"I'll be there."
I look up at him. "You're staying."
He looks at the ceiling. "Jim is here." A pause. "You're here." Another pause. "Yes. I'm staying."
I put my palm flat on his chest. Feel his heartbeat under my hand — steady, even, the rhythm of someone at rest. He covers my hand with his.
We don't say anything for a while. The facility does what it does at night around us — the reduced hum, the particular silence of a place full of people mostly asleep. In here it's warm. The pajamas are impossibly soft. His heartbeat is steady and I have so much I could say and none of it needs to be said right now.
I think about Orange House. Windows that face outward. The pack one short of complete.
RJ somewhere in this building, carrying something. The wanting that monitors without my permission running its quiet loop.
Not yet.
But Dalton's heartbeat is under my palm and the coral set is on the floor somewhere and he saidI'll be thereand he's staying, and that's enough.
I close my eyes.
Chapter twenty-five
Iwake up in the blue pajamas.
The fabric is still impossibly soft. The window faces the quad, same as always, but in my head it's already a different window — one that faces out. Orange House. Today, maybe.
I'm lying there thinking about what it will feel like to look at something other than this quad when Gavin knocks.
Not Sven. Gavin himself, which is the first wrong thing. Gavin doesn't do morning escorts. That's not his role. But his knock is unmistakable — the weight of it, the authority carried in three deliberate sounds — and I open the door and he's standing there with two staff members I don't recognize and a folder and an expression I've never seen on his face before.
Not unkind. That's the worst part. Not cruel. Just resolved.
"Alex," he says. "You need to come with me."
I look at the folder. "What's in that."
"The review panel met last night. Emergency session." He says it evenly. "Their determination has been issued."
Something cold moves through me. "What determination."
"The Sven injury incident has been classified as evidence of cascade-level instability in the current placement configuration." He doesn't look away from my face. "The panel has determined that this facility lacks the capacity to safely manage an alpha female in an active bonded configuration. Effective immediately, you're being transferred to Frosthaven Academy."
The word lands like a physical thing.
"Frosthaven," I say.
"Staff cottage. Security detail. Full access to their resources — it's not a containment transfer, Alex. It's a—"
"It's a van," I say.
He pauses. "There's transport waiting, yes."
I look at the two staff members. At the folder. At Gavin's face with its resolved expression and its not-unkind eyes. I think about the pajamas — Dalton picking them because he noticed the uniform wasn't made for women, because he noticed the silk of my skin, because he wanted me to have something soft. I think about Orange House and the window that faces out. I think about Stone sayingkeep going to the fenceand Sven sayinghe needs youand Dalton sayingI'm staying.
"Where's Dalton," I say.
Something flickers in Gavin's expression. "Mr. Dalton was briefed. He's been sent ahead to coordinate the security arrangements at Frosthaven."
Sent ahead.
