Chapter 1 #2
I crouch beside him and check his pulse. Steady. Slower than it should be, but that’s the drugs. I lift one eyelid—pupil response is sluggish but present. No fever. No signs of shock.
He’s fine.
Physically, he’s fine, aside from a gash on his arm that I stitched up earlier.
I sit back on my heels and look at his face.
Dark hair falls across his forehead. There’s a fresh bruise blooming along his cheekbone where someone’s elbow caught him during the restraint.
I should note it in my journal, but I don’t reach for the pen.
I just look at him. The angle of his jaw.
The way his lashes rest against his cheekbones, dark and fine.
Features that don’t match what he just did to three trained fighters; there’s something almost elegant about the bones of his face, visible now that the tension has been chemically stripped away.
He’s…beautiful.
The thought lands before I can stop it, and shame follows hard on its heels.
No. He’s unconscious. He’s injured. He’s your patient.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, knowing it was my own decision that put him in this predicament. But I just… I had to do something.
Two weeks. That’s how long he’s been here, in this room, under my care.
Two weeks of cleaning wounds, changing bandages, monitoring vitals, documenting the extensive damage to his body.
Chain marks on his wrists. Suppression runes carved so deep into his skin that they’ve left permanent scarring.
Surgical scars on his arms and torso, down his back.
A tattooed number on his forearm that I refuse to read because reading it would mean accepting that someone turned him into inventory.
I know this body now. Every injury. Every scar. Every place where pain has left its signature.
I know the old chain marks around his wrists, the places where metal rubbed skin raw and healed badly.
I know the suppression runes carved into his ribs, the surgical scars along his arms and torso, the long seam down his back where someone opened him and closed him again.
I know the tattoo on his forearm because I have cleaned around it every day and still refuse to read the number unless I have to.
My hand moves to his shoulder to turn him, and stops.
Not long. Not enough for anyone to notice, if anyone were here. Just a break in the rhythm. Cloth, salve, bandage, pulse. That is the order of things. That is the work.
But my palm has settled against the heat of him, and beneath the slack weight of sedation, there is strength. Not vanity. Something built hard and unwilling, muscle layered over bone by years of fighting whatever held him down.
I should move him.
Instead, my thumb shifts against his skin.
A mistake. Barely that. A healer adjusting her grip.
His breath leaves him slowly, warm across my wrist.
My own catches.
For one stupid second, the room narrows to the weight of him under my hand, the dark sweep of lashes against his cheek, the pulse beating steady beneath damaged skin. Then the antiseptic bites the back of my throat, sharp enough to bring me back.
Patient. Wound. Dressing.
I turn him carefully, check the bandage at his side, and make my hands remember what they are for.
That’s the only reason I notice. Except my hands know I’m lying.
And I thought—foolishly, apparently—that knowing the damage meant I could guide the healing.
I might know this body, but I don’t know the man.
Nobody does. He’s as much a mystery to us now as he was when he arrived, limp, bewildered, teeth chattering.
I’d thought I’d be treating another victim…
until the first attack happened. And then the next.
Consciousness brings out the beast in him. And he’s uncontrollable.
I pull my kit closer and draw up the full dose.
The syringe fills with clear liquid, the same sedative cocktail that’s kept him under since Brenna’s team brought him out of that Syndicate facility.
The same one I reduced a week ago because I believed the standard protocol was doing more harm than good.
Maybe I was right. Maybe I wasn’t. It doesn’t matter now.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmur. I find the vein in his arm, the one I’ve used dozens of times, and slide the needle in.
The plunger depresses smoothly. The drug enters his bloodstream, and within seconds his breathing deepens further, slowing into the rhythm that means he’s gone somewhere even dreams can’t reach.
I withdraw the needle, press gauze to the injection site, and dispose of everything properly.
I sit beside him for a long time after I’m done.
My hands are still steady. They’ve been steady since I entered the room.
Steadier than they were during Merric’s sutures, steadier than they were in the corridor with Brenna.
Some part of me settled when I crouched beside him, and I can’t explain it.
Adrenaline drop, probably. The crisis is over. The body comes down.
That’s all it is.
He needs sky. He needs space. He needs to wake up somewhere that doesn’t have bars or locks or strangers’ hands forcing him down.
Instead, I’ve just put him under in a room that will be locked again as soon as I leave.
It’s the right decision. It’s the safe decision. It’s the only decision Brenna could have made.
It’s also wrong.
I brush his hair from his forehead, then pull my hand back when he twitches. He shouldn’t be able to do that. But sometimes it takes a little longer for the drug to take hold.
Rising, I straighten up and pull myself away, busying myself with tidying around me until there’s a knock at the door.
“Healer Sable?” It’s Cameron. “Mom asked us to come in to help clear up.”
“Right. Great.” I stand, knees protesting, and pull the blanket up over his shoulders. My hand rests on his forearm for just a moment—not on the tattoo, just beside it where his skin is warm, and his pulse beats steady.
I head to the door and unlock it, revealing Brenna’s son standing alongside Lachlan and Conner. There’s a cot in the corridor behind them. I step aside, and they file in, Conner and Cameron hefting the cot through the door between them.
“How’s he doing?” asks Lachlan, glancing at the prone form on the blanket.
“No change,” I tell him. “Got some bumps and scrapes during the scuffle, a gash on his arm. But he’ll be okay.”
Lachlan nods. The other two are clearing the ruined furniture from the room. Within a few minutes, they’ve restored a measure of order. I’m standing watching them with my arms folded when I realize they’re looking at me expectantly.
“All done?” I ask.
“We…uh need to get him back onto his bed,” Cameron tells me. It’s only then that I notice that I’ve positioned myself between the three males and my patient like a human barricade, and I can’t tell if it’s to protect them or him.
Get over it, Sable. You’re not protecting anyone.
I step aside and find myself tensing as they lift him up and set him carefully onto the mattress.
Cameron is watching me with his head tilted. The kid’s got a strange intuition that he probably inherited from his mother. I shift uncomfortably. It’s been a couple of months since I moved from Frostbourne to Ravenclaw, and I’m still getting used to being surrounded by magic-bloods.
“Thank you,” I tell them. “I’ll take it from here.”
“You sure?” asks Conner. “Because we can—”
“Totally sure,” I stop him. “The sooner we can get back to his routine, the better.”
“Fine,” he says. “But if you need anything…”
“I’ll call you.” I smile. “But I think we’ll be good.”
They troop out in silence, though I’m sure they have a flood of unanswered questions. I shut the door behind them.
I’m alone.
I clear the rest of the room, restock the supplies, check inventory. Routine tasks, muscle memory, things I can do without thinking. When I’m done, I turn to look at him again.
He lies unmoving, chest rising and falling, lost somewhere in medicated sleep.
I step closer and straighten the covers, tucking them around him carefully.
His features are relaxed. Almost peaceful.
But I know better.
I gather my kit and walk out, closing the door behind me.
The lock turns under my hand.
For a moment, I stand there with my fingers still on the key, listening to the slow, drugged rhythm of his breathing on the other side. I tell myself he’s safe. The pack is safe. This is what a responsible healer does when compassion becomes dangerous.
Then I make myself walk away.