He turns. I raise an eyebrow. He says something to them and crosses back toward me.
"You saw it," he says.
"What exactly am I looking at," I say.
"Come to dinner," he says. "You can ask her yourself."
The cottage is small — a living space, kitchenette, a table that seats four if nobody minds proximity. Dalton sets food out. The dark-haired student — Gray, introduced simply — sits at one end. The young woman sits across from him.
Alex.
She looked at me when Dalton said the name with the direct assessment of someone running a rapid evaluation and not bothering to hide it. I've been assessed by senior faculty atinstitutions that have been running for two centuries. None of them made me as aware of being evaluated.
We eat. The conversation moves — Dalton talking about the campus, Gray asking questions about Luftis with genuine curiosity. Alex eats and listens and says things occasionally that are more precise than what came before them.
I watch Dalton watch her.
The behavioral field from the courtyard is present here too, in the close quarters of the cottage. The way he tracks her without appearing to. The way she knows where he is without looking. If I weren't specifically looking for it I would have dismissed it as familiarity. It isn't familiarity. It's structural. It runs underneath the behavior rather than sitting on top of it.
I set down my fork.
"May I see it," I say. To her.
She looks at me. "See what."
"Your wrist," I say.
A beat. She looks at Dalton. He gives her nothing — not permission, not discouragement, just watching. She looks back at me and turns her wrist over on the table.
The marks are dark. Distinct. Multiple arcs, the configuration of more than one bond. I count them.
"Five," I say.
"Yes," she says.
I look at the marks. Then at her face. Then at Dalton.
"I don't believe in fated bonds," I say.
The table is quiet.
Gray has the expression of someone trying not to smile. Dalton has no expression at all.
Alex looks at me with the direct assessment she's had since I walked in.
"I know," she says. "Dalton told me." A pause. "He said I'd have to convince you myself."
"And are you going to try," I say.
She looks at her wrist. At the marks.
"I don't think I have to," she says. "I think you're already convinced. You just won’t admit it yet."
I pick up my coffee.
The senior faculty member at the oldest shifter institution in Scandinavia told me once that fated bonds were a story powerful families told their young to control them. I watched them do exactly that for long enough that I stopped questioning the conclusion.
I look at the marks on her wrist. At Dalton, settled and anchored and different from the man who slept through my lectures. At Alex, watching me with the patience of someone who already knows the answer and is giving me the time to get there.
