Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
Alex
My door doesn’t lock from the outside.
I noticed it the first morning — standing in the corridor with my hand on the frame, looking for the mechanism and finding smooth paint instead. Nobody explained it. Things at Feral Academy change without announcement when the rules shift.
Gold House level. Technically. The words still feel unfinished, like Gavin set them down before he decided what they meant.
I’m in Red House. In a room without a lock on the outside of the door.
I’ll take it.
***
Breakfast is loud.
Leo has strong opinions about the coffee situation.
Torres is making it worse on purpose and with great patience.
They’ve settled into a rhythm — Leo states the problem, Torres agrees in a way that escalates it, Leo looks betrayed, Torres looks at his food like nothing happened.
It’s been running for three days and neither of them wants it to end.
Jake eats with the focused efficiency of someone who spent long enough without reliable meals that he doesn't take them for granted.
Jim — he told us two days ago, quiet and certain, sitting at this same table: I think I'm Jim.
David is in there but Jim is what I know and I like that Jake and I share an initial, so Jim — sits across from Jake and steals the last piece of toast without looking up.
Jake doesn't say anything. That's the shape of them.
Dalton sits at the end of the table with his coffee and his phone, technically working. He watches everything anyway. There’s warmth under it now, not hidden, just controlled.
RJ is beside me.
No restraints. His shoulder nearly touches mine. His attention tracks the room carefully — not scanning for threat, not exactly. Learning.
When Torres agrees with a smirk, RJ watches Leo’s face. I feel the moment it clicks — the pattern, the joke, the rhythm.
The corner of his mouth shifts.
Not quite a smile.
Close.
I feel it in the bond like a small, steady warmth and leave it alone.
I miss Gray. The weekend feels far away. I can feel him east, steady as ever, but the table has a shape without him that I notice every morning. I let it pass and reach for my coffee.
Torres catches my eye and nods at Leo with exaggerated innocence.
I shake my head.
He looks back down at his food.
***
Outside time.
Cold. Bright. Winter light flattened across the snow.
Stone runs the session the way he always does — present without hovering.
RJ starts the circuit out of habit.
Stops.
You can see the moment he chooses it — the break in the pattern, the decision not to follow through. He turns and comes back to stand near me instead.
He doesn’t try again.
After a while his hand finds mine. Brief. Grounding. Then he tips his head toward the far end of the yard where Jake and Jim are arguing about rules that don’t exist.
I look at him.
He looks at the game.
“Go,” I say.
He goes.
RJ crosses the yard with that same blunt certainty — not hesitation, not testing. He’s decided he’s part of it. Jake adjusts immediately. Jim doesn’t adjust at all, which earns him a longer look from RJ. Not irritation.
Assessment.
Possibly respect.
Stone comes up beside me.
“Good to have him back,” he says.
“Yes.”
We don’t say anything else.
***
Cal's lab is warm and smells like coffee and equipment that runs all day. The afternoon session is half coursework, half the assessments Cal runs so quietly you barely notice until you catch him writing something down.
Leo sits across from me with a book open, not turning the page.
He’s watching RJ.
RJ is actually working — head down, moving through it one word at a time, slow and deliberate, like he’s relearning how to stay.
Jake finished ten minutes ago. He hasn’t moved. Just waits, easy, like he knows Cal will get to him when Cal gets to him.
Jim’s already ahead. Pages turned. Quiet. Cal hasn’t said anything about it. He never does.
Torres looks like he’s working. I can’t tell if he is.
RJ looks up and catches Leo watching him. Leo looks immediately back at his coursework. RJ looks at me.
I look at my coursework.
A beat.
RJ goes back to his page.
Cal makes a small note. Says nothing.
The door opens.
Gavin comes in the way Gavin comes into rooms — without announcement, without particular hurry, taking in the table in one sweep before he speaks.
"New residents incoming," he says. "Three of them. Some current non-Red House residents will be moving to accommodate." He looks at the table. At Leo specifically. "Adjustments will be communicated individually."
Leo puts his pen down. "I'm going to miss you," he says.
Gavin looks at him.
"The personal touch," Leo says. "The warmth you bring to these announcements."
Gavin looks at Leo for one moment longer than necessary. Then he leaves.
Nobody is concerned. Fated mates don't get separated — the system learned that the hard way and documented it thoroughly. Whatever moving means, it doesn't mean that.
Torres looks up from his coursework for the first time. "He loves us," he says quietly.
Jake makes a sound that might be a laugh.
Cal writes something down and does not comment.
***
Lumi’s room has green walls.
The candle is lit.
I sit. She sits across from me, already focused.
“The panel met,” she says.
“I know.”
“Formal review. Written submissions. Footage from the yard this morning.” She pauses. “They reviewed everything.”
I watch the flame.
“The determination is a significant shift in RJ’s ferality. Not resolution. Shift.” Her gaze stays on mine. “That distinction matters.”
It does.
“Restraints come off the protocol entirely,” she continues. “Not just informally. On paper. His schedule is now managed by a team — Gavin, Sven, me. Cal and Stone have input. No single point of control.”
“Gavin agreed to that.”
“He proposed it.”
Wow.
“He’s recalibrating,” she says. “Not changing. Adjusting how he evaluates what this place can do.”
That’s closer to the truth than anything softer would be.
“And me,” I say. “The placement.”
“Tomlinson is recommending a hybrid structure. Remote coursework through Frosthaven, physical presence here. It needs panel approval, but his recommendation carries weight.”
“He thinks it will hold,” I say.
Lumi nods.
“Do you think RJ will improve,” I say, “or stay like this.”
“On a trajectory,” Lumi says. “Not stable. Not finished. Moving.”
She watches me.
“He ate with the pack. Chose not to complete the circuit. Joined a group activity without escalation. Completed coursework.” I pause. “Made eye contact and held it.”
That matters more than she says.
“How are you,” she asks.
The real question.
I think about the door without a lock.
Leo and Torres arguing about coffee like it’s life or death.
Jake eating like it matters.
Jim stealing toast because he knows he can.
Dalton watching all of it.
RJ’s hand in mine, brief and deliberate.
Gray, waiting at the edge of the week.
“Better than yesterday,” I say.
She studies me, chuckles, then nods.