“Are you cold?” I ask, because she’s shivering, and the quilt has slid down to her waist.
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t argue, either. She’s still in that thin T-shirt and those pajama shorts, and this room has always been drafty. I go to my room, grab a flannel shirt and bring it back. “You can wear this.”
She looks at it, then at me before holding out her free hand to take it. I untie her wrist yet again so she can put it on and will my hands to keep from lingering too long against her bare skin.
She pulls the flannel on over her T-shirt, and the soft, worn fabric swallows her tiny body. She’s way too thin. I could practically count her ribs under my fingers as I carried her. Her collarbones jut out sharp enough to cast shadows, and there’s a bruise visible on the inside of her left elbow when she pushes up the sleeves. Dark and intense against her pale skin. She buttons the flannel with clumsy fingers, and something in my chest turns over.
Something else happens, too. Lower. Physical. The kind of reaction I was not expecting and am not prepared for.
It throws me. That’s not how this works. Not for us. Wolves don’t react to just anyone. It’s not random, it’s not casual. It’s specific. It only happens when?—
I kill the thought before it’s complete because, no. Giving it any of my already lagging energy would only make everything worse.
She looks up at me, and I realize she caught me staring. There’s something cautious in her expression, wary but curious, like she’s trying to work me out. “Was it you?” she asks.
“Was what me?”
“The other facility.” She pulls her knees up, my shirt covering them with flannel to spare. “The one that blew up. Was that you guys?”
I didn’t expect her to ask or even speak to me at all unless absolutely necessary. Instead, she’s coming at me with questions. Interesting.
I could lie, but what would be the point? “Yes.”
She takes that in. Not much changes on her face beyond a little tightness around her eyes, the way her lips press together. Then a nod, slow, like she’s filing it away.
I don’t know why it feels necessary to keep pushing, but I do. “The facility where your father kept my brother’s mate locked up for years and used her as a test subject.”
There it is. A flinch she can’t quite hide. She looks away from me, staring over my shoulder out the window. “All test subjects are there of their own free will.” The words come out smooth, rehearsed, like she’s reciting something she learned a long time ago and has never questioned since. It sounds like her dad’s voice coming out of her mouth.
“Their own free will,” I repeat. Is she for real? A laugh rumbles in my chest, filled with disbelief. “Where in the hell did you get that idea?”
“The program has guidelines. Protocols. Nobody is forced to participate.” She lifts her chin. “I should know, because I’m also a test subject. I volunteered.”
I look at her. She looks back, and she means it. This isn’t a bluff or a deflection. She believes what she’s saying. She volunteered to let her father run experiments on her, and she thinks everyone else in those facilities did the same.
His own daughter. The man experiments on his own daughter.
“What’s he doing to you?” It comes out rougher than I mean it to. “The tests. Whatever he’s putting in you. What is it?”
Part of her wants to answer. I can feel it like a physical thing, this pull between us, a current running under the surface. She opens her mouth.
And then the wall goes back up.
“My father’s research is aimed at bridging the biological gap between humans and shifters.” Flat, robotic. Rehearsed down to the pauses between the words. “The potential applications in regenerative medicine could transform healthcare. Accelerated healing, enhanced immune response, cellular regeneration. This is about progress. Helping all of humanity.”
Every word is perfect. Every word is empty. She’s given this speech before, or she’s heard it so many times that it’s second nature now. It’s not her talking. It’s him.
I should be pissed. She’s in my house, wearing my shirt, tied to my bed, and she’s feeding me a goddamn brochure. She’s covering for the man who left her on the floor like she was nothing.
But I look at her—this skinny, shivering girl swimming in my flannel, with dark circles under her eyes and unshaking belief that her father is one of the good guys—and anger isn’t what I feel.
I’m worried about her. Under the mission and the instincts and whatever my wolf thinks he knows, I am worried about this girl who volunteered to let someone hurt her and genuinely believes she made a free choice.
Not only that, but that everybody else made their own free choice, like she did.
I tie her wrist back to the headboard, then pull the quilt up because she’s still shaking. She watches me do it with an expression I can’t read. It’s damn unnerving, like she’s trying to see inside my head. She doesn’t want to do that. She doesn’t want to know what I’m thinking about her and her fucked-up father. “Get some sleep,” I grunt.
She turns toward the wall without another word. After a while, her breathing evens out, and some of the tension crackling in the air smooths out.
