"It's pre-bonding." He says it simply, like he's telling me the weather. "Your body is starting the bonding process. Before the bite, before either of you decides anything. Your alpha has chosen a mate."
I stare at the concrete wall of the stairwell.
"That's — that can't be right. We haven't — there's no bite. We're not—"
"You don't need a bite for the process to start. The bite completes it. Makes it permanent and mutual. But the alpha body can start on its own if the attachment is strong enough." Devon pauses. "How long have you been sleeping together?"
"Dev—"
"How long?"
"Since the conference. So... a few weeks."
"And the symptoms started when?"
"I don't know. A week ago? Maybe longer. I wasn't paying attention."
"You weren't paying attention to your body fundamentally rewiring itself around another person. That's very you." He sighs. "Ray, this is serious. If the bond starts forming and then gets disrupted — if you get separated before it completes — it's not just heartbreak. It's physical. Like withdrawal. Alex and I had a fight before we bonded and I couldn't sleep for three days. I couldn't regulate without him."
I sit down on the stairwell step. Gabriel shrieks happily in the background and Devon shushes him absently.
"Does Miles know?" Devon asks.
"I don't think so. He's been — stressed. Distracted. But he might be feeling it too. His scent has been stronger. And he gets this look sometimes when I'm close, like—" Like he's scared of how much he wants to lean into me. "Like he notices it."
"If he's an omega showing symptoms too, then it's mutual pre-bonding. Which means it's happening faster than usual." Devon's voice is gentle now, the sarcasm gone. "You need to talk to him about this."
"He's already dealing with HR stuff at the firm. If I tell him his body is permanently bonding to his assistant—"
"He deserves to know."
"I know. I know he does." I press my head against the wall. "I just don't want to be the thing that scares him off."
"Ray." Devon's voice is the big-brother voice, the one that doesn't have jokes in it. "If it's already started, it's not going to stop because you don't talk about it. It's only going to get harder."
I sit in the stairwell for a while after we hang up. Pre-bonding. My body choosing a mate. Not a decision I made with my brain but something older and deeper that looked at Miles Covington and said this one, forever and started building a bridge whether I wanted one or not.
The terrifying part is that I did want one. I just didn't know it was already laying the foundation.
At the end of the day, the office empties out. I wait until the associates leave and the hallway empties and then I knock on Miles's open door.
He's still at his desk. His tie is loosened and his hair has been pushed back from his forehead — he does that when he's been running his fingers through it — and he looks exhausted. Theemail, whatever it said, has been eating at him all day. There are shadows under his eyes that weren't there this morning.
"Hey," I say.
He looks up. The ice wall is there but it's thin. "What."
"You eat today?"
"I had coffee."
"Coffee isn't food." I lean against his doorframe. The same spot I've leaned a hundred times, except now the pre-bond hums between us — the pull, the settling, my whole system saying closer, get closer. "There's a Thai place on the way to your apartment. Let me buy you dinner."
"Garcia—"
"Ray." I say it quietly. Not pushing. Just reminding him of my name.
He looks at me for a long moment. The ice wall cracks — just a hairline, just enough — and I see the person underneath. Tired. Scared. Wanting something he won't ask for.