When she finally looks up at him, Derek's expression settles into a sad smile and he shrugs a little. That question merited asking, he'll give her that.

"That depends on how you look at it," he replies. He realizes a few seconds too late that she's pulled back, but his fingers are still in her hair. Inappropriate, he tells himself, and takes his hand back as casually as he can manage.

The thing about this place is that the Specials are expected to behave like regular Alphas when they aren't regular Alphas. Katniss technically has choices, they just don't really happen to be good ones. "You have to pretend to be okay," he agrees with the implication her question laid out. "But you don't have to actually be okay. I'm not, not after realizing that the safety of the thought that my memories weren't real was a lie I was telling myself. I'm never okay, Katniss. I've just spent the better part of a decade pretending to be and I'm really good at it by now. So you don't have to be okay. You just have to learn to fake it. You'll get there."

With that, Derek sighs and looks toward his bedroom door. "We should go back…" he admits, frowning.