"It's worse when you're close." The words come out like he's annoyed at himself for having to say them. "I thought it would get easier."
I huff a quiet laugh. "Did it get easier today?"
"No." A beat of silence. The mountain line. "Does it for you?"
I think about Dalton in the common room. The almost-scene by a bookshelf that didn’t happen and has been happening anyway in every room I've been in with him since. Three days of the pull getting louder, not quieter.
"No," I say.
He nods, still looking at the mountain. "Okay."
He walks away before I can say anything else.
The partial bond between us settles to a background hum now that the distance is back. Just the pull I've been carrying since he arrived in a Red House corridor, which feels like longer ago than it was.
I finish rolling the band. The yard is almost empty. Stone is stacking equipment near the far wall, unhurried.
There are three arcs on my wrist now. Five people I feel a pull towards. Bonds and partial bonds running at varying volumes through my body at all hours, orienting me toward different points in the building and the compound like I've become a compass with too many norths. Gray in Gold House, the bond stretched thin across the compound but present. Leo somewhere in the building being loud about something. Dalton at the yard's edge with his notepad, and I can feel the direction of him through the arc the same way I can feel the cold through my jacket. And Jake, now — and RJ both fainter but still there.
I should know what to do with that by now.
I don't think anyone would.
There's no protocol for female alpha because female alphas don't exist in this facility's documented history, which means there's no protocol for what it means to carry so many bonds simultaneously while undergoing reclassification while a man with a notepad documents your every movement. I've been making it up as I go. I'll keep making it up.
I start toward the gate.
I'm almost through it when I hear it — Jake's voice, low, behind me. Not to me. To Stone, who is collecting the last of the equipment, who has his back turned, who didn't ask.
"She's different."
I slow down but don’t stop as I step through the door into Red House.
Chapter eight
The radio goes at seven forty-three.
I hear it from my room — Reyes's voice on the corridor channel, then a crackle, then someone at the gate desk reading back a confirmation. I can't make out the words but I know the cadence. Something unexpected. Something outside the standard morning protocol.
I'm still listening when the knock comes.
Dalton opens the door.
"Gavin wants you at the gate holding area," he says.
"Why."
"Someone walked up to the gate this morning. No transport, no escort, no referral paperwork. Asked to come in voluntarily." He pauses. "Asked for Jake by name. Says he came from the mountain."
I'm already reaching for my jacket.
***
The walk across the compound is quick. Dalton walks beside me, not behind, and fills in what he knows without being asked — which is how Dalton gives information when he's decided I should have it. Brief. Factual. No editorializing.
The man gave his name as Jim. No last name yet. He came on foot, alone. The gate desk described him as calm — not the feral-edged calm of someone managing something volatile, just calm. Present. He answered their questions without resistance and asked only one thing: whether Jake was here. When they confirmed it he said he'd like to come in.
"Gavin notified Cal and Stone," Dalton says. "He wants multiple assessments before making a placement determination."
