Too late.
The sting hits the side of my neck. Cold. A needle punched through skin, and I feel the heat before my hand reaches the dart. My fingers close around the shaft and pull it free, but the drug is already in me, already spreading, faster than the other doses, faster than anything she’s given me.
I turn. There’s a man behind me. Tall. Blond. Dart gun still raised, his eyes flat with the focus of someone doing a job.
My legs go.
I hit the floor on one knee. Try to rise. My hands are on the wood, and the grain is rough under my palms. I can feel the compound through the floorboards, footsteps, voices, the vibration of a building full of people who are all awake and all watching.
Then her hands. On my shoulders. Not holding, steadying. She’s on the floor beside me, and the second her skin touchesmine, the hum in my chest shifts. The pressure that was pushing outward turns inward, and instead of pressing against everything it touches, it presses toward her. Settles. The tremor in my arms eases. My claws retract without me choosing it.
Her scent wraps around me, soap and herbs and that warm undertone that my wolf presses toward even as the world narrows to a point.
“I’m here,” she says. Her voice is close. Right against my ear. “I’m here. You’re not going back to that other place. I promise. Not ever.”
I try to hold onto the words. The drug is pulling everything sideways, and the corridor is shifting, and her hands are the only fixed point.
“You’re safe,” she says. Quieter now. “I promise.”
The drug takes my legs first. Then my arms. Then the corridor, the light, the sound of footsteps. Her hands stay longer than anything else, the pressure of her fingers on my shoulders, the warmth of her beside me on the floor.
My wolf curls toward her scent and holds it as long as he can.
Then the cold comes in, and even that goes.
Chapter 10
Sable
I work first. Think later. He’s on the floor where he fell, breathing slowly and heavily under the tranquilizer. I check his airway, his pulse, the injection site on his neck where the dart went in. No complications. The dose was clean. Whoever loaded that dart knew exactly how much it takes to drop a wolf this size, and they didn’t err on the side of caution.
The child—Alec, one of the Ravenclaw youngsters—is pressed against the wall with his mother’s arms around him. He hasn’t blinked since I got here. His eyes are fixed on the prone form on the floor. His mother’s hand is in his hair, and the look she gives me doesn’t need words.
“He’s unconscious,” I tell them. “He can’t hurt anyone right now.”
She doesn’t answer. She pulls Alec closer and turns his face into her shoulder.
I move through the corridor. Greta is sitting on a bench with the woman who screamed, murmuring to her while she breathes into cupped hands. It’s Hazel, the healer who’d come with me when we came to help with the first batch of rescued wolves. She’s shaken but unhurt.
Two males are already working on the broken door frame, examining the split in the wood without speaking.
One of them, Matthew, turns to me. “We’ll need to replace it. It’ll take about an hour.”
I nod in response.
The other wolves have retreated to their rooms, doors shut. I can’t blame them.
Cameron and Lachlan help me move him back to his room. We use the replacement cot someone dragged in while I was checking the others. His third since he’s been here. The door won’t lock anymore—the frame is split clean through—so I leave it open and put Dane outside.
“Nobody goes in,” I tell him.
He nods, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the wall.
Brenna is waiting in the corridor when I come out.
“My office,” she says. “Now.”
I follow her down the hall, through the main room, past the kitchen, where Greta is making tea for Hazel because Greta responds to crisis with a kettle. The office door closes behind us, and the sound of it makes my shoulders tighten.
