Chapter 37 #2
Garrett rolls the wolf off him — barely — and staggers away.
The three of them back toward the door, and the wolf doesn’t follow.
He retreats to the far corner, crouched, teeth bared, his massive body coiled and shaking.
Blood on his hands from the partial shift, the transformation tearing skin that’s weakened by years of suppression runes.
Sable steps into the room. Alone.
There’s a syringe in her hand, low, behind her thigh. She doesn’t lead with it. She leads with her voice.
“Hey.” Low. Steady. A different register from the command she used on the men.
This is the voice she uses for him. I’ve heard it through the walls at night when I’ve walked past the healers’ wing.
Soft. Patient. Talking to something dangerous that she refuses to be afraid of.
“It’s me. It’s Sable. You know my voice. ”
The snarling drops. Not gone, the rumble continues, the deep vibration of an animal warning everything in the room that he’ll tear it apart. But the pitch changes. The wild eyes find her face.
“You’re not in the facility,” she says. Moving closer. Slowly. One step. Another. “I know it feels like it. Small room. Walls. People grabbing you. I know. But this isn’t that place. There are no chains. Feel your wrists. The chains are off.”
His eyes stay on her. The blue is startling — vivid, intense, the eyes of a wolf whose color should be beautiful and is currently terrifying.
His claws are still out, still scoring the floorboards.
But his body has shifted from attack-ready to something else.
Listening. Accepting the possibility that she’s not a threat.
Sable is close now. Four feet. Three. Her hand comes up, slow, open, showing him the palm. Not reaching for him. Just offering.
“I’m here. I’m not going to hurt you. Nobody in this room is going to hurt you.”
His eyes drop from her face to her hand.
The rumble in his chest fades to something quieter.
Not trust. Exhaustion running up against something he can’t identify — her scent, her voice, the fact that she keeps coming back, and she keeps being gentle.
The gentleness doesn’t compute with anything the facility would have taught him.
His gaze lifts back to her face and holds. For two seconds, he’s not feral. For two seconds, there’s a man behind the blue eyes, looking out at her from behind the wreckage.
Sable moves. Fast, sure, the practiced motion of a healer who’s done this four times this week. The needle finds his shoulder while his eyes are on her face. She presses the plunger.
He explodes. The reaction is instant, his body lurching forward, his claws raking the air where she was a second ago.
She’s already back, already clear, reading his trajectory the way a wolf reads a charging animal.
The snarl that tears from him rattles the windows.
He crashes into the overturned cot, sending it spinning across the room, and his fists slam the floor hard enough to crack a board.
“I know,” Sable says. Still calm. Still gentle. Standing just outside his reach as his body rages against the sedative entering his bloodstream. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I keep doing this to you.”
He lunges for the door. He makes it three steps before his legs buckle, and he goes to one knee. He tries to rise. His hands are on the floor, claws retracting as the drug pulls the wolf back, and the blue eyes find Sable one more time.
The look he gives her isn’t rage. It’s betrayal. An animal that almost trusted the hand and got a needle instead.
“I know,” she whispers. “Next time will be different. I promise.”
His eyes close. The shift reverses, teeth shortening, the half-wolf features smoothing back to human. He goes down slowly, caught by his own arms, then his elbows, then the floor. His face turns to the side. His breathing deepens.
He’s out.
Thank fuck.
I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until it comes out in a rush.
Sable kneels beside him and checks his pulse. Then she pulls the blanket from the destroyed cot and covers him, tucking it around his shoulders with a care that goes beyond medical. Her hand rests on his arm, on the number tattooed there, her fingers tracing the digits without reading them.
“How long can you keep doing this?” I ask from the doorway.
She doesn’t look up. “As long as it takes.”
“He nearly killed three of our best fighters.”
“He nearly killed three men who grabbed him in an enclosed space. His response was appropriate for what he’s been through.
” Her hand stays on his arm. “He needs space. He needs sky. He needs to wake up somewhere that doesn’t have walls closing in on him.
And he needs—” She stops. Starts again. “He needs someone to stop sedating him and start letting him be afraid without punishing him for it.”
“That someone being you.”
She looks at me, eyes steady. I see it then. She’s found something in this broken wolf that she doesn’t fully understand and isn’t ready to walk away from.
“That someone being me,” she says.
I nod and join the others as we move away to let her do what she does best.
Conner finds us at the truck. Mia is asleep on his shoulder — the ceremony, the crowd, the emotional weight of the morning having finally exhausted her. Willow is beside him. She looks at me. At the bag on my shoulder. At Garrett standing beside me.
“You’re going,” she says.
“We’re going.”
“Today.”
“Now.”
She nods. Her eyes are wet, but she’s smiling. “The baby—”
“I’ll call. Every week.”
“Every day.”
“Willow.”
“Fine. Every week. But I’m visiting.”
“You’re always welcome.”
She hugs me. Fast and fierce because we’re both wolves, and wolves don’t linger over goodbyes. Her hand squeezes my arm. Then she steps back.
Conner shifts Mia on his shoulder and looks at his brother. The conversation between them happens without words… the way it’s been happening more and more. The language of two men who grew up in the same house, then broke apart, and are finding their way back.
“Take care of her,” Conner says. Meaning me.
“She’d kill me if she heard you say that,” Garrett says.
“I heard you say that,” I say.
“I meant Mia,” Conner says, and almost smiles.
“Sure you did.”
Brenna is on the porch. She doesn’t come to the truck.
She stands with her coffee and watches us load the bag.
Then she gives me one nod — the alpha’s benediction, the permission to go that she knows I don’t need but offers anyway because that’s what alphas do.
Merric is beside her, and he gives me the same nod.
I nod back.
I have one more thing to do.
I reach into the side pocket of my bag and pull out the rabbit.
Mia is drowsing on Conner’s shoulder. I walk up to them, and I hold the rabbit where she can see it. Despite the matted fur and the chewed ear, it’s still fluffy, cute.
“Mia.”
She opens her eyes and sees the rabbit. Her eyes go wide, and her hand comes off Conner’s collar and reaches for it.
“This was someone’s,” I say. “Someone who went through a bad place. Like you did. I carried it for a long time. I don’t need to carry it anymore. Do you want to keep it safe?”
She takes the rabbit. Both hands. Holds it against her chest with the rubber ball trapped between them. The ball in one hand, the rabbit in the other, two objects that contain more meaning than any child should have to hold.
“Cah,” she says, looking at me, then at Garrett. Then at the rabbit. “Bri. Cah.”
Conner’s hand settles on the back of her head. His eyes meet mine over his daughter’s hair. Whatever he’s feeling is too large for his face.
I touch Mia’s cheek. “Keep it safe, baby.”
She nods. Solemn. The way she does everything.
I walk to the truck. Garrett is in the passenger seat. I get behind the wheel and start the engine.
Ravenclaw is in the rearview. The lodge, the barn, the compound. Brenna on the porch with Merric beside her and Cameron nearby. Willow and Conner with Mia between them. Greta in the kitchen doorway, a spoon in her hand, watching us go without waving because Greta doesn’t wave.
I pull onto the road and turn south. Garrett’s hand finds mine on the gearshift, and I let it stay.
The Ozarks fall away behind us. The highway opens ahead to the Hill Country. My wolf is quiet. The deep quiet of a creature who is exactly where she’s supposed to be, heading exactly where she needs to go, carrying exactly what she was meant to carry.
The road stretches south. The morning is bright. The man beside me is holding my hand, and his thumb is tracing circles on my knuckle, and the future is a country we haven’t mapped yet.
But we’re heading into it together. And the rabbit is safe.
And that’s enough to start with.