**DEREK POV**
The bond shifts while I am awake.
That alone is enough to make me still.
It does not spike the way it does when danger is immediate. It does not flare sharp or hot or urgent. There is no pain. No warning bell ripping through my chest. What moves through me instead is quieter and far more unsettling, the kind of sensation that bypasses instinct and goes straight for understanding.
Memory.
Not mine.
The sensation rolls in slow and heavy, like a tide that does not care whether I am ready for it or not. It does not announce itself. It does not crash. It presses. Not images. Not scenes I can see or place. Emotional echoes that do not belong to me, impressions without context, weight without shape. They press against my chest and ribs like something trying to surface and find
