"I don't want to go back," I whisper. "To what I was."
"No," Tiny says. He stands. The chair groans in relief. He crosses to the door and pauses. "But a bond isn't the mountain, Gray. It's not trying to kill you. It might be the one thing that isn't."
The door closes.
I sit on the edge of the bed. Breathing.
My eyes burn. Not gold. Wet.
I'm crying.
I haven't cried. I channeled everything into discipline and structure and the precise corners of a made bed. I told a girl I didn't want the bond while my body said the opposite.
And now I'm crying in my room at midnight and the terrible, liberating knowledge that I cannot do this alone.
I can't stay away. I knew when I said it. I knew when I turned my back and walked inside and put my hands on the counter and breathed. The body always knows before the mind catches up.
Chapter eighteen
It happens because of the ice storm.
It blows in overnight — not snow, ice. The compound wakes up glazed, every surface slicked, the paths between buildings turned to skating rinks. The electrified outer fence hums louder in the cold, a high whine that sets my teeth on edge from inside Red House. By morning, Gavin's issued a weather protocol: outdoor movement restricted to essential transit only. Meals consolidated at the lodge.
"Temporary," Sven says, reading my face. "Red House kitchen is down. Frozen pipes. We eat here, we leave."
Which means Red House and Gold House are eating at the same time.
"Stay close," he says as we cross the iced path, his hand locked on my arm to keep us both from falling. "Head down. We eat fast."
The lodge is warm inside. Crowded. Red shirts and gold shirts both in a space that isn't designed for this many bodies at once. The tension is immediate — every Red House guy running hotter because I'm in an enclosed space with them. But there are staff everywhere. Sven. Tiny. Two others I don't recognize. The room is managed.
I eat. Head down. Oatmeal. Fast.
"Let's go," Sven says. He's been standing behind me the entire meal, watching the room, watching the Gold House residents at the far tables.
We head for the door. The lodge entrance is a single hallway — timber walls, tight, one way in, one way out. The kind of space where two people passing have to turn sideways.
He's coming the other direction.
Gray. At the exact moment I'm trying to leave. Tiny is behind him, but Gray is ahead, and there isn't room for all of us.
I'm angry.
I've been angry since the path. Since the precise, controlled rejection. Since don't say my name like you know me. Since my wrist screamed while he told me he was choosing to ignore it.
Fine. He doesn't want the bond. He made that clear. I am not spending one more second reaching for someone who decided I'm a threat to his timeline.
My wrist disagrees. The pull has been worse since the rejection — louder, more insistent. Like the bond heard his refusal and took it as a challenge.
Sven is ahead of me by a step. The hallway turns. And Gray is at the end of it — standing in a doorway, one hand on the frame. Like he heard us coming and couldn't decide whether to retreat or stay and chose wrong.
Four feet apart. He sees me at the same moment I see him. His face does the thing — the flash of everything behind the control. Want, fear, the war. Then the wall goes up.
But not fast enough.
"Keep moving," Sven says from behind me.
I keep moving. Jaw tight. Eyes forward. I am not looking at him. I am walking past him the way you walk past a stranger because that's what he asked for and that's what he's getting.
