I’m the only one who can bear to stand here at all. “Jake’s back tomorrow.”
“Hopefully better behaved this time.” She mutters the words as she turns back from the uniformed staff member, a blanket in her hands. “Here you go.”
My fingers clench on the thin, rough material. Not even close to decent. “You can’t blame him for losing his temper. Our mate is in that room, and she’s cold and fucking hurting, and we can’tget to her. There’s a wall of glass and bureaucracy between us. It shouldn’t be this fucking hard to get her the bare minimum.”
My voice lowers, turning to gravel in my throat before I swallow it down.
I have to fight every moment to stop myself doing the same as Jake. We don’t need another of us banned from visiting. Oscar is focused on building the case to help her, working with Abrams. Theo is…somewhere.
One of us has to be the nice one. Polite, and bland, and unthreatening. To try and get her anything extra we can.
Like a fucking crappy blanket that itches the palm of my hand as I turn to the tiny steel window built into the glass wall. A sliding slot with a small keypad for a numerical code that Joanne types in briskly, her shoulders angled so she thinks I can’t see.
My eyes slide away when she glances at me, tugging the steel aside to open up the small hole. Swallowing, I step up to the open slot, my eyes peering through the otherwise soundproof glass. “Kenny? Baby?”
She doesn’t move. But I see the way her shoulders tighten.
“Max,” Joanne murmurs. There’s a nudge in her voice. A nervousness, as she lingers at my shoulder.
“She’s not gonna do anything from there,” I mutter. My voice raises. “Kenny? It’s cold in there, sweetheart.”
A low snarl is my only response.
I push the blanket through, wedging it into the small space, my mouth opening. But Joanne slams the slot shut before I can say anything else, and my lips press into a thin line.
Don’t bite.
Instead, I wait. Joanne disappears, muttering something about other visits as she leaves me to it. Folding my arms, I lean forward, waiting.
Come on, baby. You know you’re cold.
She unfurls herself slowly. Her head twists toward the tray below the slot where the blanket now sits. And I hold my breath, drinking in every movement as she edges toward me.
But she can’t see me, not through this fucking one-way glass.
Kenny reaches for the blanket, her head tilting as she examines it.
Those lethal canines, sharp and extended, appear as her lip curls back. Kenny tears into the blanket, shredding it until only thin ribbons of grey scatter the floor around her.
Her head lifts, brilliant scarlet irises examining the glass, as if she canseeme. My breath catches—
But she only snarls softly, a warning in the back of her throat before she lopes back to her corner and curls up.
I can see her shoulders trembling.
“I don’t blame her.” Oscar’s words are a sigh as he appears next to me. “Those blankets are fucking awful.”
Agreed. “How’d it go?”
He runs a hand over his face. “We can bring in our own stuff for her from an approved list. They won’t give us any extra funding – said they can’t afford it. Abrams will work pro bono. But they’ve agreed to work with us. Maybe work up to some direct contact. But we’d need to sign a shitload of fucking paperwork so we can’t sue them.”
“Fine,” I say immediately.At least we can get her a decent blanket. “What about care duties? Feeding?”
Oscar frowns. “No. Not yet. They want to see some progress first. The Center staff will manage it for the time being.”
He sounds as if he hates the idea as much as I do. “But we can stay here in shifts around the clock. One of us can always be with her, but we’ll have to make do out here until we fix the access.”
“Good job.” It’s a hell of a lot more than we had this morning, with our allocated two hours of visiting time.
