Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
Alex
The knock comes before first light has fully gone.
RJ feels it before I do — his arm tightening around me, his body coming alert in the particular way it does when something external enters his awareness.
I'm already awake. I've been mostly awake for a while, lying in the narrow bed in his room with his arm locked around me and the bond running warm between us.
First light. The assessment.
I sit up. RJ sits up with me.
"It's okay," I say.
His eyes are on the door. Still slightly wrong at the edges — the yellow not fully gone even after sleep. He slept in pieces — present and then suddenly not, his body jerking back to alert at sounds I couldn't hear, his hand finding me in the dark each time like checking I was still there.
The knock again.
I go to the door.
Tomlinson is in the corridor. Jacket over a sweater, the acting headmaster face not fully assembled yet — something underneath it that is just a man who got up early because something needed doing.
"When you're ready," he says. Quiet. Not rushed.
I look back at RJ.
He's on the edge of the bed, watching Tomlinson with that held stillness — dominant alpha reading something he hasn't categorized yet. His jaw is set. His hands are loose on his knees but only just.
"You have your assessment this morning," I say. "Your regular schedule after. I'll come find you later."
Something moves through his face.
"RJ." I cross back and take his jaw and make him look at me instead of the door. "I'm not leaving Feral Academy. I'm here. You do your schedule. I come find you after."
He looks at me for a long moment. The yellow pushes forward and then he drags it back.
"Alex," he says.
"I know," I say. "Schedule first."
He nods. Once. Barely there.
I squeeze his jaw and let go. I feel him watching me the entire length of the corridor.
Lumi is waiting in the common room with Tomlinson. Whatever this is, it's already been decided between them. She looks at me when I come in.
"Outside," she says.
"What's outside," I say.
"Come and see."
***
The yard isn't empty.
Stone is there — looking very familiar in his winter jacket, just another day of outdoor programming, but Kane and Kade stand a few feet away from him. And between them, a small person.
Less than four feet tall. Dark hair. A coat slightly too big for her and bright red boots. She's holding a stuffed wolf, grey and worn soft at the ears. She looks at me with the frank assessment of someone who has not yet learned to pretend she isn't looking.
"Hello," she says.
"Hello," I say.
"I'm Alexandra," she says. "I'm four and a half." Four fingers, then the thumb added with great deliberateness. "My mommy has another baby in her tummy."
I glance at Tomlinson. He shakes his head slightly.
"That's exciting," I say.
"It's going to be a baby boy," Alexandra says, with the gravity of someone managing a situation beyond her control.
Kane produces a ball and rolls it to Kade, who rolls it back. Alexandra watches this for exactly one second and then shoves the stuffed wolf at me.
"Hold Wolfie."
"Okay," I say.
She runs at the ball and immediately takes control of the game. I stand in the yard holding a worn stuffed wolf and do not look at Tomlinson again because I don't trust my face.
Lumi steps up beside me.
"Now," she says quietly. To Stone.
The gate opens.
***
RJ comes out slowly.
Familiar ground. The fenced yard. The circuit he knows. He pauses at the threshold and takes the air and the open sky and then starts moving.
Then Alexandra squeals.
Sharp. Bright. Pure delight — Kane has stolen the ball and she's chasing him with the furious determination of someone who will absolutely catch him.
RJ's head snaps up.
He goes completely still.
His eyes find her — red boots, dark hair, small body in motion — and he scans. Fast and precise and total. Looking for injury. Damage. Fear.
He doesn't find any.
His brow pulls together.
She's laughing. Chasing Kane across the yard with absolute focus, no hesitation, no fear.
I move to the fence.
His eyes come to me. Back to her. Back to me. The confusion is raw and unshielded — the dominant alpha who has been carrying something for a long time suddenly unable to locate the shape of it.
"RJ," I say.
Lumi comes up beside me.
"That's Alexandra," she says. Low and even. "She's four and a half. She’s playing with her fathers." A pause. "She's never been hurt, RJ. Look at her."
He looks.
Alexandra has caught up to Kane and is now attempting to retrieve the ball by sitting on his foot. Kane is making this easy for her. Kade watches with the expression of a man finding this extremely funny and losing the battle not to show it.
"She was never hurt," Lumi says. "Not by you. Not ever."
RJ makes a sound. Low and broken, like something tearing loose.
Tears start. Immediate. He doesn't move to stop them.
"I didn't hurt her." Barely audible.
Again.
"I didn't hurt her."
His hands close on the fence.
"I didn't hurt her."
Lumi stays beside me. She doesn't speak. She lets it move through him the way it needs to.
I look at Stone. He's already moving.
***
Stone take us through the building and into RJ’s fenced area from the inside.
Kane and Kade clear the outer yard without being asked, taking Alexandra with them.
She protests briefly about Wolfie and I toss it over the fence to her and she accepts this and allows herself to be redirected toward the ball.
Just us and the fenced yard and the cold and RJ on his knees by the fence with his hands still in the chain link and his head bowed.
I sit beside him on the ground. Not across from him. Not at a careful distance. Right beside him, my back against the fence, my shoulder against his arm, the cold coming up through my jeans.
He's still crying. Quietly now. Continuous.
I reach up and run my hand through his hair. Once. Slow.
He goes very still.
I do it again. His head drops toward me.
"Lumi told me," I say. "About the day it happened." I keep my hand moving through his hair, slow and steady. "You were at the healing center. Starting to talk again. Fully present. Trying."
His breathing shifts.
"Alexandra came in with Kade. She was younger.
She walked right up to you and climbed into your lap like it was hers and started talking to you like you'd known each other forever.
" I run my hand through his hair again. "Lumi said you just sat there.
Completely still. Like you didn't know what to do with her but you weren't going to move in case it broke something. "
His hands tighten on the chain link.
"Later you saw her outside. Alexandra was playing chase with her dads. She squealed and ran. And you watched Kane and Kade chasing her and something in your wolf read it wrong." I pause. "Read it as threat."
His breath stutters.
"You shifted before anyone could get to you. You went for them."
Silence.
"She cried," I say. "Because you scared her. Not because you hurt her. You never got close enough to hurt her." I pause. "But you didn't know that when they tranqed you. And when you came back you'd decided something."
I let that sit.
"You decided you weren't safe. And you stopped talking. Stopped trying."
The yard is quiet around us. Alexandra's voice carries faintly from the other side of the building — a squeal, Kane saying something dramatic, Kade's low laugh.
“She's fine. She has always been fine. Lumi hoped seeing her today would help," I say. "She wasn't sure. None of them were." I rest my hand at the back of his neck, warm against his skin. "I'm sorry if it hurt. We just want you back."
He turns.
His face is wrecked and open and more present than I've seen it since before the yard, before the circuit, before he decided.
He looks at me.
Not at the fence. Not at the perimeter. Not scanning for threat. He looks at me and I watch it happen in real time — the separating, of what he believed from what is true, of the RJ who stopped from the one sitting in the cold with tears on his face and his hand finding mine.
"Alex," he says.
Not claim. Not anchor.
Recognition.
I press my forehead to his.
We stay like that in the cold with the fence at our backs and Alexandra bossing her fathers around on the other side of the wall.
His hand comes up and covers mine at the back of his neck.
Holds.