Chapter 3
Sable
Greta is already pouring tea when I walk into the kitchen. She doesn’t look up from the pot.
“Sit,” she says. “You look like hell.”
“Good morning to you, too.”
She sets a mug in front of me and slides a plate across the table—thick slices of bread, butter, a wedge of cheese.
“Eat. I won’t have my healers collapsing because they forgot they have bodies.”
I sit because arguing with Greta is pointless. She’s been feeding this compound for thirty years, and she treats hunger the way other people treat emergencies. Like it’s a priority.
The tea is strong and sweet. I drink half the mug before I register how much I needed it.
“How are things after yesterday?” Greta asks, settling into the chair across from me. Her white hair is braided over one shoulder, her eyes sharp despite the softness in her voice. “Merric’s arm?”
“Stitched. He’ll heal.”
“Dane?”
“Concussion. Mild. I’m checking him again this morning.”
“Garrett?”
“Bruised ribs. Nothing broken. Nothing that would stop him from heading back to his packlands with Briar.”
She nods, buttering her own slice of bread with methodical precision. “And the other one?”
I don’t answer right away. I tear off a piece of bread and chew slowly, buying time I don’t need because the answer is simple.
“Sedated. Under full protocol.”
Greta’s knife pauses. “Brenna’s orders?”
“Brenna’s orders.”
She resumes spreading butter, but the faint tightness around her mouth says what she won’t. Greta doesn’t argue with alpha decisions. She doesn’t always agree with them, either.
None of us likes the idea of keeping a wolf in captivity.
“It’s for the best,” I say, wishing I truly believed it.
“That so?”
I meet her eyes. “Yes.”
She holds my gaze for a moment, then nods and pushes the plate closer. “Eat. You’ve got patients who need you.”
I finish the bread and cheese, drain the last of the tea, and carry my mug to the basin. Greta is already at the stove, moving the kettle, starting something else. Always in motion. Always feeding someone. I leave her to it and head for the healers’ wing.
The wing is quieter this morning. Most of the pack is still recovering from yesterday’s chaos: the celebration that turned into cleanup, the blood on the floorboards, the questions no one wants to ask out loud.
I check the supply shelves first. We’re low on calendula and arnica, and someone used the last of the willow bark without noting it in the log. I add it to the list and move on.
Dane is in the second room, sitting on the edge of his cot with his hands braced on his knees. He looks up when I knock, and his pupils track smoothly when I test them with the light.
“How’s the head?” I ask.
“Still attached.”
“Dizziness? Nausea?”
“No.”
“Blurred vision?”
“Sable, I’m fine. I don’t even know why you made me stay here last night.”
“Can’t be too careful.”
“I think you can,” he grumbles. Dane isn’t big on conversation.
I make him follow my finger anyway, checking his coordination. His reflexes are good. The swelling at the base of his skull has gone down overnight.
“You’re cleared,” I tell him. “But take it easy for the next few days. No shifting, no sparring, no throwing yourself at walls.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.” He rubs the back of his neck, wincing slightly. “How’s 3-0-6-7-0?”
My jaw sets. “Don’t. That’s not his name.”
“It’s all we’ve got for now.”
“Doesn’t mean we should use it,” I mutter. “He’s not a number, Dane. He’s a man. He had a life once. Like you or me.”
“Sure,” he says, unapologetic. “How is he?”
“Sedated. Stable.”
He watches me for a moment. “Keeping him under that deep—” He shakes his head. “That’s not healing. That’s just suspension.”
“It’s what’s best right now.” My lips purse.
“Merric says you told Brenna you cut back the meds.”
I nod, not bothering to deny it.
He walks to the door, pauses on the threshold. “For what it’s worth, I think you were right to try. He wasn’t trying to kill us, you know. He was just trying to get free.”
He leaves before I can respond, and I stand there with the light pen in my hand and the word suspension sitting heavy in my chest because he’s right. I know he’s right.
I clean the basin, restock the shelf in the examination room, and carry my kit down the hall.
Tomas is in the room next to Dara’s. They were recovered from the same facility, the one where they’d been holding Garrett.
He walked out on his own, but three weeks later, his body is still flushing whatever they were pumping into him.
His wolf’s healing has stalled. He cycles through fevers and chills, his appetite is nonexistent, and some mornings his breathing goes shallow enough to worry me.
He’s lying on his side with his back to the door, and when I knock, he doesn’t turn.
“Hey, Tomas. Just checking in,” I say, aiming for bright and breezy.
“I’m fine.” His voice is flat. Not hostile. Just empty.
I don’t push. Some days, the best I can do is confirm he’s still breathing and leave him the dignity of not being watched while he stares at the wall.
I move on to Dara.
She’s sitting cross-legged on her cot with a bowl of porridge balanced on one knee and a spoon in her hand.
Two weeks ago, after we got her out of that place, she couldn’t eat with anyone in the room.
She’d wait until I left, then scrape whatever I’d brought her into her mouth with her fingers, crouched in the corner with her back to the wall.
It took four days before she’d use a spoon.
Six before she’d eat sitting on the cot instead of the floor.
Now she looks up when I come in, spoon midway to her mouth. The flinch is gone. Not the watchfulness—that may never leave—but the flinch. The automatic recoil from a door opening. That’s gone.
“Morning,” I say.
“Morning.” She puts the spoon back in the bowl and swallows what she’s chewing. Her fingers aren’t white-knuckled on the blanket anymore. They rest in her lap, loose. Almost relaxed.
I set my kit on the table and pull up a stool. “I need to check your ribs. Okay?”
She nods and moves so I can reach her side. The bruising has faded completely, and the swelling is almost gone. She breathes evenly when I press along her ribcage. No sharp intake. No pulling away.
“Healing well,” I tell her. “You can start moving around more. Stretch. Walk the grounds if you feel up to it.”
“I went to the door yesterday,” she says. “Stood in it for a while.”
“Yeah?”
“The sun was warm.” Her lips curve up. “I remember the sun.”
My throat tightens. I keep my hands steady on the bandage I’m peeling away from her back. The broken ribs had been the least of her worries when they got her out of that damned facility. “That’s good, Dara.”
She sits silently as I examine the scalpel incisions down her spine. She’d been unconscious when they brought her back from that place. Then woke up screaming. God alone knows what those bastards had been trying to do in there. I’d kill them myself if I could.
“They were afraid of him,” she says unexpectedly.
I glance up. “Who?” I ask, though I’m pretty sure I know.
“That man. The one you keep locked up. They said he got loose last night.” She glances over her shoulder at me, then winces. “Nobody would work with him. Only the worst ones.”
The worst ones…
“Was he like this when he was in there?” I ask, not sure she’ll answer. She’s barely spoken about the place since she got here. “Under sedation?”
“Mostly. Unless they woke him up for…the treatments. Then things were bad.”
“Bad in what way?” I press cautiously, afraid she’ll clam up again.
“The sounds. The screams.” She pauses. Her spoon stops moving.
“But it wasn’t just screaming. There was something else sometimes.
Something that came through the walls. Lower.
You could feel it in the floor, in the frame of your cot.
Like a sound, but not. It would build and build, and then the lights would flicker, and the guards would start running.
” Her hand goes flat on the mattress beside her, as if she can still feel it.
“I don’t know what they were doing to make him do that. ”
I file the detail away. The base of my skull prickles.
“I know he killed a few of them,” she adds, quieter.
Somehow, that doesn’t bother me.
“Did you ever learn what his name was?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “None of us had names in there. Just numbers.”
“You didn’t get a tattoo, though,” I say. “He has one.”
“Maybe it was because he was there longer.”
“Do you know how long that was?” I ask.
“No idea.” Her throat works. “Time just…blended together after a while. You know?”
I squeeze her shoulder. “I understand.” I don’t really. Not the way she does.
“He was there when I arrived. But I think he’d been in other places before that. I heard the guards talking about transferring him.” She looks down at her bowl. “Anyway, I hope he gets better soon.”
She picks up her spoon again. Takes another bite.
Chews, swallows. The ordinary rhythm of a woman eating breakfast, and it shouldn’t undo me, but it does, because I remember what she looked like when they brought her in.
And she isn’t that terrified creature anymore.
This is Dara eating porridge in the morning light.
She’s going to walk outside today, and the sun will be warm.
“The oats could use more honey,” she says.
I almost laugh. “I’ll tell Greta.”
“Don’t. She scares me a little.”
“She scares everyone a little.”
Dara smiles. A real one. Small, but it reaches her eyes, and I smile back and try not to make a big deal of it. But it is.
I pack up my supplies and touch her shoulder on the way out. She doesn’t tense. She just lifts her spoon again.
I save his room for last. I always save his room for last.
The door is locked, just as I left it. I pull the key from my pocket and slide it into the mechanism. The click is loud in the quiet corridor.