Semua Bab I Will Find You: Bab 41 - Bab 50

RemyThe first sign wasn’t dramatic. It never is, when a bond cools by a degree. You don’t wake to snow. You wake to the window that won’t quite defog.Monday, Holland came through the west door for training with her bag crossed tight over her chest and her ponytail higher than usual—the kind of practical that doubles as armor. She nodded to June. She nodded to me. She didn’t smile. In the east gym she toed off her sneakers, taped her hands with neat, efficient motions Todd would have praised any other week, and stepped onto the mat like a soldier reporting for a post she didn’t choose.The bond hummed when she entered the room, but quieter, like a radio in another apartment. I didn’t need the wolf to tell me; my ribs knew.“Morning,” I said, keeping it ordinary, keeping it ours.“Morning,” she echoed, and the word had all the syllables but none of the warmth that usually arrives underneath as if she can’t help it.Todd clocked it too—Gamma eyes are good at reading the unsaid. He didn

HollandWe were halfway up the porch steps after the river when Remy stopped like the thought had grabbed his sleeve.“I’ve been working on a question that isn’t fair if I ask it wrong,” he said, hands in his pockets like he was trying to make himself less Alpha and more man. “So I’ll try to ask it right: would you consider moving in—with me. As a trial. For safety first, and because I… like waking up knowing you’re down the hall.” A breath. “Also because it lets me keep Angel’s voice farther from your day. I can make the rules tighter in my house than I can in yours and unfortunately, it's probably only a matter of time before she starts trying to find you to spew more nonsense.”Independence is a muscle I’ve been steadily strengthening. It twitched—mine, mine, mine. Then the other muscle I’ve been building—trust—answered back. I pictured the way my doorknob rattled in the middle of the night when my brain decided wind was hands. I pictured the way he’d held me until the adrenaline un

RobbieMaeve wore gloves. She tied my hair back with a piece of twine that smelled like rosemary and campfire. She cleaned a line down my spine with something that stung like a childhood I’d hoped not to revisit. “Breathe,” she said. “Not like a hero. Like a man not arguing with air.” When I obeyed, her nod said good dog and somehow it didn’t humiliate me.“The Moon doesn’t like shortcuts,” she murmured, selecting a needle that looked innocent. “So we don’t shortcut. We stitch toward her, not into her. It holds. Poorly. That’s why they call you defective—because you’ll hold like a scar does. Not flexible. Not graceful. Functional.”“Will I look like… him?” I asked, ridiculous and jealous even now.“You’ll look like a problem,” she said. “Hold still.”The first needle went in at the base of my neck and I remembered every reason a person might choose not to be brave. It wasn’t piercing—the word’s too small. It was like a specific kind of cold was being threaded under my skin, sharp and

RemyShe was heat and midnight and the answer to a question my bones had been asking since the night the bond woke up and named her. Holland’s knees bracketed my hips, palms warm on my chest, hair falling like a curtain that made the room ours alone. The bond didn’t flash like lightning; it built, a glow along every nerve ending, a hum under the skin that said here, here, here.“Say it,” I asked, because I needed the word as much as the want. “Tell me what you want.”Her gaze didn’t flicker. “You,” she said, steady as a vow. Then, softer, closer, “Yes.”Pierce surged—exultant, bright, all the old words a wolf knows when the world finally arranges itself correctly. Mate. Ours. I held him without caging him, kept the thrill and leashed the edge. “Three taps still stop everything,” I managed, and she nodded, thumb brushing the hollow at my collarbone like a seal pressed into wax.We took our time. There was nothing ceremonial about it and yet everything was: the way her hands mapped the

HollandNot dizzy—clear. Not floaty—grounded in a way that made the floorboards under my bare feet feel complicit. I woke with the imprint of Remy’s shoulder on my cheek and a peculiar certainty braided through my spine: something inside me had clicked into place without closing anything else.The bond didn’t crackle like last night’s livewire. It pulsed—low and steady—like a second heartbeat I could hear if I got quiet. Every time I inhaled, I caught cedar and heat and the faintest citrus, like lemon zest had been whispered into the morning. The house breathed. I breathed with it. For once, the two rhythms didn’t argue.We didn’t make a ceremony of anything. He kissed my temple and said good morning like a man who now knows what my mouth tastes like when the word is the first thing I say, and then I was walking back through the conjoining door to brush my teeth and laugh at my hair. My body felt… answered. Not used up. Not sore in the way that scares you. Satisfied, the way you are af