I gather my kit and walk out, closing the door behind me.
The lock turns under my hand.
For a moment, I stand there with my fingers still on the key, listening to the slow, drugged rhythm of his breathing on the other side. I tell myself he’s safe. The pack is safe. This is what a responsible healer does when compassion becomes dangerous.
Then I make myself walk away.
Chapter 2
Him
The world comes back in pieces. Cold floor under me. Blood thick on my tongue, iron and salt. Something tight across my chest—no, not restraints, just the way my ribs refuse to expand. Breathing costs too much.
I don’t remember hitting the ground.
The drug spreads through my veins, numbing everything it touches. My fingers won’t close. My eyelids weigh a thousand pounds. Somewhere distant, my wolf claws at the inside of my skull, snarling, but the sound is muffled. Drowning.
Hands.
That’s what I remember. Hands on my arms. Hands pulling. The room slipping away, furniture crashing, and then—
Claws.
Mine. Theirs. Blood on the floor. Someone’s arm torn open, white bone showing through red. The wolf surging up my spine,half-formed and rabid, because the room was too small and the hands wouldn’tstopand—
Then the needle.
Always the fucking needle.
I try to lift my head. Can’t. The ceiling swims above me, water-stained and gray. The light fixture bends like it’s melting. My pulse thuds slow and thick in my ears, each beat a countdown to nothing.
Voices filter in. Male. Low. Talking somewhere beyond my field of vision.
“—hit a wall.”
“Wall should’ve moved.”
Laughter. Brief. Forced. Then footsteps, fading.
I don’t know where I am.
I know I was somewhere else before. The details come in flashes: concrete walls, fluorescent lights that stayed on through the night, the smell of disinfectant layered over urine and fear. The exam room with the steel table and the leather straps worn smooth from use. The observation window where faces appeared and disappeared without speaking.
And her. Dr. Fell. Small hands. Cool, dry fingers pressing two fingers to the inside of my wrist, counting, measuring. Her other hand making notes that I couldn’t see.
“Good morning, 3-0-6-7-0.”
The number, every time. Never anything else. Then the needle.
Is this still that place?
My chest tightens. I can’t get enough air. The room presses in, walls closing, and I try to move, but my body won’t obey. The drug has me pinned like an insect on a board.
Then…a scent.
Soft. Clean. Not antiseptic. Something warmer. Lavender, maybe. Soap. It cuts through the fog just enough to register as different.
That scent has been here from the start. A detail my wolf attaches to even when the rest of me is under. Part of me does too. It feels…settling. I don’t have a better word for it.
