The first thing that feels wrong is the quiet. Not the watchful quiet we have learned to live with, not the careful stillness that settles after violence when everyone is counting breaths and taking stock, but a smoother kind of silence, the sort that arrives too neatly, like it has been rehearsed. The bond hums low and uneasy beneath my ribs as I move through the packhouse that morning, fingers brushing stone walls I know by heart, my instincts prickling even though nothing looks out of place.
Adam feels it too. I can tell by the way he slows when we reach the central corridor, his posture shifting subtly from relaxed vigilance into readiness, the kind that does not announce itself but changes the air around him.
“Something’s coming,” I murmur.
“Yes,” he replies quietly. “And it wants
