5. Chapter 5
Chapter five
Alex
I know the paths now.
Not from the map — from walking them. The stone route from the cottage to the main building, the walkway to the athletic complex, the shortcut behind the east wing that cuts off the exposed stretch of quad where the wind comes in hard off the treeline.
I know which door sticks, and which corridor smells like coffee from the faculty lounge above it.
I know the campus the way I know spaces — by where the exits are and who watches them.
Nobody stops me. That doesn't mean I'm not being watched.
I feel it more clearly today than yesterday — conversations dropping a register when I pass, a door closing just a fraction too fast, two students at a table near the library entrance going quiet and resuming when I'm far enough away. Not hostile, exactly.
That's her, someone says, behind me in the corridor after mythology.
I don't turn around. I keep walking and add the voice to the map I'm building — not the physical one, the other one. Who watches. Who whispers. Who closes doors.
Tomlinson's class runs long today, a student pushing back on the hunter myth, arguing that the elders' response is naive, that you can't sit with something dangerous and expect it to remember how to be safe.
Tomlinson doesn't shut him down. He lets the argument breathe and asks the room what they think and the room splits and I sit there listening to a classroom full of latent wolves debate whether dangerous things deserve patience.
I write down what they say. I keep the rest.
After class the quad is busy, the mid-morning break sending students out into the cold with coffee and phones and the easy movement of people who belong somewhere. I walk through it and feel them clock me and keep walking and think about what it would feel like to just be here.
Not placed. Not monitored.
Just here.
I'm still thinking about it when Dalton appears at my shoulder.
"Gavin requested a meeting," he says.
No preamble. No context. Just that, and the bond pulling tight in a way that tells me everything the words don't.
"When," I say.
"Now," he says. "The van's waiting."
I look at him. His jaw is set. I look away and start walking.
***
The drive back feels longer than it did the first time.
I watch the treeline through the window and feel the bonds change as we move — the westward pull that's been running constant sharpening, becoming more specific, more weighted.
Leo. Gray. Jake. Jim. RJ. The pull strengthens as the distance closes, the bonds tightening after being stretched too far for too long.
Dalton drives. Doesn't speak. I don't ask him to.
When Feral Academy comes through the trees it looks the same. Of course it does — nothing about the building has changed. But something in my chest responds to it the way it responds to things it recognizes, and that's complicated, given everything.
I breathe through it and get out of the van.
Gavin's office is in the admin building, the walk across the compound enough time to feel the difference — the way the air sits here, managed and contained, every variable accounted for. At Frosthaven the air moves. Here it doesn't.
I used to think that was control. Now I’m not sure.
The door to his office is open. He's at his desk, a file open in front of him, not looking up yet. I cross to the chair across from him and sit. Dalton takes a position near the door.
Gavin closes the file.
"How are you finding Frosthaven," he says.
"Fine," I say.
He nods. "The panel has been reviewing your case. I wanted to speak with you directly before their preliminary findings are issued."
"What findings."
"Your transfer was classified as a stabilization measure. The panel is satisfied that removing you from the proximity configuration at this facility has reduced cascade risk." He pauses. "What they are less satisfied with is the underlying classification issue."
"My being a female alpha."
"Your being a female alpha with an unresolved incident on your record." He holds my gaze. "The James case."
The room is quiet.
"The panel's position," he continues, "is that your final placement determination cannot be made while that case remains open.
You are stable in isolation. In proximity, your presence compounds variables they don't have a framework for.
" He folds his hands on the desk. "They need the James case resolved before they can classify you properly. "
"And if it doesn't resolve the way they want."
He doesn't answer that. "The panel will need you to remember," he says. "Whatever you can access from that night. Whatever additional detail exists." A pause. "This is not optional, Alex."
I look at him. He looks back with the resolved expression he had in the corridor outside my room — the one that isn't unkind and is somehow worse for it.
"Your placement at Frosthaven is contingent on the panel's review," he says.
"Mr. Dalton's presence is part of that contingency.
He is there to ensure the outcome remains consistent with their expectations.
If you are unsuccessful at Frosthaven, we have secured a temporary placement in Montana if needed. "
I look at Dalton.
He's looking at the floor. His jaw is set and his hands are still at his sides and he doesn't look up.
"Is there anything else," I say.
"Yes," Gavin says. "The panel will convene before the end of term. I'd recommend using the time at Frosthaven productively." He pauses. "You have more freedom there than you did here, but that freedom is conditional."
I stand. "Thank you for letting me know."
He nods. I leave.
***
In the corridor outside the admin building I stop.
Dalton comes out behind me. He stands close, not touching, and I let the silence sit for a moment before I turn to look at him.
"You knew," I say.
"Not the specifics," he says. "I knew it was about the panel." He meets my eyes now, steady, the careful thing back in place. "I'm not there to monitor you against you. You know that."
I look at him. The man who checked the hot water and pointed the bed at the trees and sat on the edge of it talking about colors in the dark.
"I know," I say.
A beat.
"Can I see them," I say.
"Gavin approved it. Brief window."
"Okay," I say.
***
Leo is in the corridor.
I don't know if he felt me coming through the bond or if it's coincidence but he's there, coming around the corner from the direction of the common room, and he stops when he sees me and his whole face shifts.
I close the distance before he does, walking into him, and his arms come up and around me and I push my face into his neck and just breathe.
He holds on. I hold on.
He smells the same. That's the thing that gets me — the specific scent of him, Leo, unchanged, the bond carrying it into my chest and staying there. I've been feeling him at a distance for days.
It's nothing like this.
This is warm and real and him, and I press closer, my face in his neck, his arms tightening as he lets out a low, rough sound.
"I missed you," he says. Into my hair.
"I missed you too," I say.
He pulls back and looks at me. At the black shirt. The boots. The jeans that fit. His eyes move over all of it and then come back to my face and what's there isn't Leo performing composure — it's Leo holding something down with both hands.
He takes my jaw. Presses his mouth to my forehead once, hard. Steps back.
"Come on," he says. Rough.
***
The common room.
Jake is on his feet before I'm through the door.
He crosses the room without hesitation and wraps me up the way Jake wraps things he's been worried about — both arms, no ceremony, the full-body grip of someone who has been carrying something and is putting it down for a second.
I feel the bond flare warm and bright when he holds on and I hold back.
"Hey," I say, into his shoulder.
"Alex," he says. Low and rough, my name doing the work of everything he's not going to say.
He pulls back and Jim is right there. His hand finds my arm, my shoulder, and his forehead drops to mine and we stay like that for a moment — the bond running warm between us, the wonder and the ache and the reaching, all of it present and close. I squeeze his hand. He squeezes back.
I pull him in and hold on and feel him breathe.
Leo is against the far wall with his arms crossed, watching all of this with his jaw clenched.
We stay like that for a moment. All of us just breathing.
Then I pull back and wipe my face with the back of my hand.
"How is he," I say.
Jake's jaw tightens.
"RJ," I say.
"Not good." Flat. Honest. "Since you left. He's gotten more withdrawn. Even for RJ."
The wanting at my wrist sharpens — not a bond, never quite a bond, but present and insistent and tuned specifically to RJ's frequency the way it always has been.
"Sven's with him," Jake says. "Stone takes him to the yard when he'll go. Cal's been in." A pause. "He went to the fence yesterday."
The south fence. Our fence. His hand through the chain link, his thumb on my marks, the cold, the distance that wasn't this distance.
"He sat there for a long time," Jake says. "Just sat there."
I press my thumb against the bruise at my wrist and stand with it. RJ in the cold on the other side of the chain link where my hand used to be, waiting for someone that didn't come.
I look at the ceiling until I have myself back.
"Can I see him," I say.
Jake looks at me. "Red restriction. Nobody in except approved staff."
"I'm—"
"You're not staff," he says. Gently. The gentleness worse than anything else.
I look at the door.
The building I know.
Every corridor. Every door.
And RJ somewhere inside it.
I breathe.
"Gray," I say. Because I need to say all of them. I need to account for all of them.
"Gold House," Leo says from the wall. His voice is careful in a way Leo's voice rarely is. "He knows you're here. He wanted to come." A pause. Something moves through his face. "Sven said it would complicate the visit parameters."
Two houses, one alpha, a panel watching every variable, everything a variable now.
I close my eyes for a second. Open them.
"Tell him I'm okay," I say. "Tell him the place has good windows."
Leo's mouth pulls. "He'll know what that means?"
"No," I say. "But tell him anyway."
Jim makes a sound that might be a laugh. Jake's jaw loosens a fraction.
"Jim," I say, looking at him. "Which name. Where are you with it."
He's quiet for a moment. His thumb moves over my knuckles. "Still deciding," he says. "Both feel true right now."
I nod. That's enough. That's the right answer for where he is.
I look at all three of them — Leo against the wall, Jake solid and present, Jim close. The common room I lived in that already feels like somewhere I'm visiting.
"I'm working on it," I say.
"We know," Leo says.
"The panel—"
"We know," he says again. Steadier. "We know you're working on it." His eyes hold mine. "We're not going anywhere."
I look at him. At the Leo underneath the Leo — the one whose eyes went wet before he got them back, the one standing against the wall with his arms crossed because if he crosses the room again he won't let go.
"Leo," I say.
He pushes off the wall and crosses to me and pulls me back in. His mouth at my temple, my hair, both arms around me and his chin coming down to the top of my head.
"You look good," he says. Quiet. Just for me. "It's good to see you looking good."
Then Dalton appears in the doorway.
Leo pulls back. His hands stay on my shoulders for one beat, two, and then he drops them and steps back and becomes Leo again — arms crossing, jaw setting, the thing he was feeling tucked back where he keeps things.
"Go find the cracks," he says.
"Already looking," I say.
***
The van back is quiet.
I watch Feral Academy disappear through the rear window. The building. The yard. The south fence somewhere on the other side that I can't see from here, where RJ sat in the cold and waited.
The bonds pull the moment the van moves — the slack snapping taut again.
Leo. Jake. Jim.
Gray out of reach.
RJ at the fence.
Neither of us speaks.
I press my palm flat against my wrist. RJ, hold on.
I was in a classroom listening to students debate whether dangerous things deserve patience and he was at a fence in the cold waiting for a hand that wasn't there.
Frosthaven comes through the trees — dark wood and stone, the campus settling into late afternoon, warm light in the windows and students moving across the quad. I watch it come and don't actually see any of it.
I get out of the van.
The cold hits.
I stand at the edge of the grounds and look at the treeline. The forest between here and everything I'm not allowed to go back to yet. I stand there until the cold gets into my jacket.
Then I walk back to the cottage.