She didn't know it was the last week until the middle of it.
Not the last week of anything specific — the ward kept running, Davan kept doing the things she was doing, the ordinary record accumulated entries. Nothing announced itself as ending or beginning.
But on a Wednesday, standing at bay four's window at the end of a long shift, she felt something shift in the bond.
Not alarm. Not urgency.
The specific quality of Caelen settling into a new position. The way he moved when something that had been in flux had resolved. She'd felt it twice before: the first time the night of the door frame marks, when he'd made the frequency that meant *home, here, right.* The second time the night Davan was born, when the chord completed.
This was smaller than both of those.
But the same quality.
