“You’re making arguments on my behalf?”
“Since you walked through the front door.” She stands. Planting herself in a way that says she’s not moving. “I told Viktor what you told me. The conditioning. The triggers. The fact that Rafael responds to your voice in ways no protocol can replicate. I’m building a case. If you go down there shouting at a Syndicate delegation, everything I’ve built falls apart.”
My jaw locks. The impulse to move—push past her, find the conference room, put myself between that woman and Rafael’s cell—is so strong my muscles ache.
“She can’t go in that room with him.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know. You don’t know what she is.” I face her. “She’s not a researcher who crossed lines. He flinches from every touch. Every hand that reaches for him, his body expects pain. She did that. She made sure the only touch he understood was hers, and it wasn’t clinical, Nadia.”
I stop. My throat closes.
“She wanted him. Not his data. Him. And she designed a program that gave her five years alone in a room with his body, and nobody questioned it because she dressed it in protocols and published the results.”
Nadia’s face has gone still.
“If she gets access to his cell, she won’t stabilize him. She’ll trigger every piece of conditioning she built. His wolf will recognize her—not the way he recognizes a threat. The way he recognizes a handler.” My hands are shaking openly. “Viktor will see a wolf who responds to her commands and think she’s helping. It won’t be helping. It’ll be the thing she trained into him with a scalpel and five years of being the only person who touched him.”
Nadia takes my hands. Holds them until the shaking steadies.
“I hear you,” she says. “I’m going back into that meeting. I’m going to tell Viktor exactly what you just told me.” Her eyes hold mine. “But I need you to stay here. If you go down there, Creed uses your behavior to argue you’re compromised. Fell smiles and agrees. Viktor has one more reason to consider their offer.”
Every instinct says go. Find him. Stand at the door.
But she’s right. If I walk in shaking and shouting about scars, I become the evidence. Emotionally compromised healer. Every label they’ve already pinned to me, confirmed.
“Go,” I say. “And Nadia…”
She stops at the door.
“Tell Viktor to ask her about the scar. The one on his ribcage. The long one. Ask her what procedure required a thirteen-inchincision along the costal margin with no purpose anyone can identify.” I hold her eyes. “If she’s a researcher, she’ll have an answer. If she’s what I think she is, she’ll deflect. And Viktor will know.”
I pray he’ll know.
She nods once. Opens the door. Steps through.
The lock clicks.
I stand in the middle of the room. Tea going cold on the nightstand. Light fading through the sealed window.
My hands open and close at my sides.
His voice in the cave. The quiet way he said my name…not the desperate way through the glass, but the way he said it by the fire. His hand reaching for mine in the dark.
Always ask.
Like it was the most important thing anyone had ever taught him.
Because no one asked him. Not in years. Not once.
She never asked.
Chapter 23
Rafael
The restraints are the same. Padded cuffs. Wrists, chest, ankles. But the fog is thinner this time. When I open my eyes, the ceiling has edges, and the monitors have numbers I can read. My heart rate: seventy-nine. My breathing: steady.
