*There's no bond.*
Three words. Said in front of six people and already spreading through the compound like smoke through a gap under a door. By midmorning, I've heard them repeated back to me twice — once by Mara, with the careful tone of someone checking whether I'm about to set something on fire, and once by a passing omega who clearly thought I was out of earshot.
I'm not setting anything on fire.
I'm sitting on the floor of the records room, surrounded by files I pulled out two hours ago and haven't actually read, with Damon's heartbeat steady and slow in the back of my chest like a metronome he left behind and apparently can't be bothered to retrieve.
*There's no bond.*
I close a folder I haven't opened.
Fine.
***
He comes to the infirmary that evening.
Not his infirmary — m
