LANDON
The bond has weight.
Most nights it feels like gravity, steady and predictable, a low current running between my ribs and hers that grounds rather than distracts. Even when tension hums through the packhouse, even when council meetings fracture into quiet hostility, that connection remains aligned.
Tonight it does not.
I wake without knowing why.
The room is dark, the air cool, the house quieter than it has been in days. I lie still, eyes open, listening for external disturbance, for a footstep in the hall or a door closing too carefully.
There is none.
The disturbance is internal.
The bond hums low, but not toward Cheyenne.
Not away from her either.
Sideways.
Faint.
Like interference bleeding across a frequency that should be clean.
I sit up slowly, palms pressing into
