Leah
The bond stirred before I heard the gates.
Keanu had left to play with the kids again, and I was sitting in the kitchen with Marta, learning how to properly dice an onion without mangling it, when the warmth flooded through my chest. Not the faint hum of distance I’d been feeling all day. Something closer. Something urgent.
Darien was here.
I set the knife down and wiped my hands on the towel Marta had draped over my shoulder hours ago. She looked at me, then at the door, and nodded once.
“Go,” she said. “The onion will wait.”
I was already moving.
The corridors of the compound blurred past me as I ran, my shoes echoing off the stone. The bond pulled me forward like a thread attached to my sternum, tightening with each step. I turned the corner into the main hall and pushed thr
