Dalton picks up his jacket. "Apparently."
***
Becky is at the main building doors, smile already in place, the particular brightness of someone who has been looking forward to this morning. It's genuine — and underneath it, quick and assessing, something else moves before she pulls it back. Gone before most people would catch it.
I catch it.
"Alex," she says. "I'm Becky." She glances at Dalton, who has settled into a distance that is technically not accompanying me. "And — your security detail?"
"He goes where I go," I say.
She pauses, takes a breath. "Okay. Let's start with the main building."
The foyer is all high ceilings and dark wood paneling, the smell of old stone and central heating and coffee from somewhere deeper in the building. Students moving through, some of them glancing up when we pass, some of them not looking directly but watching us anyway.
I track them back.
"So," Becky says, falling into the easy rhythm of someone who has done this before. "How are you finding it so far?"
"Fine."
She waits for more. I don't give her more. She adjusts smoothly, pivoting to the building — classes here, faculty offices on the upper floors, the student lounge at the end of the east corridor. She talks the way people talk when they're good at filling silence, and I listen and watch the students watch me and feel Dalton somewhere behind us, not close enough to hear, present enough that the bond runs its steady frequency.
A girl coming out of a classroom stops when she sees me. Full stop, hand still on the door. Not afraid — just stopped, the way a body stops when it gets information the mind hasn't processed yet. I hold her gaze for a second. She goes inside.
"You get used to the stares," Becky says. "New people always get it."
"Sure," I say.
She glances at me sideways and keeps moving, now on to the library building — dark wood and high windows, long tables, students bent over laptops, cold light coming in low through the glass. She pauses at one of the windows and looks out at the quad.
"Access with your student ID. I know you're not technically a student but the parameters are the same." A beat. "It's a good place to decompress. If you need it."
I look at the quad. A group of students crossing the stone path, someone's water bottle on a bench.
"Good to know," I say.
Becky looks at me. That friendly face, warm and open, and underneath it the question she's been carrying since the doors. She's been waiting for an opening and I haven't given her one and she's deciding whether to make her own.
"Can I ask—" she starts.
"What's next," I say.
A beat. "Gym facility."
We go back and out through a covered walkway to a separate building, the cold coming back briefly, and I feel Dalton's bond shift slightly — closer, adjusting to the new space. The gym is better than I expected. Real equipment, a training floor, a climbing wall along the far side. A group of students doing drills in the corner, a trainer calling out corrections. He clocks me across the room, holds the look a second too long, goes back to his students.
"Athletics is a big part of the program," Becky says. "Most students are on scholarship — wrestling, track, a few academic. The physical component is intensive." A pause. "Do you train?"
"Yes," I say.
She waits.
"What's next," I say.
She laughs, short and surprised, the first genuinely unguarded thing she's done since we met, and leads me back through the walkway and across a section of quad to the dining hall. Warm and loud inside, the morning crowd thinning, a few students lingering over coffee and laptops. Round tables, real chairs, windows along one wall looking out into the trees.
The stares here are less careful. A table of four near the door goes quiet when we walk in. A boy halfway across the room turns all the way around in his chair.
