Jason doesn't sleep that night.
He lies still on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling where shadows shift with the wind outside his window. The weight of everything presses down on his chest like a physical thing. Ivan's touch still lingers on his skin, phantom warmth that shouldn't feel so real hours later. Avalon's words keep echoing in his head, cutting through any attempt at peace. And somewhere in the drawer across the room, the scent blocker sits hidden like a ticking bomb waiting to explode his carefully constructed world.
His skin hums in strange places. Along his wrist where Ivan's fingers had brushed. At his shoulder where their contact had lasted a second too long. It's like a phantom memory of contact he shouldn't want, shouldn't crave, shouldn't be thinking about at all.
The bond used to be just a whisper under his skin, easily ignored most days. Now it's a drumbeat. Constant, loud, impossible to silence. Every heartbeat seems to match its rhythm, and Jason presses his pal
