Al stood motionless in front of Sobek, for the first time in fear. He had seen his pack leader angry many times, but that anger had never been directed at him. "Do you want to explain yourself? Please?" Sobek asked with a serious voice.

The news of Al's 'stunt' didn't take long to reach him: Al himself hadn't done anything to hide it and had confessed almost immediately. When he learned that someone had disobeyed his orders, Sobek was furious: even if it was a trivial matter, as the pack leader he couldn't tolerate it.

Al couldn't hold that fiery gaze. He lowered his head and tried to motivate his actions: "Pack leader, I know I am wrong and I will accept any punishment you wish for me. I just wanted to reassure that woman... when humans are desperate they seem so fragile and I... "

"AL, YOU DISAPPOINTED ME!" Sobek's roar made the poor allosaurus jump, as well as all the other dinosaurs present; the poor Old Li, who stood directly alongside the spinosaurus, nearly had a heart attack. "You have been a fool! Didn't you think that perhaps there were reasons behind my orders? Now it will be even more difficult to keep calm among the prisoners, and right now that the humans finally accepted the negotiation!"

Al's heart sank at those words. He knew he had made a mistake, so he wasn't surprised by Sobek's anger, but he expected it to be a trifle... well, how could a mother and two children undermine the tranquility of the prisoners? "I... I don't think I understand..."

"Of course, because you didn't think before you acted! Tell me, do you think that woman and her children were the only two people who were separated? How do you think everyone else will feel now, after seeing that they were lucky enough to reunite while they weren't?" Sobek growled. "They will be furious. They will want the same treatment. This act of weakness of yours has shown them that they can deal with us, and many will try to do so. You will see, soon requests will be made and protests will be raised. Many humans will even begin to think that escape is possible! Fear is a powerful tool, and now we have lost it because of you!"

Al's eyes widened as the revelation hit him. He actually had not calculated that implication. "But we can simply refuse their requests... show them that escape is not possible... they will be afraid of us again..."

"Don't you listen to me? By now we have played that card! Your actions have shown humans that we don't attack anything that bothers us. By refusing their requests, we will only feed discontent, discontent that could explode with a revolt!" Sobek answered increasingly angry. "My intent was to keep the climate of fear on the prisoners, so that they would stay calm until we made arrangements with their leaders. But now, the fear is gone and recreating it would mean having to perform another act of ferocity, which would only put us in a bad light now that we have the eyes of the whole world on us! Before, when humans were afraid, no one dared to revolt or make demands, so we didn't need to shed blood or show heartlessness. Instead, now we may be dragged to that point, and that's just what I want to avoid! If we want that the war with humans will result in as less deaths as possible and that it will end one day, then we can't give humans an image of us as murderous bastards! It would break any possibility of future coexistence!"

Sobek had never sought domination over humans; he aimed at the coexistence of humans and other life forms. But if he wanted this utopia to come true, he could not shed blood among the prisoners. Even if he had the reasons to do it, humans would only see it as an act of violence. One thing was an open battle against an army, where it was impossible to say that it had deliberately caused pain; but killing prisoners would not have been viewed the same way. For this reason Sobek had never even tried to dispel the climate of terror among the prisoners.

Even though he had proved them that the dinosaurs were not savages (providing food, allowing them to attend funerals and trials, etc.), he had still maintained a wall between dinosaurs and humans, so that any kind of interaction was impossible and humans kept theirs. fear towards them. Thanks to fear, humans wouldn't have caused riots, but when they will be returned to the civilization they could not even claim that the dinosaurs had been cruel to them, because in fact the dinosaurs had done nothing wrong.

Now, however, because of Al, that technique was unworkable. His actions had shown to the humans that dinosaurs were open to dialogue. This had broken the veil of fear. Problems would soon come to haunt him. Humans would start with requests, first simple pleas, then gradually more and more incisive; and then it would come to protests and riots. And even if they hadn't reached such levels, refusing their requests would have created discontent; once released, humans would describe dinosaurs as selfish, empathetic, and favoritist creatures.

"We need to act now, and let's hope the damage isn't too bad" Sobek growled. "Old Li! Spread this announcement among the prisoners. Human leaders agreed to negotiate; as a sign of friendship, the leader of the dinosaurs will allow parents and children under fifteen years old to reunite. From tomorrow, some dinosaurs will go from one enclosure to another and will take the names of the family members, and then pick them up and reunite them in a single enclosure"

Playing in advance was now the best thing to do. The revelation that the human leaders wished to negotiate would stop the thoughts of revolt. Furthermore, by passing off the family reunion as a gift from him, Sobek would not only minimize the number of requests, but would also create the image of good and charitable dinosaurs who cared about the needs of humans. "Do it! Now!"

Old Li didn't have it repeated; he too had made the same reasoning as Sobek. Although with the typical slowness of an ankylosaurus, he ran to the nearest fence to start spreading the announcement.

"Now let's get back to you" Sobek said, staring back at the furious Al. "You disobeyed an order from me, an order from your pack leader, and this is already very serious. But your disobedience has also put our future relationships with humans at risk, and now the consequences will be unpredictable. You can understand for yourself that now I can no longer trust you"

Al lowered his head. He knew it would happen. His mistakes were too great to ignore. Furthermore, a member of the pack who disobeys the orders of the pack leader could not go unpunished. Sobek had always left the dinosaurs a lot of leeway, but he had always made it clear what the hierarchy was.

Suddenly Al felt a slight change in his body, a sign that [Reinforced skin] had just vanished; he started to ask for an explanation, but the instant he raised his head Sobek's claws darted and cut his cheeks, right where his tattoos were. Blood dripped from the wound and Al clearly felt the pain. It soon became clear to him what had happened: of the four lines he had drawn across his face, two had just been cut off along with his skin.

"From now on, you are relieved of any important assignment, and you are demoted to second degree star" Sobek growled. "Since you seem to like humans, you will join the delegation team that will welcome the human ambassadors as they arrive. You will be at the service of the one I will put in charge of the operation and you will carry out every order of him to the letter. I've been clear?"

"Yes, pack leader" Al replied without hesitation.

"Then you can get out of my sight. And I mean right now"

In reality, the punishment Sobek had given Al wasn't that much: welcoming humans was certainly not a problem for many dinosaurs. However, Al had always been put in charge of the operations he attended, so the fact that he would only join the delegation as an auxiliary member was in effect a demotion. This sent a strong warning to all dinosaurs: the fact that Al was no longer put in charge of an operation meant that he had lost the confidence of the pack leader. Which, for the dinosaurs, was very serious. Al himself, despite not having received any corporal punishment, would have suffered greatly. Sobek was for the dinosaurs the maximum expression of heroism and strategy, the best leader they had ever found: he had tamed the fire and had reunited different species with his miracles of him. Dinosaurs had the same feeling for him as humans did for a god. Losing trust in him, therefore, could be likened to a cardinal sin.

Sobek didn't want to be so tough, but it was in his role as pack leader to maintain discipline. If he hadn't proved that disobeying an order had consequences for him, others would have started to do their own thing.

Al obeyed his boss's order and walked away. He didn't even have the courage to look Sobek in his eyes one last time.