The news reaches the packhouse before I do, and by the time I step inside after training, towel slung over my shoulder and muscles humming with that familiar, earned ache, the air has already shifted. It is subtle, the way conversations taper when I pass, the way eyes track and then look away, and I know without being told that my medical clearance has traveled farther than the infirmary doors and landed exactly where it was always going to land.
Adam is waiting near the command corridor, posture relaxed in a way that fools exactly no one, and the bond hums steady and alert between us, not alarmed but attentive, like it has learned to recognize the shape of incoming pressure before it fully arrives.
“He knows,” he says.
I do not ask who. “Of course he does.”
Alpha Kian has never needed
