A bed.
The hands retreat. I hear shuffling, murmured conversation, footsteps fading.
Then it’s just her again.
She’s pulling a blanket up over me. Tucking it around my shoulders. The gesture is so ordinary, sonormal, that it takes me a second to understand what she’s doing.
No one tucks you in at the facility. No one makes sure you’re warm.
Her hand hovers over my arm. I can feel the warmth of her skin, close but not touching. The vibration in my chest stirs again, that low, formless thing that the drug should have buried but didn’t. It rises toward her hand. For a second, my body hums with something that isn’t pain and isn’t fear and isn’t the wolf’s territorial snarl.
Then she pulls back, and it fades, and the cold fills in where the warmth was.
I want to tell her something. I don’t know what. Maybethank you. Maybedon’t leave. Maybewho the fuck are you, and why aren’t you hurting me yet?
But my tongue is too heavy. My throat won’t work.
She stands. I hear her moving around the room again. The sound of glass against metal. A cabinet closing. Small, careful sounds. The sounds of someone putting a broken place back in order.
Then she walks to the door.
I try to turn my head, try to see if she’s really leaving, but my body won’t cooperate. All I can do is listen.
The door opens. Closes.
The lock clicks.
My body hears it before my mind does. Every muscle that can still answer goes tight. My fingers drag once against the blanket, useless, searching for purchase they won’t find.
Locked.
Of course it’s locked.
The room is warmer than the white room. The bed is softer. The blanket still holds the shape of her hands where she pulled it over my shoulders.
The lock sounds the same.
Different room. Different woman. Same cage.
The darkness pulls at me, thick and suffocating. I sink into it because I don’t have a choice.
But the last thing I register before I go under is the contradiction burning in my chest:
She tucked me in.
And then she locked the door.
Chapter 3
Sable
Greta is already pouring tea when I walk into the kitchen. She doesn’t look up from the pot.
“Sit,” she says. “You look like hell.”
“Good morning to you, too.”
She sets a mug in front of me and slides a plate across the table—thick slices of bread, butter, a wedge of cheese.
