Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Stone had been quiet for three days.
Not the dangerous kind of quiet. Not pacing, not growling, not fighting the wolf clawing beneath his skin. This was something else. Contained. Like he was holding something down with both hands and all his strength.
I sat with him.
His room had been repaired after the breakdown. New bed frame. Fresh paint on the walls. No evidence of the destruction except for a faint discoloration near the window where Martinez's blood had seeped into the floor.
Stone sat on the edge of the mattress. I sat in the chair by the door. Ten feet of space between us.
The bond pulled tight.
I felt the pressure of it—something building on his end, dense and heavy. He wouldn't look at me. His body was coiled, every muscle locked, jaw clenched so hard I could see the tendons straining in his neck.
I didn't push.
I just waited.
An hour passed.
Maybe more. The light shifted through the window, afternoon bleeding toward evening. I stayed still. Let the silence stretch.
Then he spoke.
"White."
One word. Barely a whisper.
I didn't move.
"Too bright." His voice was rough. Distant. Like he was talking from somewhere far away. "Couldn't move."
He wasn't telling me a story.
He was reliving it.
"Stone—"
"Don't." His hand came up. Shaking. "Just... let me."
I closed my mouth. Waited.
The words came slowly. Fragments. Pieces of something shattered that he was trying to hold together long enough to show me.
"Woke up. Didn't know where." His breathing quickened. "Tried to move. Couldn't."
I stayed still. Listened.
"Straps. Wrists. Ankles." He swallowed hard. "Chest. Couldn't breathe right. Too tight."
His eyes were open but he wasn't seeing his room. He was somewhere else. Somewhere worse.
"Lights. Fluorescent. Never turned off." A shudder ran through him. "Everything smelled... clean. Sharp. Like chemicals."
I knew that smell. The Healing Center had hints of it. Antiseptic. Sterile.
But the way he said it made it sound like poison.
"There was a table."
Stone's voice had steadied. Gone flat. The kind of flat that meant he was dissociating, putting distance between himself and the memories so he could get the words out.
"Metal. Cold. I could feel it through—" He stopped. Started again. "I was on it when I woke up. Restraints already there. Already fastened."
His hands gripped his knees.
"Wasn't a medical room. I thought it was at first. Thought maybe I'd been hurt, maybe they were helping." A bitter sound escaped him. Almost a laugh. "But the restraints were already there. Before I woke up. They knew. They knew I'd fight."
My stomach turned.
"It was prepared," he said. "The room. The table. The straps. All of it. Prepared for me."
"People came."
He was staring at the wall now. Through it.
"Coats. White coats. Three of them. Maybe four. They moved around me. Talked to each other."
His jaw tightened.
"Not to me. Never to me. Like I wasn't there. Like I was—" He searched for the word. "Furniture."
I felt sick.
"They didn't use a name. Didn't call me anything. Just 'the subject.' Or numbers. I don't remember the numbers." His voice cracked. "They never looked at my face. Not once. Not even when I screamed."
The bond between us ached with his pain. I wanted to go to him. Wanted to wrap my arms around him and pull him out of this nightmare.
I stayed where I was. He needed to finish.
"I was a student."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
Stone opened his eyes. Looked at me for the first time since he'd started talking.
"Frosthaven. I was a student here."
Here. This place.
"I had classes. Friends. A roommate whose name I can't—" His voice broke. He forced himself to continue. "I wasn't feral. I wasn't broken. I wasn't dangerous."
The bond screamed with his anguish.
"They took me. From here. From my life." His hands were shaking now. Tremors that ran up his arms and into his shoulders. "And they put me in that room. On that table. And they—"
He couldn't say it. He didn't have to.
"I wasn't born like this, Lumi." His eyes met mine. Gray and devastated and so full of grief it stole my breath. "I wasn't born feral. They made me this way."
"I fought."
His voice had dropped to barely a whisper.
"The whole time. Everything they did. I fought."
I moved closer. Slowly. Carefully. Stopped at the edge of the bed.
"My wolf. He fought too. Whatever they were putting into me, whatever they were doing—he tried to reject it. Tried to push it out." Stone's breathing was ragged now. "But it was too much. Too strong."
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
"I felt it. The moment it happened. Something inside me just—" A sound escaped him. Not quite a sob. Worse. "Tore. Like fabric ripping. My thoughts started fracturing. Pieces of me breaking off and floating away."
Tears slipped down his cheeks.
"I tried to hold on. Tried to stay myself. But I couldn't find the edges anymore. Couldn't tell where I ended and the wolf began." His whole body shuddered. "And then I couldn't pull back. I reached for control and there was nothing there. Just... gone."
He dropped his hands. Looked at me with hollow eyes.
"That's when I stopped being me."
I moved without thinking.
Sat beside him. Wrapped my arms around him. Pulled him against me.
For once, he didn't resist.
His body shook. Not with rage—with trauma. Years of it, locked away, finally breaking free. He buried his face in my shoulder and let himself fall apart.
I held on.
Felt his pain through the bond. Let it wash over me without trying to fix it or push it away. Just absorbed it. Anchored him.
"I've got you," I whispered. "I'm here. I've got you."
He clung to me like I was the only solid thing in a world that had ripped everything else away.
We stayed like that for a long time.
When his breathing finally steadied, I asked the question.
"Do you remember your name?"
Quiet. Careful.
Stone went still.
For a moment, I thought he wouldn't answer. Thought maybe the question was too much, too soon, too raw.
Then he shook his head.
"No."
One word. But it carried the weight of everything he'd lost.
"I remember pieces. Flashes. A face in a mirror that might have been mine. A voice calling something I can't—" He exhaled. Shaky. "But the name. My name. It's gone."
I felt his grief through the bond. Not sharp like fresh pain. Deeper. The ache of something missing that could never be recovered.
"They took that too," he said quietly. "Along with everything else."
The silence that followed was heavy.
Stone pulled back. Not far—just enough to look at me. His face was tear-streaked, eyes red, but something in his expression had shifted. Settled.
"They did this to me."
"On purpose. Deliberately." His jaw tightened. "I wasn't an accident. I wasn't collateral damage. Someone put me on that table and broke me apart because they wanted to."
I thought about the files Neal had found.
Stone wasn't alone.
None of them were accidents.
"The others," I said slowly. "Gray. Cal. Do you think—"
"We're going to find out," I said.
"How?"
"I don't know yet. But there are records somewhere. Files. Evidence." I squeezed his hand. "Someone knows the truth. And we're going to make them tell us."
He studied my face. Looking for doubt, maybe. Or fear.
He didn't find either.
"You believe me," he said quietly. "About all of it."
"Of course I believe you."
"Even the parts that don't make sense? The pieces I can't explain?"
"Especially those." I held his gaze. "You're not crazy, Stone. You're not imagining things. What happened to you was real. And it was wrong. And whoever did it is going to answer for it."
Something flickered in his eyes. Not hope—not yet. But the first faint possibility of it.
"I don't know if I can do this," he admitted. "Remember more. Face what they did. The memories are—" He shuddered. "Every time I let them in, I feel like I'm back there. Strapped to that table. Losing myself all over again."
"Then we go slow. One piece at a time." I shifted closer. "And you don't do it alone. Whatever you remember, whatever surfaces—I'm here. We face it together."
I cupped his face in my hands.
"They took your name. Your memories. Your control. But they didn't take you. Not completely. You're still in there, Stone. And I'm not giving up on you."
His eyes closed. A single tear slipped down his cheek.
Later, after Stone had finally fallen asleep, I sat in the chair by the window and watched the stars come out.
My mind wouldn't stop turning.
Stone had been a student. Here, at Frosthaven. Walking these same halls, sitting in these same classrooms. Living a normal life until someone decided he was "too strong" and dragged him into a white room to be unmade.
How many others were there?
Gray had never spoken enough to tell us his story. Ben flinched at loud noises and couldn't hold human form for more than a few hours. The other ferals were damaged in ways we were only beginning to understand.
Had they all been students too?
Had they all been taken, restrained, broken apart piece by piece until there was nothing left but the wolf?
I thought about the dream I'd had. The white hallways. The doors. The wolves strapped to tables.
Not born. Not accidents. Made.
Someone had built a system for turning wolves feral. And they'd been running it long enough to perfect their methods, to know exactly how much pressure to apply before something shattered.
Why?
That was the question I couldn't answer. What was the point of creating monsters? What did anyone gain from it?
I looked at Stone, asleep on the bed. Even in rest, his face wasn't peaceful. His brow furrowed, his hands twitched, his jaw clenched against dreams I couldn't see.
He'd been someone once. Someone with a name and a future and people who loved him.
They'd stolen all of it. And they were going to pay.