Aurora POV
Silence like this isn't passive.
It's trained.
I had seen it before, years ago, in outer packs that had learned how to survive volatile alphas. They didn't challenge. They adapted. They learned when to disappear and when to comply just enough to avoid attention.
I had never expected to feel it here.
Not in Moonstone.
Not from my own people.
Not the charged silence of dissent, not the brittle quiet that precedes confrontation - just an absence where expectation used to live. I noticed it in small ways at first. An aide delivering reports without waiting for comment. A council member thanked me for "clarity" and then left before I could respond.
No one lingered.
I had acted openly. Deliberately. Without procedural veil or moral cushioning. I had believed that would restore coherence -that decisiveness would draw people back toward a center that had been dissolving under layers of optimization and fear.
Instead, it clarified something else.
