Page 100 of Before the Bond
"Olivia…?" he murmured.
I began to cry as I smiled.
"Hey," I said. "I'm back."
I embraced him tightly. Caleb straightened up and pulled me in, every part of him trembling.
"How…" he murmured against my hair. "How are you here…"
"Because I wanted to," I said.
I pulled back far enough to see his face properly. My thumb pressed against his jaw, the way it had in the library that night before everything changed. His hand came up and covered mine. He held it there.
"Because I chose to," I said.
He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.
His hand tightened over mine and he closed his eyes for one long second, like a man setting something down after a very long time carrying it.
I heard a small sound in the distance. Jake was crying. Not subtle.
Donovan, I noticed from the corner of my eye, was looking at the tree line. His version of privacy.
The others drew closer. Jake was first.
"I knew you'd come back," he said, a couple of feet away, careful not to break our moment.
I grinned. "I'm sorry it took this long."
"You had me there for a second," Stella said.
"I'm sorry about that."
Stella shook her head. "We're sorry."
Donovan cleared his throat and pointed ahead. Both Caleb and I looked.
From where we were, we could now clearly make out the Voss pack moving through the tree line — not charging yet, but deliberate.
I counted at least a dozen wolves. Maybe more — the fog kept swallowing the edges of the group and I couldn't get a clean perimeter. They were large. They moved the way the wolves on the forest road had moved the night all of this started, controlled. Unhurried. My stomach dropped.
Then I felt Caleb shift beside me and I looked at him instead.
He looked at me the way he had on the grass that first night — like I was the only solid thing in the landscape, like everything else was peripheral information and I was the only data point that mattered. I watched him draw a slow breath. I watched him choose his words.
I shook my head once.
"I know," I said.
He looked at me for a long moment. Whatever he'd been carrying — however many years of it, however much weight — moved through his face without breaking it. And then it was gone. Not suppressed. Set down.
Done.
Caleb got to his feet.
He turned toward the tree line and his shoulders settled into the set I'd come to know — he was fully ready. When he spoke into the fog, even with his voice low and unhurried, the authority in it was absolute — filling every corner of the space.
I stayed on the wet grass with my palms still warm and watched him walk toward the dark.
