Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Icame back the next morning.
Not because I thought it would help. Not because I had a plan. Just because I'd said I would, and breaking promises felt like the wrong way to start.
The Healing Center was quieter at this hour — early enough that most of the staff were still finishing their coffee, reviewing charts, preparing for the day. I signed in at the front desk, nodded to the night nurse who was just ending her shift, and made my way toward the isolation wing.
My footsteps echoed in the empty corridor. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in that flat, clinical glow that made healthy people look sick and sick people look dead.
I wondered which category I fell into now.
The observation room outside Stone's cell was small — enough space for a chair, a monitoring station, and a window that looked into his containment area.
It had already been tested.
I could see the marks on the inside surface — scratches, smears, the evidence of violence that hadn't quite broken through. He'd been throwing himself at the barrier. Again and again. Trying to escape, or trying to hurt himself, or maybe just trying to feel something other than rage.
I stood at the window and watched.
He was pacing. That same restless circuit I'd seen yesterday — back and forth, back and forth, his massive body eating up the small space in three strides before turning and doing it again.
His claws clicked against the floor with each step.
His breath came in harsh pants, visible in the cold air of the cell.
They kept it cold in there. Something about feral physiology, Neal had explained. They ran hot. The cold helped keep them calm.
It wasn't working.
His ribs showed through his coat — more prominent than the other four. He'd been giving them his food, I realized. All those years on the mountain. Eating last, eating least, making sure his pack survived even if it meant he didn't.
The bond between us pulsed. Distant. Painful. Like pressing on a bruise that went all the way to the bone.
I felt his rage. His confusion. The desperate, grinding need to escape that had no outlet and no end. He didn't understand where he was. Didn't understand why he couldn't leave. Didn't understand anything except that he was trapped, and I was responsible.
He stopped pacing.
His head swung toward the window. Toward me.
For a moment, we just looked at each other. His eyes were gold and wild, full of things I couldn't name. Hatred, maybe. Or fear. Or something older than both.
Then he lunged.
Three hundred pounds of muscle and fury, launching himself at the barrier with a force that made the whole wall shudder.
The impact was enormous — a crack like thunder, followed by the scrape of claws against the reinforced surface.
He was snarling, snapping, throwing his whole body against the thing that separated us.
Trying to get to me.
Trying to kill me.
I didn't flinch.
I should have. Any sane person would have. But something kept me rooted to the spot — the bond, maybe, or just exhaustion so deep it had burned away my survival instincts. I stood there and watched him rage, and I felt... nothing.
No. Not nothing. Sadness. A grief so heavy it made my chest ache.
This was what they'd done to him. Years of isolation, years of fighting to survive, years of being forgotten by everyone who should have helped.
He'd held his pack together through sheer force of will, and this was his reward — a cell barely bigger than a closet, and a woman he hadn't asked for standing on the other side of the glass.
Stone hit the barrier again. And again. And again.
I watched until my legs started to shake. Then I pulled the chair closer to the window and sat down.
"I don't really know what I'm supposed to say."
My voice sounded strange in the small room. Thin. Uncertain. Stone was still throwing himself at the barrier, but the impacts were getting weaker. Even rage had limits.
"They have protocols for this, apparently.
Feral rehabilitation. Structured interactions, carefully managed exposure, gradual trust-building.
" I leaned back in the chair, let my head rest against the wall.
"Neal tried to explain it to me. Lots of medical terminology I didn't understand.
The gist was: be patient, be consistent, don't expect too much too fast."
Stone snarled. His claws scraped against the barrier, leaving fresh marks.
"I'm not very good at patient," I admitted. "Ask anyone. I see a problem, I want to fix it. I see someone hurting, I want to help. It's probably a character flaw."
Finally, Stone had stopped lunging. He was pacing again — slower now, his movements heavy with exhaustion. But he was still watching me. I could feel his attention like a weight on my skin.
"I had a vision when I was eleven," I said.
"About the mountain. About a wolf who needed to be found.
" I paused, considering how much to share.
Decided it didn't matter. He couldn't understand me anyway.
"I spent years preparing. Learning everything I could about Denali, about survival, about wolves and being feral.
Everyone thought I was obsessed. Crazy, maybe.
But I knew — I knew — that someday I'd have to go up there. That someone was waiting."
The pacing slowed.
"I thought it was Cal. When I found him, I thought — okay, this is it.
This is what the visions were about. I saved him.
Mission accomplished." I laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"Then I found out about the rest of you.
And I realized the vision wasn't about saving one person. It was about saving all of you."
Stone had stopped moving entirely.
He stood in the center of his cell, head turned toward me, those gold eyes fixed on the window. Not attacking. Not pacing. Just... listening.
Or maybe not listening. Maybe just too tired to keep fighting.
Either way, I kept talking.
"I don't know what your life was like before. Before the mountain, I mean. Before you went feral."
The words felt strange. Invasive. I was talking about the most traumatic thing that had ever happened to him like it was casual conversation.
But what else was I supposed to do? Sit in silence? Let the void between us grow until it swallowed everything?
"Cal doesn't remember much. Just fragments. Feelings without context." I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapped my arms around them. Made myself small. "He remembers being cold. Being hungry. Being so scared he forgot what safety felt like. And he remembers you."
Stone's ear twitched. The only sign he was still paying attention.
"He remembers you staying behind and fighting." My throat tightened. "He remembers running, and looking back, and seeing you standing there. Facing something that should have killed you. Buying them time to escape."
The bond pulsed between us. Something shifted in it — a flicker of emotion I couldn't quite identify. Not rage, for once. Something softer. Something that ached.
"He thought you were dead," I said quietly. "All these years. He thought you'd died saving them, and he never forgave himself for running. For leaving you behind."
Stone turned away.
Faced the back wall of his cell. His shoulders were rigid, his tail tucked low. I couldn't see his eyes anymore, couldn't read his expression.
But I felt it through the bond. The grief he'd buried so deep it had calcified into something unrecognizable. The weight of years spent believing he'd failed the people he loved.
"You didn't fail them," I said. "You kept them alive. They survived because of you. Because you fought for them when no one else would."
He didn't respond. Didn't move.
I kept talking anyway.
"I had meatloaf for dinner last night. The dining hall kind — oversalted. James bent his fork in half because some students were saying things about me. Ivy threatened to destroy people socially, which is apparently something she can do. It was a whole thing."
Stone was lying down now.
Not relaxed — his body was still tense, still coiled with the readiness to fight. But he'd stopped pacing, stopped attacking, stopped doing anything except existing in the same space as my voice.
I didn't know if that counted as progress. Didn't know if anything I was doing mattered at all.
But I kept going.
"I'm behind in my classes. Tomlinson assigned a paper that I haven't even started.
There's probably a quiz in Psychology that I'm going to fail.
" I sighed. "I used to care about that stuff.
Grades, assignments, being a good student.
Now it just feels... small. Insignificant.
How am I supposed to worry about a paper when there are five people in this building who've lost everything? "
Stone's ear flicked toward me.
"Sorry. You five and Cal." I smiled weakly. "I don't know if you count Cal as part of the pack anymore."
No response. Just that steady, watchful presence on the other side of the glass.
"I should probably go," I said. "Neal wants to do a medical check on the others, and I promised Ivy I'd actually show up to at least one class today. Appearances, and all that."
I stood. Stretched muscles that had gone stiff from sitting too long.
"I'll come back," I said. "I'll tell you about whatever boring things happen between now and then.
Maybe I'll bring a book. Read to you." I paused, considered.
"Do you like books? Cal doesn't seem to care either way.
James pretends he doesn't read, but I found a romance novel in his bag once.
Neal reads medical journals for fun, which should tell you everything you need to know about him. "
I was rambling. I knew I was rambling. But stopping felt like giving up.
"Anyway." I pressed my palm against the window — the same gesture I'd made yesterday, when I'd named him. "I'll see you tonight, Stone."
He didn't react to the name. Didn't snarl, didn't flinch. Just lay there, watching me with those gold eyes that held nothing I could read.
I turned to leave.
I was at the door when I felt it.
A shift in the bond. Subtle. Almost imperceptible.
I stopped. Turned back.
Stone was standing.
Not pacing. Not attacking. Just standing in the center of his cell, facing the window. Facing me.
His posture had changed. The aggressive tension was still there — the coiled readiness, the distrust — but something else had crept in underneath it. Something that looked almost like... attention. Interest.
He was watching me.
Not with rage. Not with the desperate need to escape or destroy. Just watching. Like he was seeing me for the first time. Like he was trying to figure out what I was.
The bond pulsed between us. Still painful. But different now. Less like a wound and more like... a question.
I held his gaze through the reinforced glass, and I let him see the truth in my eyes — the exhaustion, the uncertainty, the stubborn refusal to give up on him even when giving up would be easier.
"I meant what I said," I told him quietly. "However long it takes."
Stone didn't respond. Didn't move. Just stood there, golden eyes fixed on mine, as still and solid as his name.
Watching.
It wasn't trust. It wasn't acceptance. It wasn't anything close to the connection I had with Cal or James or even Neal.
But it was something.
A hairline crack in the wall he'd built around himself. A moment of stillness in the endless storm of his rage.
I'd take it.