Chapter 8
Sable
The bruises show by midday. Four dark prints on the inside of my wrist where his fingers held, and a lighter shadow where his thumb pressed into the hollow over my pulse. I roll my sleeve down and button the cuff.
Greta notices anyway.
She doesn’t say anything. Just sets a bowl of stew in front of me at lunch and watches until I pick up the spoon.
“You need to eat more,” she tells me.
“You say that every day, Greta.” I smile.
“Because it’s true every day, honey.” She folds her arms over her chest. “I don’t know how you manage to do what you do. Lifting and carrying and up at all hours.”
“I love what I do,” I assure her. “It’s never a burden.”
“That’s because there’s an angel inside you.” She nods. “I wish she’d tell you to eat, though. You’re wasting away.”
“I’m just built light, Greta. But I’m wiry.”
“Mmhmm.” She doesn’t sound convinced. Her eyes flick to my wrist once, then away.
The stew smells like rosemary and slow-cooked lamb. I eat it without tasting it, and Greta watches me. Neither of us mentions the fingerprints on my wrist.
When I’m done, I rinse off my plate, give her shoulder a fond pat, and head back to my station.
It’s been quieter since many of the first batch of wolves have been cleared to leave the healers’ wing.
Not that they’re healed. There’s only so much I can do with my skills. Only time and care can handle the rest.
I’m lost in the tedium of tidying when something catches my attention.
Merric doesn’t announce himself. He’s just there, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, watching me count jars of valerian root like it’s the most interesting thing he’s seen all week.
“You need something?” I ask without looking up.
“Checking in.”
“I’m fine.”
“Didn’t say you weren’t.”
I set down the jar and turn to face him. He’s not doing anything, just standing there, his weight on one hip, his expression neutral. But his eyes are on my rolled-down sleeve, and they stay there half a second too long before they come back to my face.
“The wolf in the recovery room,” he says. “How’s he doing?”
“Stable. Wounds healing. No complications.”
“And the sedation protocol?”
My hands don’t move. I keep them flat on the desk, fingers spread.
“Following the plan Brenna and I agreed on.”
It’s true. Technically. We agreed on a protocol. I’m following a protocol. That the protocol may not be working is a detail I’m choosing not to go into.
Merric nods slowly. His eyes don’t leave my face.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time in that corridor,” he says. “More than you need to for standard care.”
“He’s a complex case.”
“He is.”
The silence stretches. I don’t fill it. Merric doesn’t either. We stand there in my small office with the herb jars between us and the afternoon light coming through the window.
“You know what you’re doing?” he asks finally.
“Yes.”
Another pause. Then: “All right.”
He pushes off the doorframe. Starts to leave. Stops.
“Sable.”
I look up.
“If that changes,” he says, “you’ll tell one of us.”
“I will,” I say.
He leaves. I go back to counting jars. My hands are steady. My heart isn’t.
I finish the inventory, then work through the afternoon the way I always do: steadily, thoroughly, my voice even and my grip firm on every bottle and bandage I touch. Under my sleeve, the bruises darken from red to purple while the hours pass.
I keep seeing his hand opening. The deliberate slowness of it. One finger, then another.
My wrist aches every time I reach for a shelf.
The afternoon light is long and low by the time I finish rounds and walk back to the locked room. I stand outside it with the key in my hand and count the hours since the last dose.
Five.
He shouldn’t surface for another three.
I unlock the door anyway. Step in. He’s where he should be: flat on his back, breathing slow and even, the blanket pulled up to his chest. His face is turned toward the window, and the late light catches the bruise I left on his arm with the needle this morning.
A small purple mark over the vein. My mark on him, to match his on me.
I cross to the cot and press two fingers to the inside of his wrist.
Sixty-eight beats per minute.
It should be fifty-five. Maybe sixty if his metabolism is running hot.
Sixty-eight means he’s climbing.
My fingers stay on his pulse longer than they need to.
The warmth of his skin seeps into my hand, and I feel it again: that settling, the tension in my shoulders easing, my breathing slowing to match his.
I’ve felt it every time I’ve touched him.
Every single time. I thought it was adrenaline dropping.
I thought it was the relief of routine. But it happens when there’s no adrenaline to drop and no routine to settle into.
It happens the second my skin meets his, and it stops when I pull away.
I pull away.
Full protocol. I haven’t changed the dose. I’ve done exactly what Brenna told me to do, and his body is burning through it anyway.
One early surfacing is an anomaly.
Two in the same day is a pattern.
I should go straight to Brenna.
The thought is clean. Sensible. Correct.
But if I report this now, the only answer will be more containment.
More bodies at the door. More fear in the room.
And fear is what makes him fight. I saw that yesterday.
I felt his hand open when I asked gently, saw his eyes track the syringe and choose not to lunge.
He let me inject him, knowing what it meant.
That matters.
It has to matter.
Reporting also means explaining the first surfacing. Explaining the first surfacing means Brenna asking questions that lead to the bruises under my sleeve and the reason I didn’t call for help when I should have.
That matters too.
One more cycle.
My hand is already reaching for the journal when Cameron appears in the doorframe.
“Sable. We need you.”
“What happened?”
“Tomas. He can’t get a full breath.”
I’m moving before he finishes. Out the door, locking it behind me, following Cameron down the corridor to the recovery rooms. The key goes into my pocket. The journal stays on the table beside the cot.
Tomas is sitting upright, one hand braced against the wall, his chest working too fast and too shallow. His lips have a blue tinge. The sound of his breathing fills the small room, a thin, whistling pull that I can hear from the doorway.
I drop my kit on the table and move to his side. “Easy. Look at me.”
He does. His eyes are wide, his nostrils flared.
“Count with me. In for four. Out for six. Ready?”
He nods. I count. He follows, and slowly—too slowly—his breathing deepens, and the blue fades from his mouth. I keep my hand on his shoulder the whole time, feeling the muscles unlock one by one as his body remembers how to do this on its own.
It takes twenty minutes to get him stable.
Another ten to check his ribs, his lungs, his oxygen.
The drugs they pumped into him at the facility are still in his system, still settling into places they shouldn’t be, and his lungs are taking the worst of it.
By the time I’m satisfied he’s not going to collapse, twilight is settling in.
“Stay with him,” I tell Cameron. “If his breathing changes, come find me.”
Cameron nods.
I gather my supplies and head back toward the locked room. The corridor is quiet. The compound has settled into the lull between afternoon work and dinner—footsteps in the yard, the distant sound of water being drawn, parents calling their children in.
I’m halfway back to his corridor when I hear it.
Wood splintering. Low. Controlled. The sound of a door frame giving way under pressure that didn’t stop.
Shit!
I run.
Not fast enough.
The door is open.
Not kicked in.
The frame around the lock has cracked clean through, the wood split in a long vertical line where pressure found the weakest point and kept going. Splinters on the floorboards. The lock still in one piece, still turned, hanging uselessly in the broken jamb.
For one stupid second, my healer’s mind notices the wrong thing.
Control.
This wasn’t a blind charge. He didn’t tear through the whole door. He worked the frame until it gave.
The cot is shoved against the wall. The blanket is on the floor.
My journal is still on the table beside the bed.
He’s gone.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I step into the corridor and listen.
The compound is still, but it feels different this time. Not the comfortable quiet of evening settling in. The silence you feel before something goes wrong.
Very wrong.
Then footsteps.
Heavy. Uneven.
Coming from the east wing.
I’m halfway down the corridor when the scream reaches me.