"Instead of suppressing the bond, we facilitate it. Supervised contact with each mate under clinical conditions. Controlled escalation. We let the transition progress in a managed environment instead of forcing it underground where it manifests as blackouts and involuntary vocalizations."
"You're suggesting we let her bond." Gavin. Each word dropped like a stone.
"I'm suggesting we stop pretending she isn't bonding and start managing the process instead of the symptoms. Every restriction we've placed on her has produced a more violent expression — the fence, the door frame, the growl. The harder we squeeze, the more the pressure builds. I am proposing we release the pressure before it blows."
"And if the Board sees that as facilitating rather than containing?"
"Then the Board needs to decide what it wants more — a contained compound or a stable resident. Because right now it can't have both."
I sit back on the bench. My hands are cold. Everything else is hot.
They're deciding. Six feet away through a cracked door, in a conversation I'm not part of. Whether I stay or go. Whether the bonds rewriting my body are a treatment plan or an evacuation order. Whether I'm a person to be helped or a problem to be relocated.
Lumi's play: let the bond happen. Stop fighting biology. The only person in that room who's lived through what I'm living through, telling them to stop squeezing.
But Gavin heard facilitate and his voice went cold. And Len is calculating liability. And the Board meets in three days.
A door opens down the hall. The staff member reappears — still not making eye contact, still radiating the low-grade discomfort of a man who drew the short straw on Alex duty.
"Session's cancelled," he says. "I'm taking you back."
He walks me across the compound. I don't ask about the session. There was no session. They parked me on a bench while the adults argued about my future ten feet away, and now they're sending me back to my room because the argument isn't over and they don't want me hearing the rest.
Red House. My door. The bolt slides.
I sit on the bed. Knees up. Arms wrapped. The overheard conversation replaying on a loop — Lumi's blade-warm voice, Stone's crack, Len's paperwork tone. Transfer. Cascade. Liability. Controlled bonding protocol. Words that mean my life decided by people in a room I wasn't invited into.
Hours pass. The building goes quiet. The skeleton crew takes over.
Leo comes after midnight. Bare feet. Serious face.
He sits on the bed next to me. Close. Warm. His shoulder against mine.
"I heard things," he says. "Staff talking. Jason — Orange House — on the phone in the hall. They're making lists. Places that can take a high-risk female resident. Ridgeback. Montana. Washington state."
My stomach drops.
"Places far from here," he says. "Far from all of us."
He doesn't need to say more. I heard the meeting. I know what the lists mean.
"Lumi's fighting it," I say. "She wants supervised bonding instead of transfer."
"Lumi's one voice." He looks at me. Amber behind the brown. "The Board wants proof that the risk can be managed. Lumi's proposing supervised bonding. That means they need to see bonds that are progressing, not exploding. Controlled. Stable."
"You're saying we need to prove the bond works."
"I'm saying we need to prove we work. You, me, RJ, Gray — all of it. Not as a threat. As proof that this can hold." He pulls back. Looks at me. "Can you hold it together for three days?"
The micro-blackouts. The growl. The seconds I keep losing.
"I don't know," I say.
Leo nods. Doesn't reassure me. Doesn't promise it'll be fine. Just nods. Because he grew up in the system too, and he knows that sometimes the honest answer is the only one worth giving.
"Three days," he says. "And then we find out what they think you're worth."
The sentence sits in the dark between us.
