She was in the reading room before him, at the table, hands folded on a closed folder.
The Council grey pressed in the same hard lines as the first day.
He still didn't have her name. The roster listed her as OBSERVATION: COUNCIL, field blank, and she'd never filled it.
What he had instead was the ears.
Tucked down under her hair, very still, barely a texture from across the room. Not a fox. Too narrow. Not a wolf. Too small. Some canid the file didn't have a word for.
She didn't let them move when he walked in.
That told him more than the folder would. A bonded beast held that quiet under stress wasn't quiet by accident. Somebody had spent years teaching it not to react, or teaching her not to let it.
The Council didn't pull a stranger off the street to watch a contested bond group. They sent someone who already lived inside the problem. He'd assumed it the day she sat down without a name. The ears confirmed it.
