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The windows still rattle when the wind hits them, but the sound no longer has to cross the whole room before it reaches me. His breathing slows first.

Then the tension leaves his hand by degrees until his fingers go slack in my fur. I stay awake a while longer, listening to the house settle around us and counting nothing except the changes in his breath because I want to know them. By the time he slips into deeper sleep, I know the rhythm well enough that one missed inhale would wake me.

Chapter Six

Arlo

By the fourth day, Orion has decided I’m not leaving the house alone anymore. I find out when I open the front door and nearly catch several hundred pounds of bear in the nose because he’s already jammed into the foyer behind me, ears forward and attention fixed on the road like I’ve been planning an escape instead of a ten-minute walk.

“No. I’m going to Kael’s house.”

He stays exactly where he is. Mentioning that Kael’s place will be full of Alphas earns me one slow ear flick, which is apparently the amount of consideration my argument deserves. I should make him stay. The Council already has one report about what happens when somebody gets too close to me, and walking Orion into a house full of dominant Alphas sounds like a spectacular way to hand them another one.

Then I remember yesterday, when I walked as far as the mailbox and came back to find half a bear wedged through the front doorway because less than a minute out of sight had somehow become an emergency. I look at him. He looks back without a trace of shame, enormous enough to block most of the hall and stubborn enough that I already know how this ends.

“Fine. You come with me, but if I tell you I’m all right, you believe me before you start opening people.”

Orion is through the door before I finish, which feels less like agreement than victory. My ribs still complain when the gravel shifts under my boots, though they’re healing well enough that I don’t have to hide every breath anymore. Orion notices anyway. Near the first guard post he drifts closer until his body sits between me and the tower, subtle only if everyone involved agrees not to acknowledge the bear the size of a small car using himself as a shield.

Once we’re clear, he gives me room again. His head turns when a rifle moves above us, and I tell him we’re going somewhere safe, to people I trust. The look he sends me is flat enough that I can almost hear the answer. My judgment in people hasn’t exactly earned his confidence.

Kael’s house is loud before we reach the porch. Voices overlap through the walls, somebody laughs hard enough to carry through the front windows, and something hits the floor inside without anyone sounding alarmed afterward. Orion slows at the bottom step. His ears angle toward the noise while his nose works through the mess of fox, milk, coffee, food, and too many Alphas packed into one place.

I stop beside him instead of making him follow me up. “There are a lot of people inside. Nobody should touch you without asking, and nobody should touch me without warning, but I’m going to stand near them. I might let them get close. If I’m fine, you leave them alone.” His eyes move to mine, and I wait until I know I have his attention before adding, “Please.”

He breathes hard through his nose, then climbs the steps with me. The conversation inside cuts off almost as soon as the door opens. Kael and Malik are at the dining table with half the surface buried beneath files. Thane has claimed the investigation board, one hand braced against the wall while he reads, and Beck sits at the far end looking like sleep has become something that happens to other people.

Every one of them looks past me at Orion, who fills what remains of the doorway and then some. Kael’s gaze travels over him once before returning to my face.

“You brought him.”

“He disagreed with staying home.”

Malik leans back without getting out of the chair, giving Orion the kind of measured look people usually save for structural damage. “That is a very large bear.” Orion turns his head toward him, and Malik lifts both hands before the movement can become anything else. “Observation, not criticism.”

Thane looks between us. “Does he understand everything?” Orion answers for himself with a low vibration that rolls through his chest and into the floorboards.

“Yeah,” I say. “He understands you just fine.” Orion huffs beside me, nostrils flaring, and whatever accusation I meant to put into the words gets undercut by the fact that he clearly objects to me speaking for him. “And apparently he’d like me to stop translating.”

Malik’s attention shifts back to the board. He taps the Ursus column with the end of his pen. “We’re trying to figure out what changed between Slate and Orion. Slate took years to get where he is. Orion didn’t.”

Kael looks at me. “How long was he shifting before they brought him here?”

“Before me. One prior bond, one removal, and he could already take the bear before Wolfscorge put him in my path.” The numbers still feel wrong when I say them out loud. Slate survived six removals before the fox fully surfaced. Orion came here after one with the bear already close enough to skin that sedation barely kept him human when the Collective wanted it to.

Beck has been staring at the Ursus line. When he finally speaks, his voice is rougher than it was when I walked in. “Then they weren’t hiding a failure. They were holding him until whatever they were waiting for arrived.”

Or whoever. The thought sits there before I can push it aside. Orion’s ears move between speakers, but his eyes keep coming back to me first, checking my face before he bothers with whoever has the floor. Kael notices too. He doesn’t announce it or turn it into a theory. He just shifts his chair a little farther from mine so Orion has a cleaner line of sight.

Beck rubs both hands over his face until his palms drag his skin downward. “Something’s wrong at my house.” Whatever room noise had started creeping back dies again. “The Council keeps changing schedules. Monet disappears for examinations they won’t let me attend, and when he comes back, he’s off. No obvious injuries. No bruises. He just stops reacting to things he should react to.”

Kael’s jaw tightens. “How long?”

“Long enough that I should’ve broken a door down sooner.”

Malik’s voice loses the edge it had with Orion. “You’re here now. Tell us what they’ve been doing.”

I look at the board because it’s easier than looking at Beck. “They don’t improvise. Not with this.” The Collective will let people bleed, scream, deteriorate, whatever the experiment requires, but they love a procedure. A sequence. Something they can repeat until suffering turns into a result on paper. “If they’re changing what they do with Monet, something worked somewhere else first.”