Surfacing through the drug, not slow but fast. Like breaking through ice. One second, dark. The next: her scent, her wrist, my wolf hurling forward with something that wasn’t escape.
My hand on her back. Fingers spread across her spine. Her palm flat against my chest.
And then—
The vibration.
It started in my sternum and moved toward her hand like something answering. It spread through my ribs, my shoulders, the bones of my arm where I held her wrist, and for one second, the fog burned clean.
No facility. No drug. No number tattooed on my arm in black ink.
Just the vibration.
Just her pulse.
Just wanting something I don’t have words for.
Then she saidwait, and my hand opened, and the clarity went with it.
Now I’m back under.
Or I should be.
My fingers curl into the blanket. Wool. Rough. The texture scrapes my palm the way the facility cots never did. Their bedding was slick and synthetic and held nothing—no warmth, no weight, no evidence that a body had ever lain there long enough to matter. Sometimes I was sure they were there to catch body fluids more than to give comfort.
This blanket holds warmth.
She put it on me. Tucked it around my shoulders. I remember that from other days, other doses. The edge of the blanket pulled up to my chin. The same hands that change dressings. Press a cloth to my forehead when the fever spikes.
Her hands.
She’s been touching me for weeks.
I know it in pieces, the way I know everything under the drugs. Her grip under my elbow when she turns me. Her fingers at my pulse. The press of gauze. The scrape of a razor along my jaw, her thumb steady beneath my chin.
Hands near my throat should make me fight.
Hers don’t.
That should scare me more than it does.
The men who come into the room smell like braced muscle and bitten-back fear. Sweat. Adrenaline. Violence waiting for permission. My wolf tastes it before they reach the bed and bares his teeth because he can’t tell the difference between fear and threat when he’s cornered.
She doesn’t smell like that.
Lavender. Soap. Warm skin. No sharp chemical spike of terror. No hunger under the calm. When she touches me, my wolf goes quiet.
He went quiet today, too.
Her wrist trapped in my grip. Her pulse kicking against my thumb. The blood-hunger still beating in my skull.
The rest of her against me—solid, warm, real in a way nothing had been real for years. Her hip caught against mine. Her hand flat on my chest. The sharp little breath she took when I pulled her in. Not fear.
Not only fear.
And still, when she said wait, he listened.
I think about the syringe.
