Stone is my escort today. He's been quieter since the fence. Still walks beside me, still lets silence exist, but the ease is gone. He watches me the way you watch weather you can't predict.
We're on the second lap when Leo falls in step beside us.
He looks different. Not dramatically — same lean frame, same close-cropped hair, same sharp jaw. But the way he moves has changed.
Now he moves like something that doesn't need to announce itself. Quieter. Smoother. His stride has that fluid quality I'veseen in the older residents — the ones who've been shifting long enough that the animal has integrated into how they walk, how they turn, how they hold their weight. It happened to Leo in one shift. Like the wolf was always in his body and just needed permission to rearrange the furniture.
His eyes find mine and my wrist pulses.
"Hey, murder girl."
"Hey, wolf boy."
His mouth twitches. Not the smirk. Something realer. He looks at Stone.
"I'm supervised," Leo says. "Tiny cleared me for yard time an hour ago. You can check."
Stone studies him for a moment. Whatever he sees satisfies something, because he gives a short nod and drops back — not leaving, but creating a gap. Enough space for a conversation that isn't overheard if we keep our voices low.
Leo walks beside me. Close enough that I can feel the warmth coming off him — and see the way the shift has changed his body. He was lean before. Now, he’s harder. The muscles in his forearms are more defined, his shoulders sit lower, and the line of his neck into his jaw has sharpened into something I want to trace with my fingers. The wolf didn't just rearrange the furniture. It renovated.
"You're different," I say.
"Yeah." He doesn't deflect. Doesn't joke. Just — yeah. "Everything's louder. Smells. Sounds. I can hear Stone's heartbeat from here and it's pissing me off because it's irregular. He should get that checked."
"Louder how?"
"Like someone cranked the volume and broke the knob." He shoves his hands in his pockets. His fingers are flexing in there — I can see the movement through the fabric. "My skin doesn't fit right. Like I'm wearing a suit that's a size too small. And mybrain keeps —" He stops walking for a second. Catches himself. Starts again. "My brain keeps doing this thing where it thinks about the yard. About the fence. About all three of us touching and the — the thing that happened."
The circuit.
"Me too," I say.
"It felt like locking into place." He says it fast. Like he's been holding it and the weight of keeping it in finally exceeded the weight of saying it. "Not the shift. The shift felt like dying. The part before it — when I grabbed you and the three of us connected — that felt like something clicking. Like my whole body said there. Like I'd been walking around with a socket in my chest I didn't know about and something plugged in."
I felt it too. Exactly that. The door opening inside my chest. The roar of connection. The feeling of something that was always supposed to be there finally arriving.
“I felt it too.”
Leo nods. Jaw working. Something complicated crosses his face — not jealousy, not resentment. Something I can't fully read and don't think he wants me to.
"Tell me about the houses," I say. Changing the subject because the look on his face is making my chest tight.
He accepts the pivot. Rolls his shoulders. Drops into something closer to his normal register — still different from before the shift, but recognizable.
"Three tiers. Red is intake and containment — you're here because you've hurt someone or you're a risk to. Orange is transitional. You can hold your shift, you're not trying to eat anyone, they start letting you have privileges. Gold is reintegration. You're stable, you're controlled, and you're getting ready to be sent back to the regular world. Or what passes for it."
"And the Panel decides who moves?"
"The Panel decides everything." He kicks a frozen clod of dirt. Watches it skid across the yard. "Promotions, demotions, placements, transfers. Every six weeks they review files and make calls. Who goes up, who stays, who goes somewhere worse."
"Somewhere worse than this?"
"This is a satellite facility. Experimental. There are other programs — places where the philosophy isn't contain and evaluate. It's just contain." He glances at me. "There's also the permanent placement option. If they decide you're never going to stabilize, they stop trying."
The air gets colder. Or maybe that's me.
"What does that mean? Permanent placement."
