"Good."
Chapter five
Alex
I know the paths now.
Not from the map — from walking them. The stone route from the cottage to the main building, the walkway to the athletic complex, the shortcut behind the east wing that cuts off the exposed stretch of quad where the wind comes in hard off the treeline. I know which door sticks, and which corridor smells like coffee from the faculty lounge above it.
I know the campus the way I know spaces — by where the exits are and who watches them.
Nobody stops me. That doesn't mean I'm not being watched.
I feel it more clearly today than yesterday — conversations dropping a register when I pass, a door closing just a fraction too fast, two students at a table near the library entrance going quiet and resuming when I'm far enough away. Not hostile, exactly.
That's her, someone says, behind me in the corridor after mythology.
I don't turn around. I keep walking and add the voice to the map I'm building — not the physical one, the other one. Who watches. Who whispers. Who closes doors.
Tomlinson's class runs long today, a student pushing back on the hunter myth, arguing that the elders' response is naive, that you can't sit with something dangerous and expect it to remember how to be safe. Tomlinson doesn't shut him down. He lets the argument breathe and asks the room what they think and the room splits and I sit there listening to a classroom full of latent wolves debate whether dangerous things deserve patience.
I write down what they say. I keep the rest.
After class the quad is busy, the mid-morning break sending students out into the cold with coffee and phones and the easy movement of people who belong somewhere. I walk through it and feel them clock me and keep walking and think about what it would feel like to just be here.
Not placed. Not monitored.
Just here.
I'm still thinking about it when Dalton appears at my shoulder.
"Gavin requested a meeting," he says.
No preamble. No context. Just that, and the bond pulling tight in a way that tells me everything the words don't.
"When," I say.
"Now," he says. "The van's waiting."
I look at him. His jaw is set. I look away and start walking.
***
The drive back feels longer than it did the first time. I watch the treeline through the window and feel the bonds change as we move — the westward pull that's been running constant sharpening, becoming more specific, more weighted. Leo. Gray.Jake. Jim. RJ. The pull strengthens as the distance closes, the bonds tightening after being stretched too far for too long.
Dalton drives. Doesn't speak. I don't ask him to.
When Feral Academy comes through the trees it looks the same. Of course it does — nothing about the building has changed. But something in my chest responds to it the way it responds to things it recognizes, and that's complicated, given everything.
I breathe through it and get out of the van.
Gavin's office is in the admin building, the walk across the compound enough time to feel the difference — the way the air sits here, managed and contained, every variable accounted for. At Frosthaven the air moves. Here it doesn't.
I used to think that was control. Now I’m not sure.
The door to his office is open. He's at his desk, a file open in front of him, not looking up yet. I cross to the chair across from him and sit. Dalton takes a position near the door.
Gavin closes the file.
