Alex
It wakes me up.
Not a sound — the bond. RJ's frequency, which has been a bruise at my wrist since the yard, since watching him not find me in his own face. I know the shape of it the way I know all of them now. Warm when he's still. Quiet when he's doing the circuit.
This is neither.
Moving. Directional.
I'm off the bed before I'm fully awake, hand closing hard over the mark at my wrist. It pulses under my palm — fast, wrong.
I pull on clothes and go to the living room.
Dalton is already up. Coffee untouched on the table, phone in his hand, jaw set. He looks up when I come in and reads my face.
"RJ's moving," I say.
A beat. Dalton goes still — not feeling it the way I do, but calculating. His phone is already up.
"Feral Academy," he says into it. Listens. Waits. Hangs up. "They haven't called yet."
"They will," I say.
The bond spikes.
Closer.
Dalton sees it hit me. "How far."
"Too fast," I say.
His phone rings. He answers immediately. "Yes." A pause. "When." His jaw tightens. "Direction." He looks at me. "Straight line. No deviation."
Straight to Frosthaven. Straight to me.
He hangs up. "They're mobilizing. Security teams—"
"I’m going to him," I say. "If they go at him like a threat he responds like one."
Dalton watches me for a moment. Then he nods and gets back on the phone. "Alex is heading to him. You can tell her that when you see her." He hangs up and looks at me. "This doesn't stay contained."
"I know," I say.
I run outside.
***
The campus has already cleared — doors shut, paths empty, the silence of a place that knows something is coming. Dalton positions himself two steps ahead of me and doesn't say anything and I don't ask him to move. He's made his decision about what this moment requires. So have I.
Security comes anyway.
Fast and controlled, moving in from the east, and I see the formation and the hands going to weapons and I step forward.
"Stand down." The register drops out of me without deciding to. Low. Not loud. The one that ended the containment breach in the dark. "All of you. Weapons down. Nobody moves."
Every one of them stops.
Hands drop.
