Chapter 306

Chapter 306
Alex's POV

Landon talked most through dinner. He was good at that, filling silences with things that were easy to respond to, asking Caitlin small questions about her parents, about the drive, about whether she preferred the soup with or without the bread. Caitlin answered everything politely and ate steadily and I watched her from across the table and said very little.

She was exhausted. I could see it in the way she held herself, careful and deliberate, like she was concentrating on keeping everything upright through willpower alone.

The first shift took more out of a person than almost anything else. The second was easier. The third is still easier. But the first one hollowed you out completely and the only real cure for it was time and sleep.

When she finished eating she set her spoon down and looked up.

"I think I'm going to go to bed," she said. "If that's okay."

"Of course," my mother said immediately.

Caitlin pushed her chair back and stood and then stopped. She looked at my mother for a moment and then she stepped around the table and put her arms around her. My mother's hands came up around her back without hesitation and she held on.

It lasted only a few seconds. Caitlin straightened up and cleared her throat and said goodnight to Landon and walked out of the kitchen without looking at me.

I looked at my plate.

My mother looked at me. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to.

I didn't sleep that night either.

Not fully. I lay on my bed with my eyes on the ceiling and listened to the house settle around me and kept part of my attention on the room down the hall the way I had every night since Caitlin arrived. An old habit by now.

I told myself it was practical. I told myself it was because of the shifts, because the second one could come at any time in the first week and she needed someone close when it did.

I told myself a lot of things.

The truth was simpler and less convenient. I was not ready to stop listening to her. After days of sitting in that chair beside her bed waiting for her to open her eyes, after standing at iron bars calling her name in the dark, after carrying her out of the woods wrapped in my jacket with mud on her feet, I could not make myself switch off the part of me that was paying attention to whether she was okay.

The bond was there. I had known it would be, from the moment the turn was completed. I had felt it settle into place like something clicking shut. It was not the same as a born mate bond, not exactly, but it was not nothing either.

It was a thread, constant and quiet, running between us. I could feel the general shape of her from down the hall. Not her thoughts, not specifics, just her presence, the fact of her.

She was restless tonight. I could feel that too.I stayed on my side of the wall and let her be.

Three days passed.

James cleared Caitlin for light activity on the second day and she began moving around the house and the grounds on her own. She walked the gardens in the morning, which I knew because I watched from the upstairs window like someone who had entirely lost perspective on himself.

She spent time in the library in the afternoons. She called her mother every two days exactly as she had promised.

I gave her space.

It was the hardest thing I had done in recent memory and I was someone who had done genuinely hard things. But she needed room to breathe inside her new reality and crowding her was not going to help either of us.

On the third evening I was in the kitchen making coffee when she came in. She stopped when she saw me, just for a second, and then kept walking to the other counter and filled a glass with water.

We stood in the kitchen in silence for a moment.

"The senses are settling," She said, not looking at me. "The sounds aren't as loud as they were."

"Good. That's the right timeline."

"James said I should start controlled training next week. For the shifts."

"When you're ready. There's no pressure."

She turned the glass in her hands. "I don't want to wait too long. Last time I didn't have control and I don't want that again."

"Okay. I'll set it up."

She nodded and looked down at the glass. Then she looked up at me.

"What you said in the car," she said. "About making things right."

I still went.

"I haven't stopped thinking about it," she said. Her voice was even, measured, giving nothing away.

"I'm not saying yes. I want to be clear about that. I'm not there yet and I don't know when I will be or if I will be."

"I understand."

"But I'm also not saying no." She held my gaze. "I'm saying I'm still here. And I'm saying that means something, even if I don't know exactly what yet."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"That's enough," I said. "That's more than enough."

She looked at me for a moment longer, then set her glass down on the counter and walked back out of the kitchen.

I stood very still and looked at the space where she had been standing, and felt something in my chest that had been sitting heavy for over a week lifted by one small degree.

She was still here.

For now, that was everything.