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“Do what?”

“Turn this into a moment. I told you about Iris because you reminded me of her. That’s all.”

“That’s not all.”

“Chris.”

“Sloane.” He said her name the way he always said it. Like he was testing it. Like he was trying to figure out if the word could hold everything he’d learned about the woman attached to it.

She stood up, picked up her plate and carried it to the sink. She rinsed it with too much attention under the tap, the water loud against the ceramic. Her back was to him. She could feel his eyes on her, could feel the bond stretching between them, pulling, asking her to turn around.

She set the plate on the rack. Dried her hands on the towel.

“Thank you for dinner,” she said without turning.

She walked out of the kitchen down the corridor. Her bedroom door was three steps away. She reached for the handle.

“Sloane.”

She stopped. Didn’t turn.

“I’m glad they took him too,” he said. His voice carried down the corridor, low, steady, meant for her alone.

Her hand tightened on the handle. She pressed her forehead against the wood for two seconds. Then she opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind her.

She sat on the edge of the bed. The bond hummed. He was still in the kitchen. She could feel him there, warm, present, not following, not pushing, just existing in the same space she’d left behind.

Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs. Breathed in. Breathed out.

She’d told him about Iris. She’d told him about Garrett. She’d sat at a table with a man who made her a sandwich, who listened without leaning in, who smiled at her jokes about Elena’s soup.

She had told him more in one evening than she’d told anyone in twenty years.

Her throat ached. She pressed her palm against it, felt the pulse beating fast beneath her fingers. The rain hammered the window. Somewhere in the kitchen, Chris was clearing the table. She heard the tap run. Heard his plate settle on the rack beside hers.

She lay back on the bed. Stared at the ceiling. The bond was a low fire behind her ribs, steady, patient, asking nothing.

She closed her eyes against it.

Chapter 15 - Chris

The subconscious awareness woke him before the sound did.

It hit him low, under the ribs, a jolt of raw fear that wasn’t his. Chris sat up in the dark with his heart slamming and his hand already reaching for the knife under his pillow before his mind caught up to his body. He listened. The quarters were silent. Rain had stopped sometime after midnight, and the pipes had gone quiet, and nothing moved in the corridor.

Then it came again, sharper this time, a spike that made his teeth ache.

He was out of bed and in the hallway before he’d decided to move. Sloane’s door was closed. He could hear her through it now, a broken sound, not quite a scream, cut off before it could become one.

He knocked once and didn’t wait for an answer.

She was tangled in the sheet, her back arched off the mattress, her hands fighting something that wasn’t there. Her face in the moonlight from the window looked nothing like the face she wore during the day. No mask. Just raw terror, her mouth open, her breath coming in short pulls that weren’t reaching her lungs.

“Sloane.”

She didn’t hear him. Her hand swung out and caught air.

He crossed the room and crouched by the bed, keeping distance, keeping his hands where she could see them if her eyes opened.