~ LARK ~
“Welcome, Lark.”
Kenji was the first to greet her when she entered the chamber, a room wider than it was long, wood-paneled, with large windows to Lark’s right that let in the light, but through a glass that obscured anything beyond vague shapes on its other side.
The Elders were seated in a single row at a long, curved table on the opposite side of the room from where she entered. Six males and one female, they all sat in thick, padded chairs and watched her enter—except for Michael Dalton, the elder of the Dalton bloodline. He frowned at something on the table in front of him and only glanced up over the rim of his glasses when she walked in to take a seat at a much smaller table that faced them all, just outside its curve. She wasn’t surprised. She was certain both he and
