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“It was probably my fault,” I said after a beat. “There was so fucking much going on when I got to the hospital. When they told me that my optic nerves…” My voice wavered a little, and I felt pathetic at how speaking the truth could reduce me like this. I dragged my tongue over my lips and appreciated more than I could say that he just let me hang there in the silence as I gathered my thoughts. “I thought shifting would trigger all of my healing, but they told me it’s impossible.”
“Our biology is complicated,” he told me, and I wanted to laugh, and I also kind of wanted to hit him for the statement. “We can heal so much, but the parts of us that are fragile are so damn fragile.”
I shifted upward, the hunched position murder on my lung, and I flexed my fingers. My claws poked through, the half-shift rippling through me. I knew my eyes were dilated now—that they always would be, but I wondered if even the sliver of iris left glowed the way it once had. I almost laughed at the irony that I couldn’t ask the man sent here to help me through it.
“What happened?”
“To my sight?” he asked, and I grunted by way of answer. “There was an airstrike—humans launched a couple of missiles in the area. I remember my father talking about it years later. The humans tried to say they didn’t know it was a civilian area, but we weren’t the first town to be hit.” He sighed quietly.
I remembered it. I was sixteen at the time. The news played images all day long of civilian Wolves being carted out of rubble on stretchers. So many were wounded, and more than a few died. The thought that Cameron had been in the center of it—still a toddler—stoked the fires of my rage again.
“I don’t actually remember much,” Cameron went on after a moment. “I remember the sound, and I remember hitting the ground. I remember everything being really hot, and there was gas everywhere so thick I couldn’t breathe. I was too young to shift on command, so the burns healed a lot slower, and there wasn’t much they could do about my eyes. I was stuck in that chemical cloud for too long, and the damage was too severe.”
“Can you see anything?” I asked softly.
He hummed, a noise of consideration. “I hate that question. It’s so—” He stopped and let out a small, frustrated sigh. “I hate the value placed on the light and shadows I have left. The damage to my right eye was worse. It swelled up a few weeks after the injury and they had to remove it, so I wear a prosthetic. My left eye can see a little bit in my periphery. Nothing usable.”
I wondered how furious he’d be if I told him I’d give a limb to see even that—but it felt cruel to even consider it. He was no better off than I was—and I was no worse off than him. The only difference was he’d been living that way for a lot longer.
“I know it’s difficult,” he said again. “Everything was harder for me after, and there were days I wanted to just stop. I wanted to make a nest inside my bed and never leave because it was safe there. I understood that space—I didn’t have to rely on people, trust people, embarrass myself by trying to figure out how to navigate the world differently than everyone else. But I was also young. I had only been sighted for six years, and it didn’t take long before I was blind for longer than that.”
His words were gutting, and I felt my eyes get hot again, though I had no plans to fall apart. Not now. “And you got through it.”
“I got through it,” he repeated. “Blind and traumatized, I got through it. We were segregated, and then we were at war, but I managed to finish school and get two graduate degrees. I’ve been working in rehab for a long time—getting wounded soldiers back on their feet.”
I flexed my claws again, then drew them back into my skin before tracing the bumps and shapes on the arm of the chair. “When did you end up here?”
“The resistance?” he asked, then laughed. “My brother’s a soldier—a General. He was holding off the Western Front when the treaty was signed. He came back changed. He came back angry and bitter, and then three weeks ago, he told me the resistance had been forming for months before the treaty was even an idea. They saw the corruption heading all the way to the top.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and cursed myself for being so fucking ignorant, so myopic. I’d had one focus and that was to free my people—but I hadn’t seen the poison in our ranks. “So you joined up here. Easy as that?”
“It’s another war—it’s just a quieter one. My brother said Wolves all over the world are going missing. We’re one of many of compounds across the globe, General. And it’s just getting started. I knew my skills here would be useful.”
“For Wolves like me,” I said flatly.
I heard him shift, and there was something in the air—like I could feel his need to stand up and touch me, though he didn’t dare move. “You’re the first of many. I don’t know what state they’ll be in, but I know that I’m skilled enough to make a difference because I refuse to let Wolves like you who fought—who were brought to their knees by the humans—succumb to that darkness after being freed.”
There was something in my chest—a sort of warm comfort and pride. He was right. This was going to be simple, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
Chapter Ten
KOR
Hours later and I wanted to claw Cameron’s throat out again. His gentle laughter and unfailing patience had grated on the last of my nerves. This was no military training. There were no barking orders or demands for perfection. There was just his gentle guiding hands and careful praise every time I did something that had once come without a second thought.
It was at the end of successfully filling a water glass that my tolerance shattered along with the glass I’d flung at the wall. The silence that echoed after rang in my ears along with the sharp hitch of his breath and the steady beat of his heart.
For all that I had obviously shocked him, my senses picked up on the obvious: he had been waiting for me to crack.
“Enough,” I said, my voice ragged. I dug my claws into the tops of the counters and turned my face toward it. My heart was thudding hard against my chest, and before I could say more, the flashing began again.
The headache wasn’t as intense this time, but the ache in my eyes was enough to send me to my knees. He must have heard me fall because his hands were on me shortly after, guiding me to a kitchen chair.
“You’re hurting,” he said.
I let out a humorless laugh. “It’s fucking agony.” I dug the pads of my fingers into my eyes and rubbed at them until that pain overtook the phantom sensations, and the flashing faded into nothingness. “The doctor told me to expect it,” I said, then clarified for him, “flashing lights. Phantom pain from dying optic nerves,” I quoted.
His hand brushed against my own for a second, then I heard the other chair move back as he sat. “What’s it like, Kor?”
