The word lands too close to the place I’ve been refusing to examine.
“He was conditioned,” I say. “For years. Pain, sedation, isolation, obedience. Of course he reacts when I leave. Of course he reacts when he thinks I’m hurt.”
“Sable.”
“No.” I pull my hand back before she can soften me with that voice. “Don’t make this mystical because it’s easier than looking at what they did to him.”
Nadia doesn’t argue. She just looks at me with the eyes of a woman who found her own mate and knows exactly what denial sounds like.
“Walk with me,” she says. “You need to be away from this corridor before Viktor gets here.”
She helps me up. We walk…away from the observation room, away from the containment level, up a flight of stairs to a quiet corridor where the air is clean. There’s a bench by a window. Nadia sits. I stand for a moment, then sit because my legs won’t hold.
“Tell me about Jason,” she says.
I don’t ask how she knows the name. “He died. Before the bond was sealed. I thought that was my chance, and I missed it.”
“And now?”
I look at my hands. The scrapes from the crevice are still healing.
These hands held Jason while his body cooled. They held Rafael’s face in the firelight while he looked at me as if I was the first thing in the world he knew how to trust.
The memories don’t touch the same place in me.
Jason was gentle. The bond between us came slowly, one careful step at a time, and I always felt as if I could choose the next one.
Rafael was never like that.
The first time I touched his wrist, something in me locked on. I’ve been trying to pry it loose ever since, and all I’ve done is tear myself open around it.
“It’s not the same,” I say.
Nadia waits.
“I can grieve Jason and still know the difference.” My voice is quieter than I want it to be. “Rafael isn’t a second chance at what I lost. He’s Rafael. And when I try to step away from him, my wolf reacts like I’m leaving part of myself behind.”
“Sable.” She leans forward. “I have to be honest with you. After what happened in that observation room, he’s going to start running out of options.”
“Hehasoptions! If you’d just listen—”
“Viktor will want to talk to you,” she interrupts me. “And what he’ll tell you is that Aurora can’t hold a wolf whose magic breaks warded containment. That the gas is a last resort, not a protocol. That they don’t have the resources to manage a subject who detonates every time someone upsets his healer.”
“He’s not beyond saving.”
“I don’t think he is either. But what I think and what the Council decides are different things.” She reaches across and takes my hand. “If they classify him as unrecoverable, the options narrow to things neither of us wants to think about.”
The corridor is quiet. The light through the window is flat and gray.
“I won’t let that happen,” I say.
“You might not have a choice.”
“Then I’ll make one.”
Nadia holds my gaze. Whatever she sees in my face, she doesn’t argue with it. She squeezes my hand and lets go.
“Let’s get you back to your room,” she says. “You need—”
