Page 76 of Before the Bond
"I didn't go into much detail about how I resuscitated you," I finally said.
Olivia blinked. "Oh?"
I nodded.
Guilt seeped out of me and seemed to surround me. It burned. Like an acid you couldn't wash off.
"I kept the details sparse because of how violent that night had been," I said. "I wanted to give you a full picture for a while, but I haven't found the right way to do it yet."
The words came out easy. I hated it. I hated how easy it was.
Olivia was quiet for a moment. I watched her measure the answer against the space where the substance of it should have been.
"Okay," she said. Careful. "And when did you want to do that?"
"Soon. When I can give it to you cleanly."
She nodded — slow, deliberate, not satisfied, but choosing again to extend something I hadn't earned. She turned the page of her book without ceremony.
I stood up.
"I need to go on patrol again," I said.
Olivia merely nodded. She offered a small smile. "It was nice to see you. At least a little."
I didn't know how I was still standing.
The room was the same. The fire was the same. She was the same — patient and warm and entirely unaware of how close I'd just come, and how far I'd still fallen short.
"Good night, Caleb," she said.
"Good night."
I ran the perimeter again.
The motion was familiar. The same ground, the same entry points, the same quality of cold air moving through the same stands of fir.
I knew every scent marker on the line. This time, no new scent.
The Voss pack had pulled back.
I stopped at the far end of the eastern sweep where the trees broke into a shallow creek bed, the water running low after weeks without rain.
The fog was thick enough to blur the tree line into shapes without edges. I stood in it and let the cold settle into my lungs, and for a moment there was just the sound of the water and the dark.
Olivia’s face replayed in my mind. So did Elias’s remark.
I was running out of time.
I’m selfish. I wanted to squeeze every second, every grain of sand I could with Olivia. But this wasn’t just a matter of pushing something back. Every moment I borrowed from the future only made it crumble faster.
The lie was spreading.
Chapter 16
Olivia
The distance between Caleb and me widened even more over the next few days.
