A measured pause followed, a single heartbeat stretching longer than it should have, the golden link pulsing with shared awareness of what that decision had cost him.
"I warned them," he continued, his tone even, controlled. "They won't follow us. Not until I return to Shadowpine."
The word lingered in the air between them, return, settling into the room with a weight that neither of them acknowledged aloud, but both of them felt through the bond like a distant thunderhead on the horizon, heavy with pack law and mountain strongholds and everything she had already refused.
Liora's expression remained unchanged, but there was a subtle sharpening in her gaze, a shift so slight it might have been missed if not for the bond carrying it across to him with quiet clarity. "I'm not going there," she said, her voice softer now, but holding no uncertainty, no defensiveness, simply final as the turning of a key in a lock that would never open again.
"I know."
