Morning used to anchor me in small, reliable ways, in the quiet certainty of familiar movements and predictable sounds, but today it feels different the moment I wake, because the stillness of the room presses in rather than settles, and instead of grounding me, it makes my skin prickle with the awareness of being noticed. I lie there for a moment longer than usual, staring at the ceiling and listening to the packhouse breathe around me, to the faint tick of pipes in the walls and the distant murmur of early risers moving through the halls, and none of it sounds wrong exactly, but none of it sounds neutral either.
I slip out of bed carefully, moving slowly so I do not disturb Landon, even though part of me knows that if he were meant to wake, he already would have. The bond hums low and p
