Leo tips my head his direction and presses his lips to mine, softly.
“Stone takes RJ outside in the mornings,” he says. Low. “Early. Before the yard fills up.”
I quickly kiss Jim and Jake and walk to the door.
I hold Leo’s gaze one beat.
Then I go.
Chapter thirteen
Alex
Stone comes out of the stairwell and sees me and stops. He does the read — fast, thorough, the kind that doesn't announce itself.
"No," he says.
"I haven't asked anything."
"You're about to."
"Let me outside," I say. "I need to see him."
He looks at me. A long moment — not calculating, just holding the weight of it. Stone is a man who holds lines. I watch him decide what this one costs.
"Five minutes," he says. "Fence only. You don't call to him. You don't move toward him." His eyes stay on mine. "He reacts, you step back."
I hold his gaze and nod once.
He takes me out.
***
The yard is empty except for RJ.
He's at the far end, moving the perimeter. Not pacing — something more purposeful than that, more animal. Working the edges the way something works the edges of a space that has become the whole world. I stop at the south fence and wrap my hands in the chain link and the wanting at my wrist sharpens.
His frequency.
Close now. Closer than it's been since the dream.
He doesn't notice me.
He completes the circuit, turns, starts back.
Then he stops — head coming up, weight shifting before the rest of him catches up. Something's reached him. Scent maybe. The pull between us doing whatever it does at this distance.
He turns toward me.
I stay still. Hands loose at my sides.
He stands there for a moment. Just looking at the direction of me. Then he starts forward.
His pace is unhurried. Deliberate. The walk of a wolf who has decided something is worth investigating but hasn't decided what it is yet. I know this walk. I've stood on the other side of this fence and watched him cover this ground before — the specific economy of him, the way he moves like the yard belongs to him because it does, the way he never wastes a step.
I know this. I've watched this.
I wait.
