**POV: Aria**The pack gathered on the ceremony grounds for Lyra's first birthday as the sun was setting.Not because anyone had formally organized it. Simply because word had moved through the territory the way word always moved, quietly and completely, and by the time the golden summer evening had settled over the grounds, the whole pack was there, drawn by the particular instinct of a community that understood when something deserved to be witnessed together.Mara had brought food.Of course, Mara had brought food. She had arrived two hours before anyone else with the focused energy of someone who had decided this occasion required her particular brand of enthusiastic preparation and had not been wrong about that.Dorian was already there when Aria arrived, standing near the front with Sable Wren beside him, the two of them in quiet conversation about something that appeared to involve the garden. Sable was holding Lyra with the careful confidence of someone who had been practicing
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