The feeling doesn’t arrive like panic.
It’s quieter than that, a subtle misalignment that slips under my skin while everything else looks exactly the same, and that’s what makes it dangerous. I’m standing at the window watching the courtyard below, morning light catching on stone and steel, wolves moving through their routines with the careful efficiency that has become our new normal, when the bond shifts.
Not flares. Not pulls.
It tightens.
I press my palm to the glass, grounding, because the sensation is familiar in the worst way, like the moment before a storm breaks when the air feels too heavy to breathe properly. Adam feels it too. I know he does before he speaks, the bond syncing our awareness with uncomfortable precision.
“What,” he says quietly from behind me.
I don’t turn
