My chest tightens.
"I withdrew from Frosthaven tonight."
The words land like a dropped stone.
"I told Stone I'm not doing the reintegration review. I'm done chasing a life that requires me to ignore the things that matter."
He's shaking now. Head to foot.
The most controlled man I've ever met vibrating apart in my room at one in the morning.
"I want to help RJ," he says.
"I want to be in this pack."
His voice breaks clean in half.
"I want you."
The words tear out of him.
"I have wanted you since the window. Since the moment you walked past it."
He drags in a ragged breath.
"And if you tell me to leave, I'll leave."
His voice drops to something raw and final.
"But you deserve to know the truth."
"The only real thing I've known since I got to this compound…"
He looks straight at me.
"...is you."
Silence fills the room. I look at him.
Wrecked. Red-eyed. Shaking. Standing barefoot in open boots in the middle of my concrete room. The man who built a fortress out of discipline and walked out of it in the middle of the night because the thing inside was bigger than the walls.
"Come here," I say.
He doesn't move at first. Like he's afraid. Then he crosses the room in two steps.
Falls to his knees in front of the bed.
His hands find my face — both hands, cupping my jaw, his fingers trembling against my skin. The first real contact since the corridor brush.
This is bigger.
The bond ignites.
Not a flare.
Not a surge.
A detonation.
