Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Alex
It wakes me up.
Not a sound — the bond. RJ's frequency, which has been a bruise at my wrist since the yard, since watching him not find me in his own face. I know the shape of it the way I know all of them now. Warm when he's still. Quiet when he's doing the circuit.
This is neither.
Moving. Directional.
I'm off the bed before I'm fully awake, hand closing hard over the mark at my wrist. It pulses under my palm — fast, wrong.
I pull on clothes and go to the living room.
Dalton is already up. Coffee untouched on the table, phone in his hand, jaw set. He looks up when I come in and reads my face.
"RJ's moving," I say.
A beat. Dalton goes still — not feeling it the way I do, but calculating. His phone is already up.
"Feral Academy," he says into it. Listens. Waits. Hangs up. "They haven't called yet."
"They will," I say.
The bond spikes.
Closer.
Dalton sees it hit me. "How far."
"Too fast," I say.
His phone rings. He answers immediately. "Yes." A pause. "When." His jaw tightens. "Direction." He looks at me. "Straight line. No deviation."
Straight to Frosthaven. Straight to me.
He hangs up. "They're mobilizing. Security teams—"
"I’m going to him," I say. "If they go at him like a threat he responds like one."
Dalton watches me for a moment. Then he nods and gets back on the phone. "Alex is heading to him. You can tell her that when you see her." He hangs up and looks at me. "This doesn't stay contained."
"I know," I say.
I run outside.
***
The campus has already cleared — doors shut, paths empty, the silence of a place that knows something is coming. Dalton positions himself two steps ahead of me and doesn't say anything and I don't ask him to move. He's made his decision about what this moment requires. So have I.
Security comes anyway.
Fast and controlled, moving in from the east, and I see the formation and the hands going to weapons and I step forward.
"Stand down." The register drops out of me without deciding to. Low. Not loud. The one that ended the containment breach in the dark. "All of you. Weapons down. Nobody moves."
Every one of them stops.
Hands drop.
Nobody moves.
I feel him before I see him — the bond surging warm and desperate and animal, nothing like the bruise it's been, nothing like the muted frequency of the circuit. This is RJ running without containment and the bond is enormous with it, flooding the mark up my wrist and into my chest.
He breaks from the treeline.
Not human. Not wolf. Something between, fur and claws, standing on two legs — too fast, too fluid, the movement of something that has stopped pretending it isn't what it is. His eyes find me across the distance and lock.
Then he sees Dalton.
He hits him like a wall.
They go down hard and fast and RJ goes for his throat — not controlled, not measured, pure drive and teeth and claws.
Dalton turns with it, manages the angle, takes the impact without fighting back.
His eyes are fully shifted, gold in the early light, but his hands on RJ are containment.
Not combat. He's absorbing it, redirecting, keeping his throat protected.
Violent and aggressive. It's not sustainable.
"RJ."
He doesn't hear it. Swings again. Dalton blocks.
Dalton's footing slips.
That's it.
I step forward and let the bond rise. It doesn't creep — it takes. Up my spine, into my chest, through my shoulders. My bones shift under it. Not fully. Enough.
My hands aren't hands anymore — longer, heavier, claws pressing through skin. My jaw tightens, teeth changing, breath pulling deeper and sharper.
RJ feels it.
His head snaps toward me.
I don't slow. I hit him.
We go down and he turns on me instantly — faster, harder, no hesitation. He slams me back. My shoulder hits the ground hard enough to jar bone, breath punching out of me.
For a second he has me. Weight and teeth and pressure.
I drive back. Claw, weight, turn. We roll. I meet him with everything I have — force for force, teeth for teeth, no softness, no hesitation.
He presses me down.
I shift under it. Change the angle. Drive up.
Now I have him.
My hand closes at his throat — claws biting just enough — my weight locking his chest to the ground.
He bucks. Hard.
"Look at me."
The bond slams — full, violent, forced open from both sides at once. He jerks. Gasps. Still fighting —
He jerks against me — not yielding, not yet.
The bond surges again, misaligned, violent, trying to find the right shape and missing it.
Then it breaks.
Not clean. Not gentle.
His hands stop. His eyes find mine.
Not fully back. But cracking through. The vacancy that was there at the south fence gone, something underneath it pushing to the surface.
I don't ease. Don't soften. Don't give him room to misread it.
"Stay," I say.
He stills.
Breathing hard under me.
And this time he sees me.