Chapter 20
Sable
Nadia met me at six, and I thought it would be early enough.
“Difficult night,” she’d said as we descended. “He surfaced at midnight, so they gave him another sedative. It looks like his metabolism is burning through everything.”
If only I’d known how bad it was. Because what I’m looking at now makes me want to burst into tears. There’s blood smeared on the glass between us, and the man behind it looks like he’s living in his own private hell.
“I wish you hadn’t hurt yourself,” I tell him.
“Couldn’t find you.”
My throat tightens. “I know. They wouldn’t let me come down last night. I tried.”
His breathing through the speaker is harsh. I sense the wolf fighting to surface—I can hear it in the way his voice catches, the slight distortion when his jaw pushes toward wolf and then recedes.
“The room,” he says. “It’s the same.”
“I know it is.”
“White. Locked. The smell.” A pause. His hand presses harder against the glass. “I keep waking up thinking I’m back. Then I remember, and it’s…still white. Still the same.”
“I’m going to get you out of there.”
“Don’t—” He stops. Breathes. “Don’t promise what you can’t control.”
He’s right.
The honesty stings because I’ve already done this once. I promised him safety in a hallway before a dart dropped him to the floor. I promised myself I could keep him from waking alone, and then I slept eight floors above him while he tore his hands open against the glass.
“Okay,” I say, swallowing around the ache in my throat. “You’re right. I can’t promise that.”
His hand stays against the glass.
“But I can promise I’m not leaving this building without you.”
His breathing slows. Just slightly. On the monitors behind me, his heart rate ticks down…a hundred and two, ninety-nine, ninety-six.
“Tell me something,” he says. “Something from outside.”
“Like what?”
“Anything. Your voice…it helps.”
“Okay.” I settle into the chair Nadia brings me, and press my palm flat against the glass. “The mountain. Do you remember the bird?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“I caught you whistling when it sang. Listening to the music.”
He nods.
“And the water. You heard it before I did. I couldn’t hear anything; my wolf’s been dormant too long. You had to lead me to it.”
“You couldn’t hear the stream.” He nods again, his expression softening.
“Not until we were practically standing in it. My ears are shot.”
A rough sound through the speaker that might be a laugh. “Your ears aren’t shot. They’re just…out of practice.”
“That’s a polite way to say it.”
Silence. His breathing through the intercom. Then: “The crevice. Your hands.”
“Healing. They’re fine.”
“You fell. I couldn’t—” The shift distorts his voice for a second. He breathes through it. “I couldn’t reach you fast enough.”
“You reached me. That’s what mattered.”
“I said something. After.”
“You said I saved you.” My throat tightens. “I said you saved me.”
“Both true.”
The monitors behind me tick. His heart rate has dropped below ninety. The shift cycling has slowed.
“This room,” he says. “The wards. They pulse every eight seconds.”
“You can feel that?”
“I can feel everything in this building. The walls carry the vibration. There’s a junction thirty feet down the corridor. Two floors up, the construction is lighter…more traffic. Offices, maybe.”
“You’ve been mapping the building.”
“Sound bounces. Off walls. Floors.”
“Like you did in the mountains. You could feel inside them. Where there were tunnels and caves.”
“Yeah.” His hand shifts against the glass. “This room doesn’t breathe.”
“I know.” I swallow hard. “I’m going to get you out,” I say again. I can’t stop myself.
“You said you can’t promise.”
“I’m not promising. I’m telling you what I’m going to do.”
On the monitors, his heart rate has dropped to eighty-four, the wolf barely surfacing. Not stable. But close.
The door behind me opens.
I don’t turn immediately. I’m watching his face through the glass, watching the way the shift has almost settled to human.
“Healer Marsh.” A male voice. Firm. “Your time with the subject has exceeded the authorized observation window. I need you to come with me.”
I turn. An Aurora staffer. Mid-thirties, square-jawed, the professional blankness of someone following orders he didn’t write. He’s standing just inside the door with a tablet in one hand and his other hand resting at his hip.
“I’m not done,” I say.
“The window was sixty minutes. You’ve been here ninety. Director Parlance authorized observation, not open-ended contact.”
“He’s responding. Look at the monitors. His heart rate has dropped twenty points since I started talking to him.”
“That’s noted. But the protocol—”
“The protocol is going to undo everything I’ve just accomplished. If you pull me out now, his vitals will spike within seconds.”
The staffer’s jaw sets. “Ma’am, I have my orders.”
“Then get Viktor on the phone and let me change them.”
“Director Parlance is in meetings and is not to be disturbed.” He steps forward. “I need you to come with me. Now.”
I look at Rafael through the glass. He’s watching the staffer. His body has gone still; the dangerous kind, the kind that comes before something breaks. The shift is pushing at his jaw again. His claws are half out, pressing into the tile.
If this man touches me and Rafael sees it, he’s going to lose it.
“Fine.” The word tears out of me. “I’m coming.”
I turn back to the glass. Press both palms flat against it one last time. His eyes find mine. His hand comes up to match my palm on the other side.
“I have to go,” I say. My voice cracks on the second word. “They’re making me leave. I’ll come back. I’ll—”
I can’t finish. The tears come before I can stop them, hot and humiliating, blurring the glass between us until his face breaks into pieces.
His hand is on the other side, fingers spread against mine with two inches of warded reinforcement between us. I want to press harder, as if pressure could become touch if I wanted it badly enough.
“I’ll come back,” I manage. “I promise. I’ll come back.”
This is the promise I can make. Not freedom. Not safety. Not a door I don’t have the authority to open.
Only this.
I will come back.
I pull my hands off the glass.
Rafael’s fingers stay where mine were.
For one second, I nearly turn back.
Then the staffer shifts by the door, impatient, one hand close to his comms unit, and I remember what happens if Rafael sees me fight. If I resist, Rafael breaks the glass. If Rafael breaks the glass, they stop talking about recovery and start talking about containment.
So I turn toward the door with my eyes blurred and my hands empty.
I walk. A sob breaks free. Then another.
Three steps from the door, the glass cracks.
The sound snaps through the room like a rifle shot. A line splits the reinforced panel from corner to corner. Then another. A web spreads from the point where Rafael’s fist has struck the other side.
I spin around.
He’s on his feet. The shift has taken him, jaw extended, shoulders massive, claws out. His eyes aren’t on the staffer. They’re on me. On my face. On the tears I couldn’t stop.
The force of him rolls through both rooms.
I feel it in the floor first, then in the chair, then in my teeth. The monitors spike, every readout going red at once.
The security officer is already speaking into his comms unit, his voice tight and controlled. “Containment breach in progress, Observation Three. Subject is resonance-active. Requesting immediate suppression.”
Another crack opens in the glass.
“Rafael, stop! I’m okay, I’m not hurt—”
He can’t hear me. Whatever is pouring out of him has swallowed the intercom, the alarms, maybe even my voice. The glass is holding, but it won’t hold long. A shard falls inward and skitters across the tile.
He isn’t trying to get to the staffer.
He’s trying to get to me.
No. Please, no.
“Suppression authorized.” The voice comes through the security officer’s comms. Flat. Immediate.
The hiss starts on Rafael’s side of the glass.
Ceiling vents.
I can see them open, the white vapor descending into his cell.
The gas rolls down from the vents in a pale sheet.
Rafael staggers once, catches himself with one hand against the cracked glass, and fights it. Of course he fights it. Every line of his body has learned what it means when chemicals enter the air.
“Don’t do this,” I say, but no one on my side of the room is listening to me.
His claws scrape down the glass. Four long marks, white against the fractured surface. His eyes stay on mine, furious and terrified and already losing focus.
I step toward him.
The security officer catches my arm. “Stay back.”
“He’s reacting to the gas now,” I snap. “You’re making it worse.”
Rafael’s knees hit the floor.
The sound goes through me harder than the cracking glass did.
He tries to rise again. Gets one foot under him. Fails. His hand slides down the panel until his palm is level with mine, separated by glass, wards, procedure, and a room full of people who will write this down as proof that he can’t be trusted.
His lips move.
I can’t hear him through the alarms.
Then his eyes roll back, and he drops.
The force that filled the room cuts out so abruptly that the silence feels violent.
“Oh, God. Rafael—”
He doesn’t move. The gas settles in his cell like fog. His body lies slack on the white tile, face turned toward the glass, toward me, while I press both hands to the shattered surface and can’t reach him. Inches of warded glass between my palms and his face. Inches, and it might as well be miles.
“Get her away from the glass,” the security officer says. “If that panel gives way, the gas will come through.”
Hands close on my shoulders.
Not the staffer.
Nadia.
I didn’t hear her come in.
“Sable. Come away from the glass. You can’t help him from in here.”
“Let me go in. Open the door. I can—”
“The gas is still active. You go in there, you go down too.”