“Sable.”
I stop.
“This is my decision, and I believe it’s the right one,” she says. “But it’s still going to be a locked room. It’s still going to be walls and protocol and someone else deciding if he wakes up.”
I look back at her. “I know.”
“Be there for him when it happens.”
I nod. She doesn’t need me to explain why I will be. Which is a relief, because I don’t really know.
I leave her office and walk back to the healers’ wing. The corridor is empty. The broken door has been replaced. Dane is still posted outside, arms still folded, watching the hall.
“I’m sure it’s safe for you to go now, Dane,” I tell him.
He raises an eyebrow at me. “You sure about that?”
I think about his expression when he saw me in that corridor. How he stopped when I asked him to.
“Yes,” I say. “He’s not going to hurt anyone.”
Dane nods and heads down the hall, and I turn to the repaired door. Inside the room, he lies on the cot with his face turned toward the window. The light is almost gone, and his features are cast in shadow. His breathing is deep and even. His hands are open on the blanket, palms up.
I smooth the blanket and tuck it around his shoulders. My hand stays on his arm for a moment. The muscle is warm through the wool.
“What’s going on inside that head of yours, hmm?” I murmur. I rub my thumb over the point where his pulse beats steadily. And I’m sure—sure—I feel a fraction of a change for a moment.
Two weeks. He’s been here two weeks, and his body has been changing the whole time. Through the sedation, through the locked door, through every dose I administered and every word I said into a room I thought couldn’t hear me. He was listening. He was adjusting. His metabolism burning hotter, his sleep growing shallower, his wolf turning toward my voice. And I missed it because the signs were small and I was too busy telling myself he was just a patient.
He was never just a patient.
My wolf presses forward until I can feel her under my skin, and the tight thing behind my ribs won’t ease no matter how hard I breathe.
Tomorrow, we leave for Aurora. A facility with better walls and better drugs and people who know what they’re doing with wolves like him.
I should want that.
I pull my hand back and go to pack.
Chapter 11
Him
I take in the world the way I’ve learned to become aware of it for the past few years: through sensation. There’s metal beneath my back. Vibrating. Engine noise and wheels on rough ground.
Moving. I’m moving.
Are they transferring me?
I go under again before I can hold onto it.
When I come back, the straps are the first thing I know.
Chest. Wrists. Ankles.
Synthetic. Wide. No give.
My body recognizes them before my mind catches up. The pressure sits in the old grooves, exactly where the skin remembers being held down.
