"He's already unstable. You reaching didn't create that."
"Then why did it get worse."
A beat. He doesn't rush to answer. He doesn't fill space with reassurance.
"Distance isn't neutral for him," he says. "It's pressure. You reaching gave him something to respond to and then took it away and he couldn't track where it went." A pause. "It's not your fault. It's not something you could have known."
"I should have known," I whisper. “I just miss him so much.”
"You were half asleep and you missed him," Dalton says. "It’s ok."
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
Outside the window the trees are dark. Five miles through those trees RJ is somewhere in Red House with whatever just happened still running through him and I'm here with a snapped thread and ghost-warm lips that don't tingle anymore and not enough.
"So reaching like that," I say. "It's not enough."
"Not like that," he says. "Not from here."
I breathe.
"Lie down," Dalton says.
I don't argue.
I lie back and he moves to sit against the headboard and I put my face against his side and feel his hand move to my hair, slow and even, and I breathe and feel the bonds — Leo west, Gray in the dorm, Jake and Jim together, and the place where the thread was that is now just absence.
"What if I can't fix it," I say. Into his chest.
"You're not going to fix it tonight," he says. "Tonight you sleep."
"And tomorrow."
"Tomorrow we figure out the next thing."
Not comfort. Just true. True is all I have room for.
I breathe.
His hand moves in my hair.
Outside the window the trees hold their dark and cold and somewhere through them RJ is carrying what I just accidentally gave him, and I'm going to have to hold that and keep going anyway because stopping doesn't help him and because the panel meets and before it does I need to be ready.
Not yet, I think. At the unfinished thing. At the bond that snapped.
But I'm coming.
I close my eyes.
Dalton's hand moves in my hair until I stop feeling the absence and fall into sleep.
Chapter ten
Jon Matthias - visiting Luftis Academy Professor
I saw the posting on a Thursday.
Acting headmaster, Frosthaven Academy, Alaska. Full administrative oversight of a mixed-population institution operating a dual curriculum model. Candidates should have experience in shifter education, institutional development, and cross-cultural program design.
