guards had not moved from their posts. They had not spoken. They had simply... watched.
Alex had learned, in the months since arriving in this world, that silence before a negotiation was rarely neutral. It was pressure. It was assessment. It was the powerful reminding the less powerful that they could wait as long as they needed to, because time belonged to them.
