Axel comes back near dusk, the familiar pull of the bond tightening just before I hear his boots on the stairs, and by the time the bedroom door opens I can already feel the edge of his mood, sharp and unsettled in a way that tells me something happened on patrol. He barely gets the door closed before his eyes sweep the room, checking corners out of habit, checking me out of something closer to instinct, and when he sees me sitting on the bed beside Atticus his shoulders finally drop a fraction.
“You okay,” he asks immediately, crossing the room in long strides.
“I am now,” I say, because it is true and because I do not want him imagining worst case scenarios before we even start talking.
Atticus shifts forward, his posture tense in a way that mirrors Axel’s without copying it, and I kn
