6 Tommy #3
The wolf had its hackles up now, soaked and cold and snarling low, because that man had just looked at Kaia like a column in a ledger he intended to balance. And my protectiveness, the thing I kept swearing was just the mission, lit all the way up and stopped pretending.
I should’ve gone straight to the dorm to sort myself out.
Freezing and soaked on day four, with the potion thinning, the smart play was dry clothes and stillness.
But they called a finish to the game, Wicked Wickets taking the win, and Stewards had routed us back through the east wing single-file to make curfew.
The line stalled at a checkpoint. I stayed compliant in line when I should have ducked into the side corridor.
That’s when I caught a glimpse of something that made the hair on my arms stand up.
An older Warden—high-ranking, judging by the silver piping on his uniform—strode down the intersecting hall carrying a book.
But it wasn’t bound in leather or paper.
The cover was thick, faceted glass, glowing with a pulsing crimson light, as if the pages inside were forged from liquid blood.
As he passed, a strange, sickening resonance washed over me.
My wolf snarled, feeling the echo of trapped life force radiating from the object.
I stood there shivering in my soaked clothes, wondering what kind of twisted, meticulous accounting the Verdant Order was keeping—and how the hell my blood recognized it.
I ended up stopped with my back to a cracked office door, dripping on their nice clean floor, close enough for my wolf ears to hear everything.
Miller’s voice came through the gap, low and hard. “—new potential dormant’s reactive. Too reactive. Moved like a buck at the pond. The masking on these late intakes is garbage.”
A second voice spoke, papery and dry, the sound of someone who lived behind a desk. “The California file? The rare male?”
“Yes. He’s not responding to the standard dosage.
His vitals are spiking during the ward-songs, and today he showed reflexes that don’t belong in a suppressant haze.
” A pause, followed by a soft, paper-rustling sigh.
“And there’s a second problem. Steward Thorne is compromised. She’s been hovering. Covering for him.”
“Thorne has a clean record. Her bloodline has been loyal to the Order for three generations.”
Miller tapped his knuckles on the desk. “I watched her face at the pond. She’s soft on him. She bypassed the standard log for the other male, and now she’s shielding this one. If we don’t act, she’ll compromise the whole harvest cycle.”
A rustle of parchment drifted through the crack. “The schedule is fixed. There’s contracts to fulfill. We can’t afford any disruption. What’s your recommendation?”
“Move him to private evaluation tomorrow. Lower level. Run the full reactivity panel. If he tests unstable—and he will—prep him for Harvest review with the Third Saint. We’ll extract what we can.”
Private evaluation. Two words the brochure might use.
Two words the soft-voiced intake woman probably said to families who called asking after their person.
Your daughter is receiving a private evaluation, we’ll update you when the results are in.
And meanwhile, the lower floor, and the Tenders, and the chair Eli’s cousin had described, the one that vibrated in your teeth.
The whole language of this place—alignment, wellness, evaluation, sanctuary, clarity—was engineered to mean the opposite of what it said, and it worked, it kept working, because the words were so reasonable. Who could object to an evaluation? Who could object to clarity?
There it was. The thing I’d come for.
The first real thread leading down to the floor I couldn’t find, handed to me through a cracked door by the man who wanted me dead.
Tomorrow. Lower level. Within reach.
I didn’t even have time to process it before the knife hit.
“And the Steward?”
A cold silence stretched for a moment. “If she interferes, calibrate her. Put her on a holding regimen. We can always train a replacement.”
The wolf came up under my skin so hard and so fast I had to brace both hands flat against the cold wall and bite down on the inside of my cheek until the hot taste of blood filled my mouth. The line had cleared. I should have followed. Instead, I remained alone in the corridor, my wolf snarling.
The growl was right there, the shift was right there, and one sound out of me in this corridor ended everything.
Three days left on Nadia’s potion. Maybe less, the way it was burning.
One hidden floor, finally, within reach—lower level, tomorrow, the lead I’d been bleeding for since they walked me through the gate.
The mission and the want had been two separate files for three days.
I’d worked so hard to keep them apart. But standing in that dripping corridor with my own blood in my mouth, they slammed together into one single, unbearable thing, and there wasn’t a joke left in me that could pry them back apart.
The office door scraped.
I pushed off the wall and walked away, harmless and soaked like any other dormant heading to bed—
—and Miller stepped out into the corridor in front of me, dry and smiling.
“Long day, Thomas?”