His eyes come back to mine. The blue is too clear for a man who should still be under.
I move slowly. Every inch announced. His body stays rigid, but he doesn’t strike, and when I touch his forearm, the muscle jumps beneath my fingers. The same arm I was washing aminute ago. The same skin…but everything about it is different now.
I find the vein. “Now,” I say.
The needle goes in. His eyes close for a fraction of a second—not surrender, just endurance—and I depress the plunger.
The drug enters his bloodstream, and I count breaths while it takes him. His pupils widen on the second. The tension in his shoulders loosens on the fourth. His hand curls once in the blanket on the fifth. His eyes are still on me on the sixth, and on the seventh, the awareness thins and goes.
I stand with the empty syringe in my hand until the silence becomes the only thing I can hear.
My breath comes out in a rush, and I realize I’m shaking. A full-body tremor that makes me sway.
Calm down. Breathe in. Breathe out.
I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for my heart rate to settle. Only then do I finish what I started. My hands work because that is what they know. Fresh cloth. Clean water. I button his shirt, pull the blanket up, check his pulse. Drain the basin. Dry the table where the water spilled. Record in the journal.
Dressing changed. Bath completed. Correction dose administered at 09:42.
I stop there.
The next line waits.
I write it:Patient surfaced two hours ahead of expected sedation window.
Then I stare at the ink until it settles.
The sedation protocol should have held. It didn’t. That is a fact, and facts belong in Brenna’s hands because she is the alpha and this is her compound, her pack, her risk.
I should take the journal to her now.
I don’t move.
Because there’s more to this story. He gripped my wrist. Pulled me against him. And he wasn’t feral. He let me go. And he saw the syringe and chose not to fight me.
If I give Brenna the first part, she’ll ask for the rest. She should. But will she know what to do with it?
I close the journal.
“You can’t jump to conclusions,” I murmur into the room. “It’s not like this is a pattern. It’s only happened once. It could have been a fluke. Something triggered by the trauma.”
If I go running to Brenna with one early surfacing and a handful of bruises, she’ll do the only thing an alpha can do. She’ll tighten the protocol. More guards. More restraints. A heavier dose if she can justify it.
And if the point of today was that he could hear me, that he could stop, that some part of him was present enough to choose, then burying him deeper might destroy the only useful thing I’ve seen.
That is clinical.
That is true.
It is also not the whole truth, and I know the difference.
Because some of the reasons have nothing to do with anomalies, and everything to do with a man’s hand opening when I asked him to stop.
It’s not a lie if I wait through one more cycle.
Not yet.
I pack the used washcloths. Dispose of the syringe. Put the tray back where it belongs with hands that are steadier than the rest of me.
