No response. Just that steady, watchful presence on the other side of the glass.
"I should probably go," I said. "Neal wants to do a medical check on the others, and I promised Ivy I'd actually show up to at least one class today. Appearances, and all that."
I stood. Stretched muscles that had gone stiff from sitting too long.
"I'll come back," I said. "I'll tell you about whatever boring things happen between now and then. Maybe I'll bring a book. Read to you." I paused, considered. "Do you like books? Cal doesn't seem to care either way. James pretends he doesn't read, but I found a romance novel in his bag once. Neal reads medical journals for fun, which should tell you everything you need to know about him."
I was rambling. I knew I was rambling. But stopping felt like giving up.
"Anyway." I pressed my palm against the window — the same gesture I'd made yesterday, when I'd named him. "I'll see you tonight, Stone."
He didn't react to the name. Didn't snarl, didn't flinch. Just lay there, watching me with those gold eyes that held nothing I could read.
I turned to leave.
I was at the door when I felt it.
A shift in the bond. Subtle. Almost imperceptible.
I stopped. Turned back.
Stone was standing.
Not pacing. Not attacking. Just standing in the center of his cell, facing the window. Facing me.
His posture had changed. The aggressive tension was still there — the coiled readiness, the distrust — but something else had crept in underneath it. Something that looked almost like... attention. Interest.
He was watching me.
Not with rage. Not with the desperate need to escape or destroy. Just watching. Like he was seeing me for the first time. Like he was trying to figure out what I was.
The bond pulsed between us. Still painful. But different now. Less like a wound and more like... a question.
I held his gaze through the reinforced glass, and I let him see the truth in my eyes — the exhaustion, the uncertainty, the stubborn refusal to give up on him even when giving up would be easier.
"I meant what I said," I told him quietly. "However long it takes."
Stone didn't respond. Didn't move. Just stood there, golden eyes fixed on mine, as still and solid as his name.
Watching.
It wasn't trust. It wasn't acceptance. It wasn't anything close to the connection I had with Cal or James or even Neal.
But it was something.
A hairline crack in the wall he'd built around himself. A moment of stillness in the endless storm of his rage.
I'd take it.
Chapter thirteen
Stone was pacing when I arrived — the same restless circuit, back and forth, back and forth. But he stopped when he heard my voice. Turned toward the window. Watched as I settled into the chair that had become mine.
"Tomlinson gave us an extension on the paper," I said. "Two more days. I think he felt sorry for me. Or maybe he just got tired of students crying in his office. Either way, I'll take it."
Stone's ears flicked. Not relaxed — never relaxed — but present. Attentive.
"I actually started reading the source material during lunch. Selkie myths, mostly. Transformation narratives where the changed person tries to return to their original state." I pulled my knees up, got comfortable. "There's this one story about a woman who finds her seal skin after years of living as a human.Her children watch her put it on and swim away. The story doesn't say if she ever came back."
