ZION
He had been watching Caden Voss for two years.
Not obsessively. Strategically. The way you watched someone who stood between you and something you intended to have. Caden was the only name above his in four consecutive assessment cycles, and Zion had made a study of understanding why, because understanding a thing was the first step to changing it.
He knew how Caden moved. How he made decisions. The specific way he went still when something had his full attention.
He had been watching him go still around Ash Darvin for three weeks.
Zion sat at the far end of the training ground after the body check dispersed, running solo blade drills with the unhurried focus of someone who was thinking about something else entirely, and he watched Caden walk out of the east block with Ash beside
