Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
Neal looked like hell.
I noticed it the moment he walked into Stone's observation room with my breakfast tray—the shadows under his eyes darker than usual, the tension in his jaw that meant he'd been clenching his teeth for hours. His movements were precise but mechanical, like he was running on training instead of rest.
"You didn't sleep," I said.
He set the tray down on the small desk. Oatmeal, blueberries, coffee. The same breakfast he'd been bringing me every morning since he'd set up the bed in Stone's room. "I slept enough."
"Neal."
"Eat your breakfast, Lumi."
I didn't touch the spoon. Just watched him as he checked Stone's monitors, his back to me, shoulders tight beneath his white coat.
Stone was watching too. He'd been calmer since yesterday. Still not peaceful, exactly. But the constant pacing had stopped. He lay near the wall now, his golden eyes tracking Neal's movements with something that might have been curiosity instead of hostility.
I stood and crossed to where Neal was pretending to study a readout.
"Hey." I touched his arm. Felt him tense, then deliberately relax. "Talk to me."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"You're a terrible liar. It's one of the things I like about you."
That got a reaction—a small huff that might have been a laugh in better circumstances. He turned to face me, and up close the exhaustion was even more obvious. Whatever had kept him up all night, it wasn't good.
"I found something," he said quietly. "In Rae's archives."
My stomach dropped. "What kind of something?"
Neal glanced at Stone, then at the door. Calculating who might overhear, what might get back to the wrong people.
"Not here," he said. "Can you meet me in my office in an hour?"
"Neal, you're scaring me."
"I know." He reached up, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture was tender, almost absent-minded, like he'd forgotten to be careful about touching me. "I'm scared too."
Neal's office was small and cluttered with the organized chaos of someone who knew exactly where everything was despite appearances.
Medical journals stacked on every surface.
A half-empty coffee mug that had been there for days.
Charts and printouts pinned to a corkboard, covered in his precise handwriting.
But today, his desk was different. Cleared of its usual clutter. Covered instead with folders and printouts arranged in careful rows, like evidence at a crime scene.
He closed the door behind us. The click of the latch sounded too loud.
"I started with Rae's notes," Neal began. He moved to the desk but didn't sit—just stood there, looking down at the papers like they might bite him. "Her early work. The severed-bond healing protocols from after the council transition."
"Why?"
"Because I'm trying to understand why your presence helps Stone sometimes and not others.
" He picked up one of the folders, turned it over in his hands without opening it.
"Why the gray one responded to Cal but the others haven't.
What makes the difference between a feral who can recover and one who can't."
I moved closer, looking at the papers spread across the desk. Medical terminology I didn't fully understand. Dates going back years.
"I wasn't looking for history," Neal continued. "I was looking for mechanics. How bond damage presents. What recovery typically looks like. What should be possible, based on Rae's documented cases."
"And?"
"And I found a gap."
He set down the folder and picked up a different one. This one was older—the paper yellowed at the edges, the type slightly faded.
"The ferals in the east wing. Stone. The gray one.
The others." Neal's voice was careful now.
Measured. The voice he used when he was building toward something he didn't want to say.
"Based on physical development, dental analysis, bone density scans—standard aging protocols—they're between twenty-five and twenty-seven years old. "
I did the math automatically. Twenty-five to twenty-seven. Which meant they would have been student age when—
"They would have been students here," I said slowly. "During the years right before the old council fell."
"Exactly." Neal spread his hands over the papers.
"So I went looking in Rae's notes. She's been running the Healing Center for eight years.
She's treated hundreds of patients with bond damage, trauma from the severings, all of it.
If these ferals had been students here, if they'd shown any signs of instability before they went feral, she would have seen them. Treated them. There would be records."
"And there aren't."
"There aren't." Neal shook his head. "No references to feral wolves anywhere in her documentation. No patients matching their ages or descriptions. No cases that could have become what we're seeing now."
The room felt smaller. Colder. I wrapped my arms around myself.
"Maybe they weren't students here," I said. "Maybe they came from somewhere else."
"That's what I thought too. So I went looking earlier."
He pulled out a different stack of papers. These were older still.
"Old Frosthaven medical archives," Neal said. "Records from before the council fell. Before the Healing Center existed. Before Rae had any authority or access."
He spread the pages across the desk. I leaned in, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
Student files. Medical assessments. Clinical notes written in detached, institutional language.
And repeated, over and over, the same phrases:
Subject displays developmental instability.
Recommend preemptive intervention.
Transfer approved.
"Developmental instability," I read aloud. The words felt wrong in my mouth. "Preemptive intervention. What does that mean?"
"I don't know." Neal's jaw tightened. "But I know what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean treatment. It doesn't mean healing. And it doesn't mean transfer to anywhere I can find."
He pulled out another sheet. A list of names—some redacted, black bars covering identifying information, but enough visible to show a pattern.
"Thirteen students," he said. "Flagged with this classification over a two-year period. Thirteen young shifters identified as developmentally unstable and recommended for preemptive intervention."
"What happened to them?"
Neal met my eyes. "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"No follow-up records. No recovery notes. No transfer confirmations. No referrals to anyone else." He spread his hands. "No deaths listed. These students just... disappear from the system. One day they're flagged for intervention, and the next day they don't exist."
We found Rae in her office on the top floor of the Healing Center. She turned when we entered, and I saw the moment she registered Neal's expression. The exhaustion.
"Dr. Wilson." Her voice was careful. "Lumi. What's wrong?"
Neal didn't waste time with preamble. He crossed to her desk and set the folder down.
"I need you to look at this," he said. "And I need you to tell me if you've ever seen any of it before."
Rae's eyebrow lifted slightly. But she moved to the desk, opened the folder, and started reading.
The silence stretched.
I watched her face as she turned pages. Watched the confusion give way to focus, then to something harder. Something sharper.
"Where did you find this?" she asked without looking up.
"Old Frosthaven archives. Records from before the transition."
"Before the Healing Center."
"Yes."
Rae kept reading. Her movements slowed as she reached the pages with the clinical classifications. The repeated phrases. The list of names.
"Developmental instability," she read aloud. Her voice was flat. Controlled. "Preemptive intervention. Transfer approved." She looked up at Neal. "Approved by whom?"
"The signatures are mostly illegible."
Rae set the folder down. Her hands were steady, but I could see the tension in her shoulders. The careful way she was holding herself together.
"Explain what you're thinking," she said. "All of it."
Neal took a breath. "The ferals in the east wing. Based on physical assessment, they're between twenty-five and twenty-seven years old. They would have been student age during the years right before the council fell."
"Go on."
"I went looking for them in your records. Any patient who might have shown early signs of instability, any case that could have progressed to feral state. There's nothing. No references to feral wolves in any of your healing documentation."
Rae nodded slowly. "Because I never treated any ferals."
"That's what I thought." Neal gestured at the folder. "So I went looking earlier. Into records from before your time. Before the Healing Center existed."
"And you found these classifications."
"Thirteen students," Neal said. "Flagged over two years. Identical language in every file. And then nothing. No follow-up. No recovery notes. No deaths. No referrals to you or anyone else." He paused. "The ages line up, Rae. These students would be the same age as our ferals now."
Rae was very still.
I watched her process it. Watched the implications hit her one by one, like waves breaking against rock.
"You're suggesting," she said slowly, "that these students were targeted. Deliberately."
"I'm suggesting it's possible."
"And you're suggesting that whatever was done to them—whatever 'preemptive intervention' means—might be connected to the feral wolves we're treating now."
"Yes."
Rae turned back to the window. Her reflection in the glass showed an expression I'd never seen on her face before.
"These records predate my authority," she said quietly.
"I didn't know they existed. I didn't know—" She stopped.
Started again. "When I took over the Healing Center, I was given access to everything related to bond trauma.
Every case file. Every treatment protocol.
Every patient who had been harmed by the old council's policies. "
She turned to face us.
"This was not included."