Chapter 52: Reed

Reed

I hadn’t slept.

I lay awake replaying the moment at the ball over and over, Astrid standing between Xander and me, her expression shifting the instant the bond snapped into place. And then she’d run.

I could still see her face exactly as it had been in that final second. Not disgust. Not hatred.

Fear.

That was what kept me awake. I’d expected the bond to feel overwhelming. It had. What I hadn’t expected was the instinct that followed immediately after, the desire to reach for her, to close the distance, to pull her back before she could disappear down that corridor.

I hadn’t let myself. Because she’d been afraid, and whatever I wanted in that moment mattered less than that.

I wanted her. The thought unsettled me with how immediate it was, how physical, how little it had to do with reason.

I kept remembering the dance itself. Her hand in mine. The warmth of her against me, close enough that I could catch the scent of her hair. The way she’d looked up at me right before the bond took hold, uncertain and open in a way I’d never seen from her before.

My mind betrayed me more than once that night, imagining what it would have felt like to pull her closer instead of stepping back. My hand settling at her waist. Her head resting against my chest. My fingers brushing the hair from her face.

Her lips, close enough that leaning down would have taken nothing at all.

Not a crude thought. Something slower. Something I had no right imagining given how she’d looked at me minutes later.

The bond had given my instincts a voice. It hadn’t given me permission to listen to them.

I remembered standing outside her door afterward, listening to her cry, hearing her beg through the wood. Reject me. I remembered how badly I’d wanted to open that door, not to force anything, only to hold her, to tell her she was safe, to let her cry into my chest instead of alone on the floor of an empty room.

I stayed outside anyway. Because she’d asked me to.

That was the part that mattered most, I thought. Wanting her desperately didn’t give me the right to override what she needed.

I kept turning one question over throughout the night. Why had she been so afraid? A bond like this wasn’t something most wolves ran from. Her reaction had gone beyond overwhelmed straight into terror, like the bond itself represented something dangerous rather than simply unexpected.

I considered asking her outright. Then decided against it. I had no right to demand an explanation from her, not yet. If she wanted to tell me, she would, in her own time.

I felt her the moment I arrived at the academy that morning, the bond making her presence impossible to ignore no matter where she stood on the grounds. I found her outside the main hall, her eyes still swollen from crying.

I wanted to go to her. I wanted to ask if she’d slept at all. I wanted to touch her face, brush my thumb beneath her eye, pull her against me and simply make sure she was still standing.

Instead I gave her a small nod. Xander found me shortly after, visibly frustrated. "We should check on her."

"She asked us for space," I said.

"She asked us to reject her. She was crying, Reed."

I understood his instinct. I felt the same pull. But chasing her now would only frighten her further, confirm every fear that had sent her running in the first place.

"If we care about her," I said, "we can’t make this about what we want."

He went quiet. He knew I was right, even if it cost him something to admit it.

By midmorning, the whispers had already started. Students had noticed her leaving the ball. They’d noticed us following. Speculation moved fast through a school this size, and I disliked it immediately, not for my own sake, but because Astrid was already frightened enough without an entire academy watching her unravel.

Selene approached me near the courtyard, her usual entourage trailing a few steps behind.

"Did you enjoy the ball?" she asked, casual.

I didn’t answer.

"Where did Astrid disappear to?"

My mood shifted instantly, and she noticed. "What happened between you two?"

"Nothing that concerns you," I said.

She seemed surprised by how cold I sounded. She tried to press further, testing. "Since when do you care what happens to her?"

"Since I decided you shouldn’t be talking about her," I said.

She walked away, suspicious, already whispering something to the girl beside her before she’d gone ten feet.

I saw Astrid in class later, pretending everything was ordinary. She wasn’t fooling me. She kept her eyes fixed on her notes, refusing to look toward where I sat, her fingers tightening around her pen more than once without her seeming to notice.

She was fighting the bond every second. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to fight it around me, that I wasn’t going to force anything on her regardless of what instinct demanded.

I didn’t approach. I would let her come to me, whenever, if ever, she decided she was ready.

She passed close to me once, changing seats, and her scent reached me before she did. My instincts responded before I could stop them, imagining catching her wrist, pulling her back, holding her, kissing her.

Then I saw her tense, shoulders drawing inward the moment she registered how close she’d come to me.

I let her pass without a word.

That was when I understood something clearly about myself. The bond hadn’t made me entitled to anything from her. If anything, it had made me more determined to earn whatever trust she was willing to give, on her own terms, at her own pace.

I watched her leave the classroom once the bell rang, her shoulders still tight, her steps quick.

Reject me, she’d said through that door.

I could probably give her that. Maybe it would make things easier for her. Maybe walking away entirely was the right thing to do.

But the thought of never feeling her presence again, never hearing her laugh, never having her look at me the way she had for those brief moments before everything shattered apart, hurt more than I’d expected it to.

I could survive her hatred.

I could survive her fear.

But I didn’t know if I could survive letting her go.