I woke before dawn with my hand pressed to my chest.
For a moment, I didn’t understand why.
The forest around me was quiet in that fragile way it only ever was just before the world decided to wake. No birds yet. No wind worth naming. The air held its breath, cool and still beneath the shelter of rock and pine.
Then I felt it.
Not fear.
Not alarm.
Presence.
I sat up slowly, heart steadying as warmth spread beneath my ribs — not sharp, not sudden, but certain. The thread that had existed between us, faint and patient, had shifted. It no longer felt distant.
It felt chosen.
He crossed, Asher said.
My fingers curled instinctively into the fabric of my cloak. “The boundary?”
Yes.
I closed my eyes and breathed, letting the sensation settle instead of resisting it. The connection did
