Declan's POV
I watched the town car until it turned out of the campus gate and disappeared.
Then I stood by the oak trees for a while longer because there wasn't anywhere I needed to be and the cold didn't bother me. The bond was doing something it had never done before. It was stretching. Not breaking, not snapping the way it had that first morning when she'd walked across the lawn, just pulling in a direction that was getting further away, slow and steady and taking something with it.
I stood there until I couldn't feel the direction of it anymore.
Then I went inside.
*****
I called my mom that evening and told her I was staying at Blackwood for the first week of break. She was quiet for a moment like she was deciding between pressing and not pressing.
"Are you staying back
