Bothered

KAEL'S POV 

"What do you mean, something else?" I ask again, because Lorenzo hasn't actually answered me yet.

"If there was a bond, there would be a sign immediately both your bloods came in contact but it didn't.

What happened at the circle, I have never seen it before."

He looks up at me. "I need to go through the old records before I say anything I can't take back. Some of them haven't been opened since before my father held this post."

"How long?"

"A few days. Maybe longer."

"And until then?"

"Until then, you say nothing." His voice hardens into something closer to an order than a request, which is rare enough from him that I actually listen. "Not to anyone. Not to her."

"But she deserves to know if something's wrong,"I say.

"She deserves to know something's wrong when I can tell her what it is, not before. Frightening her with half a guess helps no one, least of all her." He softens, just slightly. "Watch her, Kael. Does the mark ever ache. Does her scent shift. Anything at all that feels different, bring it to me."

I don't like it. I like less that I understand exactly why he's asking.

"Fine," I say.

Here I am, thinking the bond is real but it seems something else has gone awry.

I don't mention it to Lyra because of this.

I know she's bothered but it's better to be bothered for not knowing than being bothered for knowing.

I don't sleep a wink. I stare at her almost throughout the night.

Morning comes slower than it has any right to, given how little of the night I actually slept.

Lyra's still curled against my side when I wake, hair a mess across the pillow, breathing slow and even in a way that finally looks like real rest instead of the exhausted half-sleep she's been running on for two days straight. I don't move. I don't want to be the reason this ends any sooner than it has to.

She stirs anyway, blinking up at me with the particular annoyance of someone who was enjoying unconsciousness and resents being pulled out of it.

"You're staring again," she mutters.

"Habit."

"Bad habit."

"I've got worse ones."

She props herself up on one elbow, squinting at the light coming through the window like it's personally offended her. "What time is it?"

"Late enough that Darin's probably already annoyed we're not up."

"Darin can wait."

"Darin cannot wait. Darin has never waited for anything in his life."

As if summoned, a fist hits the door twice, hard.

"Alpha? I can hear you talking," Darin calls through it. "Which means you have no excuse left not to be downstairs in ten minutes."

Lyra groans and drops her face back into the pillow. "I take it back. I liked him better when he was worried about us dying."

"Careful what you wish for."

She laughs, muffled against the pillow, and something in my chest settles at the sound of it, easy in a way nothing's been allowed to be easy in days. I let myself have this. One quiet morning, her laugh, the ordinary weight of her shoulder against mine, before whatever Lorenzo's records turn up finds its way back to my door.

"Ten minutes," I tell her, swinging my legs out of bed. "Then the whole pack gets to watch you at breakfast."

"The whole pack? You all actually eat breakfast together?"

I laugh. "Well. Not really. Just Darin, mostly, and only because he shows up uninvited."

She throws a pillow at me on her way to get dressed, and for a few more minutes, at least, nothing about today feels like it's waiting to go wrong.

I know better than to trust that feeling. I let myself believe it anyway, just for now.