**LILA POV**
I feel it before I understand it.
That familiar prickle along the back of my neck. The tightening between my shoulders. The quiet, insistent sense that the space around me has shifted in a way that doesn’t match the room I’m standing in.
I stop mid-step in the hallway, one hand brushing the wall as if that might anchor me. The cabin is quiet. Too quiet. No wind rattling the eaves. No branches scraping the roof. Just the low hum of the fridge and the faint tick of cooling metal somewhere behind the walls.
I listen harder.
Nothing.
That’s what makes my pulse start to climb.
It isn’t Derek.
I know that with a certainty that settles deep and fast. There’s no pull, no pressure through the bond. No awareness blooming under my skin the way it always does when he’s near. My wo
