Chapter 25
Iwake up in the blue pajamas.
The fabric is still impossibly soft. The window faces the quad, same as always, but in my head it's already a different window — one that faces out. Orange House. Today, maybe.
I'm lying there thinking about what it will feel like to look at something other than this quad when Gavin knocks.
Not Sven. Gavin himself, which is the first wrong thing.
Gavin doesn't do morning escorts. That's not his role.
But his knock is unmistakable — the weight of it, the authority carried in three deliberate sounds — and I open the door and he's standing there with two staff members I don't recognize and a folder and an expression I've never seen on his face before.
Not unkind. That's the worst part. Not cruel. Just resolved.
"Alex," he says. "You need to come with me."
I look at the folder. "What's in that."
"The review panel met last night. Emergency session." He says it evenly. "Their determination has been issued."
Something cold moves through me. "What determination."
"The Sven injury incident has been classified as evidence of cascade-level instability in the current placement configuration.
" He doesn't look away from my face. "The panel has determined that this facility lacks the capacity to safely manage an alpha female in an active bonded configuration.
Effective immediately, you're being transferred to Frosthaven Academy. "
The word lands like a physical thing.
"Frosthaven," I say.
"Staff cottage. Security detail. Full access to their resources — it's not a containment transfer, Alex. It's a—"
"It's a van," I say.
He pauses. "There's transport waiting, yes."
I look at the two staff members. At the folder.
At Gavin's face with its resolved expression and its not-unkind eyes.
I think about the pajamas — Dalton picking them because he noticed the uniform wasn't made for women, because he noticed the silk of my skin, because he wanted me to have something soft.
I think about Orange House and the window that faces out.
I think about Stone saying keep going to the fence and Sven saying he needs you and Dalton saying I'm staying.
"Where's Dalton," I say.
Something flickers in Gavin's expression. "Mr. Dalton was briefed. He's been sent ahead to coordinate the security arrangements at Frosthaven."
Sent ahead.
I sit with that for a second. Frosthaven — the facility that took David.
That Dalton spent nine years trying to get close to.
Where his brother went in at eighteen and came out feral.
And now Dalton is already there, sent ahead, coordinating the security arrangements, doing his job.
While I was sleeping in the blue pajamas.
"I need to—" I start.
"There isn't time," Gavin says. Gently. That's the most brutal thing he's ever done to me. "The transport is waiting."
***
I don't go quietly.
I want to be honest about that. I don't take it with composure and I don't perform dignity and I don't make it easy for anyone in that corridor.
I say things. Loud things. I say Sven's name and the report and what the panel just did with it and I say RJ's name and what it will mean to leave him at his lowest and I say the pack's names one by one and what it means that I built this here and they're taking me away from it.
Gavin walks beside me and doesn't try to silence me.
That's the thing about Gavin. He lets me say it. He doesn't argue, doesn't justify, doesn't tell me I'm wrong. He just walks.
The corridor. The main entrance. The cold air of the Alaska morning hitting my face and the van parked where vans park when they're waiting for people who don't want to get in.
I stop.
"I need a minute," I say.
"Alex—"
"One minute." I look at him. "One."
He nods.
I stand in the cold and breathe.
The bonds are all running — I can feel every one of them, five arcs and the wanting that isn't a bond yet but has been building toward one since the day I arrived.
Leo warm and present somewhere in the building, probably still asleep.
Gray across the compound, the bond stretched but holding the way it always holds.
Jake and Jim, close together, the bonds steady and real.
Dalton's — pointing toward Frosthaven, toward a facility he has his own reasons to be afraid of, doing his job, already there.
The wanting is the loudest. RJ in his room. At his lowest. Still here, still in there, still climbing in centimeters toward something I was supposed to be present for.
I turn and face the building.
Red House. Somewhere in that building Leo doesn't know yet. Jake doesn't know. Jim doesn't know. Stone doesn't know.
Cal doesn't know.
Sven doesn't know.
I open my mouth.
The alpha in me doesn't need permission.
The sound that comes out of my throat is not a word. It's not a command. It's just — me. The full register of what I am, sent into the building like a signal, like a flare, like I'm here and I'm being taken and I need you to know.
The building goes silent.
And then — from somewhere deep inside it, from a room I've never been allowed into, from a man who has barely spoken in months —
A howl.
Long. Ragged. The sound of something that has been holding itself together finally letting go of one thing. Not grief — recognition. I hear you. I know. I know.
The bonds blaze on my wrist.
Gavin puts his hand lightly on my arm.
I get in the van.
***
The door closes.
Through the window I watch Feral Academy get smaller. The building. The yard. The south fence where I sat on the cold ground and held RJ's hand through chain link.
RJ's howl is still in my chest.
I'll carry it to Frosthaven. I'll carry all of it — the bonds and the pack and the unfinished thing with RJ and Dalton already there waiting, and the James case that Lumi is holding for me, and the board that just decided I'm too much for this facility.
Too much.
I press my palm flat against my wrist.
Five mate bonds and RJ.
Not yet, I think, at all of it. At RJ and the fence and the window that faces out and the pack I'm leaving and the one I'm going toward. Not yet. But I'm coming back.
The van turns onto the road.
Feral Academy disappears behind me.