Chapter 20 #2
I press my forehead against the cracked glass. On the other side, Rafael’s breathing has changed to the slow, stolen rhythm of sedation.
Nadia’s hands stay firm on my shoulders. “Come with me. Now. Being here isn’t helping anyone.”
She steers me out of the observation room and into the corridor. I let her because my legs have stopped being reliable.
“He’s down,” Nadia says. “He’s unconscious. They’re not hurting him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know. I’m going to make sure.” She turns to someone behind her. “Medical team in his cell. No restraints unless I authorize it. Go.”
Somehow, I’m on the floor of the corridor with my back against the wall, sucking in shuddering breaths.
Nadia crouches beside me. “Sable. Look at me.”
I look at her.
“The observation glass is shattered. The monitors are fried. His magic nearly broke through two inches of warded reinforcement.” Her voice is quiet, but her eyes are unflinching. “Nobody touched you. Nobody threatened you. You were walking away from him.”
“I was crying. He saw me crying.”
“He saw you leaving.” She pauses. “Sable, do you understand what that means? It wasn’t a physical threat. He didn’t see someone hurt you. He saw you in distress and walking away from him, and the response was totally uncontrolled.”
I close my eyes.
“If his trigger is physical threat to you, we can manage that. We keep staff at a distance. We control the environment. But if his trigger is your emotional state…if he detonates because you’re upset, because you’re leaving, because he can feel what you’re feeling—” She stops.
“We can’t manage that. Nobody can manage that. ”
“It’s conditioning,” I say. My voice sounds thin. “He’s reacting to years of—”
“That’s not conditioning, Sable. Conditioning doesn’t teach a wolf to read someone’s tears through a wall. Conditioning doesn’t produce that kind of response to someone walking away. That’s something else.”
I press my head back against the wall. Close my eyes. I think of those hours in the cave, talking about feeling a pull you can’t ignore.
“They’re going to say he’s unrecoverable,” she says.
“He’s not.”
“I hear you. And I believe you.” Nadia squeezes my hand. “But that male is unstable. And he’s bonded with you.”
The word lands too close to the place I’ve been refusing to examine.
“He was conditioned,” I say. “For years. Pain, sedation, isolation, obedience. Of course he reacts when I leave. Of course he reacts when he thinks I’m hurt.”
“Sable.”
“No.” I pull my hand back before she can soften me with that voice. “Don’t make this mystical because it’s easier than looking at what they did to him.”
Nadia doesn’t argue. She just looks at me with the eyes of a woman who found her own mate and knows exactly what denial sounds like.
“Walk with me,” she says. “You need to be away from this corridor before Viktor gets here.”
She helps me up. We walk…away from the observation room, away from the containment level, up a flight of stairs to a quiet corridor where the air is clean. There’s a bench by a window. Nadia sits. I stand for a moment, then sit because my legs won’t hold.
“Tell me about Jason,” she says.
I don’t ask how she knows the name. “He died. Before the bond was sealed. I thought that was my chance, and I missed it.”
“And now?”
I look at my hands. The scrapes from the crevice are still healing.
These hands held Jason while his body cooled. They held Rafael’s face in the firelight while he looked at me as if I was the first thing in the world he knew how to trust.
The memories don’t touch the same place in me.
Jason was gentle. The bond between us came slowly, one careful step at a time, and I always felt as if I could choose the next one.
Rafael was never like that.
The first time I touched his wrist, something in me locked on. I’ve been trying to pry it loose ever since, and all I’ve done is tear myself open around it.
“It’s not the same,” I say.
Nadia waits.
“I can grieve Jason and still know the difference.” My voice is quieter than I want it to be. “Rafael isn’t a second chance at what I lost. He’s Rafael. And when I try to step away from him, my wolf reacts like I’m leaving part of myself behind.”
“Sable.” She leans forward. “I have to be honest with you. After what happened in that observation room, he’s going to start running out of options.”
“He has options! If you’d just listen—”
“Viktor will want to talk to you,” she interrupts me.
“And what he’ll tell you is that Aurora can’t hold a wolf whose magic breaks warded containment.
That the gas is a last resort, not a protocol.
That they don’t have the resources to manage a subject who detonates every time someone upsets his healer. ”
“He’s not beyond saving.”
“I don’t think he is either. But what I think and what the Council decides are different things.” She reaches across and takes my hand. “If they classify him as unrecoverable, the options narrow to things neither of us wants to think about.”
The corridor is quiet. The light through the window is flat and gray.
“I won’t let that happen,” I say.
“You might not have a choice.”
“Then I’ll make one.”
Nadia holds my gaze. Whatever she sees in my face, she doesn’t argue with it. She squeezes my hand and lets go.
“Let’s get you back to your room,” she says. “You need—”
The sound reaches us before she can continue: boots moving in formation through the corridor below, visible through the stairwell window.
Six figures pass beneath us. Four wear dark formal clothing with a military cut, and the fifth walks at the center as if the building belongs to him. Tall. Dark-haired. Confident enough not to hurry.
Beside him, half a step behind, is a woman.
Tall. Blonde. Hands clasped neatly in front of her. Too still in a way I feel before I understand it.
My wolf stirs. Not the full-body reaction from the observation room. Something quieter. A low unease that presses against my ribs without explanation.
“Nadia. Who is that?”
Nadia’s jaw is tight. “Syndicate.” She practically spits the word. “The tall one is Alastair Creed. High command.”
The word sends me reeling. Syndicate. The organization that kept Rafael in a sealed room for five years. The people who funded the research, built the facility, supplied the handlers. They’re here. In this building.
“What the fuck are they doing here?”
“Don’t know.” Nadia’s nostrils flare, eyes glowing slightly. “And the sooner they’re out, the better.”
“The woman?” I’m on my feet. I don’t remember standing. My wolf is pressing forward so hard my gums ache.
“I don’t know. She wasn’t on the visitor list.”
The delegation passes below us. The woman’s head turns slightly as she walks, her eyes sweeping the corridor. For one second, her gaze catches the stairwell window where we’re sitting.
Pale eyes. Light blue or gray. Flat.
Then she’s past. The formation rounds the corner. Gone.
I stare at the empty corridor. My hands are shaking again—not with grief this time, but with something hotter. The people who did this to him are in Viktor’s building. Drinking his coffee. Sitting in his conference rooms.
And two floors below them, Rafael is strapped to a cot because five years of their work didn’t end when we got him out. It’s baked into him, and written on his skin, and in every raw flinch, every violent reaction.
“If they’re here for Rafael—”
“We don’t know why they’re here.”
“If they’re here for him, Nadia. If Viktor is even considering—”
“One thing at a time.” Her hand finds my arm. Firm. “Right now, Rafael is safe. Whatever the Syndicate wants, they’ll have to go through Viktor, and Viktor doesn’t roll over for anyone.”
She’s right. Probably. But the unease doesn’t fade. Something about that woman sets my teeth on edge. And something about the Syndicate arriving just after Rafael arrived feels less like coincidence and more like timing.
“Come on,” Nadia says. “Back to your room. I’ll find out what I can.”
I let her lead me away from the window, but every step feels like surrender.
Nadia is thinking in protocols. Viktor will be thinking in leverage, politics, containment, whatever language ancient men use when they decide how much one damaged wolf is worth.
I am thinking about timing.
The delegation arrived too soon. Too neatly. And the blonde woman with her hands folded in front of her has set every instinct I have on edge.
I need to get back to Rafael before he wakes.
And I need Viktor to hear the truth before anyone from that delegation teaches him which parts of Rafael are useful.