“I also saw a healer who withheld critical information about her patient’s condition because she wanted more time.” Brenna meets my eyes. “Your judgment on this isn’t clean, and we both know it.”
I don’t flinch. I should.
She pauses. Something in her face shifts; not softer, exactly, but more careful. “Merric told me a little about your history. About the mate you lost.”
My hands go still at my sides. The air in the room changes.
“He wasn’t my mate.” My voice is suddenly hoarse. “We never…”
Sealed the bond.
I can’t say it.
Brenna raises her hand. “He didn’t give me details,” she says. “And I’m not asking for them. But what I know is that you lostsomeone who mattered. And I know how you lost him, that he went down, and you sat beside him, and he didn’t come back.” Her voice is steady, but her eyes are careful on mine. “And now you’re sitting beside another unconscious man, fighting to bring him back when everyone else is telling you it might not be possible. Do you hear what I’m saying, Sable?”
My jaw locks. The denial is right there—this isn’t that, this is different, I’m a healer doing her job—but the words won’t come. Because she isn’t wrong about what it looks like. The vigil. The one-sided conversations. The refusal to let go. I’ve done this before. I sat beside Jason for eleven days while his body breathed, and his mind was gone. I talked to him the way I talk to the man in my locked room, and I told him I’d be there when he woke up. And he never woke up.
I hate that she can see it.
From the outside, it must look the same.
It isn’t.
Jason never once turned toward my voice. Never squeezed my fingers. Never fought his way back through the dark to meet me halfway.
Hedid.
His hand opened when I said wait.
The memory hits so hard I have to close my fingers around the edge of Brenna’s desk to keep from reaching for something that isn’t there.
I can’t explain that to her.
Not yet.
“I made a mistake,” I say. “I own that. But if you transfer him without me, and he wakes up alone in another facility, surrounded by strangers… After everything they did to him back at that hell-hole. That isn’t a fresh start. That’s a repetition.”
Brenna is quiet for a long time. Long enough that I can hear the kettle start to whistle in the kitchen, and Greta’s footsteps crossing the floor to take it off the heat.
“Sable—” she begins.
“Brenna, how long have you been fighting what the purists have done to your kind? Years? Longer?”
“Too long,” she mutters.
“Don’t let him be just another wolf who gets lost to that system. Because we may have taken him from them, but he’s by no means saved.”
Brenna heaves a sigh. “If I let you go,” she says slowly, “you follow Aurora’s protocols. Not yours. You don’t adjust doses without approval. You report everything to Viktor or whoever he assigns. Everything, Sable. No more judgment calls.”
“Understood.”
“And if they determine he can’t be recovered—if they decide he needs permanent containment—you accept that.”
My throat closes. I breathe past it. “Yes.”
She turns back from the window. “I’ll contact Viktor tonight. Transport and a secure room will take a day to arrange.” She pauses. “Pack your things.”
I nod. Turn for the door.
