I want to ask why. I don't. The side door is right there and Gavin's voice is already carrying through it, the call winding down.
He looks at me. The shutter open that fraction still.
The side door opens. Gavin, already dismissing me. I stand on autopilot.
I walk out.
Sven is in the corridor and he falls into step beside me without a word. We're halfway down the corridor before I realize my thumb has been pressed against the third arc the entire length of it.
I move my hand.
The third arc tracks Dalton through the wall anyway. Steady. Certain. I press my thumb against my thigh instead and keep walking.
Sven opens the Red House door and I go through it and I think: female alpha.
I have no idea what that means.
But Dalton's going to be in this building while I figure it out, and whatever he felt in that hallway this morning he is already planning to manage very carefully.
Good luck with that, I think.
I'm not easy to manage.
Chapter three
Ihear him before I see him.
Shouting first — not words, just volume, someone who has stopped caring what it sounds like. Then something hitting a wall, or a door frame, followed by the kind of controlled scramble that means staff are involved and not winning.
I'm in the common room. I should stay in the common room. I go to the doorway instead, because I have apparently not yet learned anything.
The corridor in Red House is not supposed to sound like this. Two staff members I recognize from overnight shifts are trying to walk a man down it and the man is not interested in being walked.
Big. Dark hair that needs a cut. A fresh tear splits the shoulder seam of his jacket. He’s already shrugged off one staff member’s grip and is explaining, at volume, that he’s done being touched— not in those words, the words he’s using are more direct — and the explanation involves a lot of motion and the strong implication that a wall is about to be involved.
"Jim isn't here." Not talking to the staff. Talking to the building, to whoever made the decisions. "I was told Jim was here. Where is he. Where—"
"Mr. Jake, if you'll just come with us—"
"Don't." Short. Absolute. "Don't touch me!"
Feral-edged. Present enough to be using language, not present enough to be using it well. The words are getting out but the filter between impulse and output has packed up and left.
I step into the corridor.
He goes completely still.
Not gradual. Not a slow register of my presence — one second in motion, the next second not, like something cut the feed. His head comes around and he finds me with the directness of someone who isn't looking with their eyes first.
The mark on my wrist detonates.
Not a pull. Not the warm-steady register of Leo's bond or the directional ache that's been pointing west since this morning. This is a shockwave — rough and immediate, hitting the existing bonds and ricocheting through all of them at once, and my alpha nature responds to him before I've decided to respond to anything.
He feels it too.
I can see it — the way his whole body recoils and then locks. His jaw goes tight.
I look at the gold pulsing mark on my wrist. The fourth fucking mark. Not subtle.
