I do not move at first, and that is the point, and the corridor around me feels too loud even though no one is speaking, and the memory of the hit and the words he left behind sit under my skin. He said you’d move left. Not guessed. Not hoped. Said.
I lean back against the wall and close my eyes for a second, and the noise of the packhouse fades just enough for me to think instead of react, and not follow the next step everyone expects me to take.
Because that is the problem. Every step has been expected, every turn read, and every adjustment tracked before it settles.
So I stop, not physically but mentally, and I replay the patrol hits and the shift points and the way the wolves move around me, and the way Ezra adjusts the structure while Christopher answers before we decide.
He is no
