Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
Alex
We walk back through the trees.
RJ stays close. Every few steps his hand finds my arm, my shoulder, the back of my neck — brief contact, checking, then releasing. Dalton walks on my other side, moving carefully, feeling his injuries from the fight. He doesn't complain.
RJ looks at him.
Not the drive-blind focus of the campus — something more deliberate. Reading Dalton the way a dominant alpha reads something that has been near his mate and hasn’t decided yet if it’s allowed. His jaw is set. His hand finds my arm again and this time doesn't release.
Dalton feels it. He doesn't look back. He adjusts his position by half a step — not retreating, not conceding — just giving the two of us more space — and keeps walking.
It's a choice. I feel it through the bond, what it costs him to make it.
RJ's grip on my arm loosens slightly.
Nobody speaks.
Feral Academy comes through the trees.
RJ slows. His hand tightens on my arm and I feel through the bond what the sight of it does to him — the yard, the circuit, the south fence. All the edges he spent months tracing because tracing edges was what was left.
"It's okay," I say.
He looks at me. His eyes are still wrong. Too tense. But he’s here — I can see it, the part of him holding on, refusing to drop back into that empty place.
Working for it.
I step closer.
“RJ,” I say. “You found me.”
His focus tightens.
“You came back,” I say. “You stayed.”
A beat. I hold his eyes.
“You don’t let go again.”
Not harsh. Not soft.
Certain.
“I’m here,” I say. “You stay with me.”
The bond steadies — not calm, not easy, but aligned.
“Together,” I say.
We walk in.
***
Sven is at the gate.
He sees RJ and something in his face opens — briefly, just enough. He puts his hand on RJ's shoulder and grips once, hard. RJ goes still under it and dips his head.
Then Sven looks past him to Dalton's collar. His jaw tightens. He looks at me.
I hold his gaze. He nods and steps back.
Stone is in the doorway to Red House. He crosses to RJ and pulls him in — not careful, the full grip of someone who has been where RJ has been. RJ's hands come up and hold and they stand there and nobody says anything.
RJ pulls back first. His eyes find me immediately. I'm three feet away. I haven't moved.
His shoulders drop a fraction.
Cal appears behind Stone. He takes one look at RJ’s face, reads it, and reaches out, his hand settling briefly at the back of RJ’s neck.
“Good,” Cal says, quiet but firm. “I was starting to think we’d lost you.”
A beat. His mouth shifts.
“And Leo is a terrible substitute.”
RJ makes a sound — rough, unpracticed.
A laugh.
Cal catches my eye and says nothing and turns back down the corridor.
Then Gavin appears.
He stands at the far end of the corridor and doesn't come closer. Takes in RJ — the hand that finds my arm again the moment Stone releases him, the way RJ positions himself so I'm not between him and the door. Gavin looks at Dalton's collar. At me. At my wrist.
"My office," he says to me.
RJ's hand tightens on my arm.
"I'm coming back," I say. To RJ, not Gavin.
RJ looks at the corridor. At Gavin. At me. Something moves through his face — the territorial instinct running hard against the new bond, the part of him not fully back pulling against the part that is trying to trust me.
"Stone," I say.
Stone steps up beside RJ. Not restraining — just present.
RJ lets me go. But he watches me walk down that corridor with yellow still bleeding into the edges of his eyes and I feel it through the bond the whole way — the pull of him, the wrong-frequency alertness, the effort it takes him to hold.
***
Gavin's office. He closes the door and stays standing.
"He needs to be assessed," Gavin says.
"Yes," I say.
"He escaped containment, attacked a security consultant, and broke the boundary of Frosthaven." His voice is even. Clinical. "Those aren't bureaucratic concerns. Those are safety events."
"I know what they are," I say. "I was there for all of them."
"Then you understand why temporary tolerance is not the same as approval.
" He holds my gaze. "Whatever happened in that clearing — whatever the bond means — he still did those things.
The assessment happens. The panel reviews it.
I don't have the authority to make this disappear and I wouldn't if I could. "
"I'm not asking you to make it disappear," I say. "I'm asking you to let me stay with him tonight. The bond is new and he's not stable yet and pulling me out now—"
"I'm aware of what pulling you out now does," Gavin says. "I'm also aware that you're placed at Frosthaven. That placement was a panel decision. One conversation in my office doesn't override it."
"The panel is already reviewing new information," I say.
"The James case. The bond with Dalton. This bond will be documented before the end of the day.
" I pause. "I'm not asking you to override the placement.
I'm asking for tonight. One night while the bond settles and the assessment gets scheduled and I’ll ask Lumi to get Tomlinson on the phone. "
Gavin is quiet.
"And Frosthaven," I say. "The classes. I want to talk about that."
"One thing at a time," he says.
"It's the same thing," I say. "I can't be at Frosthaven and here.
And I need to be here." I hold his eyes.
"Remote coursework. Whatever Tomlinson requires — assessments, check-ins, all of it — I'll do it from here.
But I need to be at Feral Academy." I pause.
"RJ needs me here. The pack needs me here.
The bond is a fact and it happened here and—"
I stop.
Tomlinson's office. The library table and Lumi's cold coffee and Jon Matthias watching me across a faculty dinner with the expression of someone recalibrating. Kane and Kade and the documented memory and the panel sitting in silence while the framework cracked.
Things I am walking away from.
Things I am choosing to walk away from.
"The work at Frosthaven matters," I say. "I know that. But I can do it from here."
Gavin looks at me for a long moment.
"Tonight," he says finally. "You stay tonight.
The assessment happens at first light." He pauses.
"If the assessment finds him unstable — clinically unstable, not difficult, not adjusting, unstable — he goes back into monitored containment and you go back to Frosthaven before noon.
No contact. No exceptions." He holds my gaze.
"That's not a negotiating position. That's the condition. "
The word containment sits in the room.
I think about the yard. The circuit. The south fence.
"Understood," I say.
"The Frosthaven question goes to Tomlinson. I'll make the call." He moves to his desk. "Go."
I go.
Lumi is in the corridor.
"Tomlinson," she says.
"Gavin's calling him now," I say.
She nods. Glances toward Stone and RJ. "How is he."
"Bonded," I say. "Not fixed."
"No," she says. "Not yet." She looks at me. "Go. He's been watching that corridor since you left."
***
RJ's eyes find me as I round the corner. The bond pulls tight and releases the moment I'm in sight. He exhales — not steady, not fully controlled, but here.
I go and stand next to him.
His hand finds mine immediately. Grip too tight before he catches it and eases back.
Dalton comes down the corridor a moment later. He stops at a deliberate distance — not across the room, not crowding.
RJ's attention snaps to him and holds and his body shifts, angling toward Dalton, putting himself between us without deciding to.
Too fast. Too instinctive.
Then he catches it.
Stops.
His jaw works. He steps back to where he was, his hand still in mine, and I feel through the bond what it costs him — the instinct running hard against the choice, the dominant alpha fighting itself in real time.
Dalton watches this. His face is even. His eyes are not.
He looks at me and something moves across his expression that he doesn't let land fully — a fraction of something that is not quite okay, that is the look of a man holding more than he's putting down. His hand lifts slightly at his side like he’s going to reach for me—then stops. Drops.
"Assessment at first light," he says.
"I know," I say.
He holds my gaze one beat longer than he needs to. Like he’s choosing something and not saying it. Then, keeping his eyes on RJ’s, he leans in and kisses my forehead.
The way he looks at RJ — not challenging, not yielding, something that takes more effort than either — and walks past us down the corridor.
RJ turns to watch him go. His grip on my hand tightens.
"I know," I say.
He looks at me. The yellow has almost faded from the edges of his eyes.
"Alex," he says.
"Still here," I say.
He pulls me close and presses his face into my hair and breathes.
I hold on and feel the bond running warm and new between us and underneath it the condition sitting quiet and real.
First light decides what happens next.
And the system is still watching.