My vision goes red.
Not a color. A state. Her panicked voice, her frantic struggles. The hands on her that weren’t invited… It’s too much.
The shift rips through me before the thought completes.
Bones cracking. Muscle re-shaping. My jaw extends, my claws punch through, and the snarl that tears out of my chest shakes the air. The hum comes with it.
Not the tone I used on the bear, or the one I felt with her.
The weapon. The pressure that pushes against everything it touches.
The snow in the clearing lifts. The trees at the edges groan. The nearest operative stumbles backward, and his rifle comes up.
“Weapons hot! He’s shifting!”
“Rafael, don’t!” Sable’s voice. High. Desperate. “Don’t do this. I can reason with them. Rafael, STOP—”
I hear her. Somewhere past the wolf’s roar, past the pressure building behind my ribs, I hear her saying my name, and the part of me that emerged in that cave last night knows I should listen. But the wolf isn’t allowing it, because those men have their hands on her, andno one touches her.
Someone’s running up toward me. I swivel my head, focus on him, and the hum erupts. He lifts off the floor, flies ten feet through the air, and lands on his back, gasping.
“Rafael!” Sable screams, and it’s not in fear now. It’s a warning.
The dart hits my neck.
I rip it out. Keep moving toward them. The operative with the heavier weapon shoulders it.
A second dart. My thigh. The drug is faster this time. It hits like a wall. My legs buckle. The hum blows outward in a raw, uncontrolled pulse that flattens the snow in a ten-foot radius and sends two operatives to their knees.
“Take him out!” someone yells. “Before he—”
“Hold your fire! Hold your fucking fire!” The bear-man’s voice again. Deep. Commanding. “You’re making it worse!”
A third dart. My shoulder. My vision breaks apart. The snow is cold under my palms. My claws rake the frozen earth, and I try to get up, try to reach her, but my arms won’t hold.
Sable is screaming. Not the sharp scream of the corridor; a hoarse, desperate sound, the sound of a woman watching something break that she just spent three days putting together. She’s fighting toward me. Someone is holding her back. She’s clawing at the arm across her chest.
“Don’t hurt him! He’s not dangerous. He’s reacting to you, can’t you see that? Let me go! Let me fucking GO—”
The drug takes my legs. Then my arms. Then the clearing, the sky, the operatives, the screaming.
The last thing I hear is her voice. My name, over and over, getting further away.
The last thing I feel is the snow against my cheek and the hum dying in my chest.
The cold comes in.
And then nothing.
Chapter 18
Sable
They put me in the second vehicle. Not with Rafael. With two operatives who don’t speak to me, and a woman driving who checks the mirror every thirty seconds as if I might dissolve. Someone gave me clothes—gray sweats, a fleece, boots two sizes too big—and a bottle of water I haven’t opened.
The first vehicle is ahead of us. I can see it through the windshield on the straights, disappearing around the curves. Rafael’s sedated body is in that vehicle. So is the big man who was there when they took us.
Every time the gap between the vehicles widens, my wolf comes up hard enough to make my teeth ache. She doesn’t understand procedure, chain of custody, containment protocols, or the fact that I am one bad decision away from being barred from Rafael’s care permanently.
