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“I’ll sleep when the gutter stops dripping.”

“Fix the gutter.”

“I might.” He took a sip. “Or I might sit here until you decide to wander in at this hour.”

She looked at him over the rim of her mug. He looked back. His face was open in the kitchen light, tired, unguarded, the performance he wore for the rest of the compound stripped down to the person underneath. She’d seen glimpses of this Chris before. On the log that afternoon, in the seconds between her joke and his laugh. In the training yard, when he’d watched her correct a stance flaw and told her it was skill. She only ever caught him unguarded in the margins, in the gaps between the moments he spent holding everyone else steady.

“Your tea is worse than your coffee,” she said.

“I’ll keep practicing.”

“Please don’t.”

He smiled. A real one, brief, creasing the skin around his eyes before he pulled it back. She felt the heat of it in her sternum, a bloom she couldn’t assign to the tea. She drank from the mug to give her mouth a task that didn’t involve smiling back.

“Goodnight, Chris.” She stood. Set the mug on the counter. Turned toward the corridor.

“Sloane.”

She stopped with her back to him. His voice carried across the kitchen, low, unhurried.

“Don’t overtrain. You’ll hurt yourself.”

She didn’t answer. She walked back down the corridor with her pulse loud in her ears, her hands finally still at her sides. She kept her face blank until she was inside her own room, where nobody could see her. Only then did she let the corners of her mouth pull upward.

She sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her hands against her knees. Every single muscle ached.

She could still hear him moving around in the kitchen. She waited until she felt him go to his own room, waited until the heat of the bond cooled just a little. Then she turned on her side and slept.

Chapter 19 - Chris

Kahn’s study was quiet. Chris found him at the desk with the map still spread out. Red markers clustered along the eastern boundary, and a mug was pushed to one side that he clearly hadn’t touched since morning.

“You wanted to see me.”

Kahn didn’t look up. “Close the door.”

Chris closed it and stood across the desk, hands loose at his sides. He’d learned a long time ago not to sit unless Kahn told him to. It kept things faster. It kept his mind sharper too, standing, ready to move.

“I want your read on Sloane,” Kahn said.

“You already have it.”

“I want it again.”

Chris rolled his shoulders back. “She’s not loyal to him. Not to Garrett, not in any part of her. Everything in her runs the other direction.”

Kahn finally looked up, and his eyes had the flat, considering quality Chris had seen him use on captured rogues, on suppliers who lied about their inventory, on anyone whose word needed to be weighed instead of trusted.

“You’re bonded to her.”

“That’s not why I’m saying this.”

“It’s part of why.”

Chris held still. He understood the accusation for what it was, not cruelty, just caution, the same caution that had kept Kahn’s pack alive through Marcus and through the kidnapping and through every threat before that. He didn’t take it personally. He just didn’t agree with it.

“Of course it’s part of why, but not for the reason you think. I’ve been living with her. I’ve watched her for weeks,” Chris said. “She flinches when his name comes up. Not because she misses him. Because he’s still inside her, the way he was inside that house for years, and she’s spent her whole life trying to get him out.”