Our eyes meet across the room.
This has been happening a lot. I don’t know why her eye contact means so much to me. I’ve tried to work it out. The closest I can get is that most people, when they meet your eyes, are thinking about the meeting. She meets your eyes and she’s thinking aboutyou.Fully present in the contact, assessing, and honest about it.
“Coffee?” she asks, to the room.
“Kitchen,” I reply.
She goes to the kitchen.
I sit and make plans.
The pack discussion happens after she leaves.
She goes back to Doris Harrow’s at nine, saying she needs a change of clothes. Tristan hands her coffee in a travel cup. She takes it without ceremony and leaves. The home changes when she exits. It settles differently, like a room after the main light has been switched off, everything still visible but running on different energy. The four of us stand in the kitchen.
“She stayed,” Jack says.
“She fell asleep,” Archer replies.
“Those aren’t different.”
“They are, actually.” But Archer’s voice doesn’t havethe edge it would have had three days ago.
“She’s ours,” Tristan states bluntly. It’s not a question, not a declaration. It’s just Tristan speaking the truth that the rest of us are carrying with enough clarity to put it out there. The bond registers a calm settling at the truth of his statement.
“She doesn’t know that,” Jack replies. “Or she knows it and she’s fighting it.”
“She’s fighting it,” I confirm.
“Effectively,” Archer adds. “She’s very good at fighting things.”
“You’d know,” Jack teases.
Archer doesn’t respond, which is also a response.
“What do we know?” I ask. It’s not really a question. More of a prompt to get them talking in longer sentences.
Jack goes first, which is how it usually goes. Jack processes externally, in words. He finds his position by speaking. “She’s running. Not from us, or not only from us. There’s something real following her, not metaphorical. She hasn’t said it but I can feel the fear through the partial bond.” He pauses. “She’s alone with something she’s been alone with for a while. The weight of it is…” He stops. “It’s real.”
“Distress scent,” Archer adds. “Under the deflection. I’ve been running it since day one. It’s beyond fear. It’s more like sustained vigilance. Like someone who hasn’t had their guard fully down in weeks.”
“The car,” Tristan begins. My gaze falls upon him. “She’s moving things around in the back. When she thinks no one’s watching. There’s a bag she keeps close.”
She’s ready to run. Ready to move at short notice. The bag she’d grab if she needed to leave fast.
“She’s is trouble with either the law or bad people,” I conclude.
The room goes quiet while we process that.
“She’s in trouble,” Archer says. Flat. “That’s why she pays cash. That’s why she checked the exits at the carnival.”
“Yes.”
The bond grinds like two pieces of metal against one another. It’s not fear causing it, we don’t run fear easily. It’s something more alert. Protective circuitry engaging.
“We can help her,” Tristan points out.
“Only if she lets us,” I reply. “And she’s not there yet.”
