Chapter 36 Mira #2
“Don’t tell anyone about this. The shaking, the nosebleed. Any of it.”
His jaw tightened. “Mira...”
“I mean it, Wyatt. Not Thiago. Not the clinic. Nobody.”
The reluctance was visible. He worked through it slowly, mouth pressed flat, before giving a single nod. “Fine. But if you collapse during a session, I’m carrying you to Elaine myself and you can be mad about it later.”
“Deal.”
We sat in the mud while the morning sun dried the puddle around us and the guards on the south wall pretended not to watch.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” I said.
“You can ask. I reserve the right to deflect.”
“How did you end up here?”
The pause was brief. He’d told this story before.
“Rogue wolf killed my parents when I was nine. I was at a friend’s house that night.
” He pulled a blade of grass from the edge of the courtyard and wound it around his finger.
“Foster care after that. Eight years. The Order found me, explained what really happened, gave me a choice.” He shrugged. “So I chose.”
His story sounded so similar to mine.
If Thiago hadn’t abandoned me. I’d have grown up inside these walls. Would have become exactly what my father wanted.
If three lycans had walked into my life would the girl raised inside this compound have felt the bond pull and followed it?
I didn’t have an answer.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Long time ago.” He stood, offered his hand. “Come on. Thirty minutes left.”
I took his hand and got out of the mud and carried the question with me through the rest of the session.
Thiago’s office smelled of coffee and the faint chemical undertone of whatever they used on the leather.
“Your grandmother had the same aptitude.”
Fourteen times. I’d started counting after the eighth because the repetition felt intentional.
“You have instincts that training can’t teach.” He set a file on the desk between us.
“Is that your way of saying I’m getting better at falling down?”
“It’s my way of saying you belong here, Mira.”
The words landed in a place I didn’t want them to reach.
Because the training did feel good. Discovering my body could do things, not feeling helpless anymore.
Competence. That’s what Thiago was selling. And competence was addictive to a woman who’d spent most of her life feeling powerless.
“I want to see the lower sublevel,” I said.
The tell was in his hands. A micro-pause in the way his fingers wrapped around his coffee cup.
A beat of silence.
“There are protocols, Mira. Clearance levels that exist for your safety and ours.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true.” He sipped his coffee. “Your grandmother waited eleven months before her first tour of the research level.”
I didn’t push further. Pushing Thiago was a precision instrument, not a battering ram. He’d open the door when I’d earned enough trust or accumulated enough leverage.
The keypad was a twelve-digit system.
I’d watched six different people enter codes, memorizing hand positions from angles where the cameras couldn’t catch me watching.
The first three digits were consistent across every code I’d observed: 4-7-2.
The remaining digits varied by clearance level.
I needed four more numbers and a twelve-minute window.
“Patience it is,” I said.
He smiled. I smiled back. Neither smile reached our eyes.
Later on, I find myself leaving food in the woods.
I’m not sure why I did it. Guilt, maybe. Or the inability to stop caring about someone who’d told me he couldn’t stay away even after I’d told him to leave.
I wrapped bread, an apple, and dried meat in a cloth napkin from dinner. Tucked it into my jacket. Walked to the eastern tree line during the gap, which I’d timed fourteen times before trusting the pattern. Left the bundle at the base of a pine tree twenty feet past the cameras.
The next morning, the napkin was there. Food untouched.
I told myself I was relieved. Percival had listened. He’d gone.
Second night, I left more. Added water.
Untouched.
Third night, I almost didn’t go. The point of feeding a ghost escaped me. He was gone. I’d told him to leave and he’d left and that was the right call for both of us.
I went anyway.
Fourth morning, I checked at dawn. Prepared for the same untouched napkin.
The napkin was folded neatly at the base of the tree. The food was gone.
My pulse stuttered. I knelt, touched the cloth. Folded with care, the corners tucked in a way that wasn’t wind or animals.
A person had done this. Taken the food, eaten it before leaving it for me to find.
I stood and looked around.
Dawn light filtered through the canopy. The forest was quiet. No footprints in the soft ground, which meant whoever had been here knew how to walk without leaving traces. Or wasn’t walking on human feet.
My chest ached. I turned to leave.
“I tried.”
The voice came from behind me. Low, rough, stripped of its usual warmth. I froze with my back to the trees and my hands curled at my sides.
“I tried to go, Mira. Picked a direction and walked for three days.” A pause. The sound of someone swallowing around the truth. “Couldn’t find my way home. Kept ending up back here.”
I didn’t turn around. If I turned around, I’d see him.
And if I saw him, I’d break.
I walked back toward the compound without responding. Through the tree line, past the cameras, across the courtyard. I went inside and closed the door.
Pressed my back against it and slid to the floor with my hands over my mouth and my eyes burning.
He was still there.