As Sage inhaled and exhaled, Tanner looked for any sign that the beast inside her might take over and she was about to lose it. Beside him, Zarina did the same. He would have preferred her to watch this exercise from farther away, like on a closed-circuit television in another room. But Zarina insisted she needed to be close in case Sage lost control.
When he’d tried to argue, Zarina had folded her arms—a sure sign he wasn’t going to change her mind no matter what he said. “Who taught you how to control your inner beast?” she asked. “Me, that’s who.”
But while that was true, Tanner didn’t like the idea of Zarina putting herself at risk. He’d been watching out for her ever since she’d saved his life in Washington State after a pair of psycho doctors had injected him with a serum that turned him into a hybrid like Sage. He wasn’t about to stop now.
Across from him, Sage’s brow knit, like she was fighting for control. Tanner tensed, but after a moment, she relaxed again. While he’d had more than his share of episodes since being turned into a hybrid, sometimes it seemed like Sage was more beast than human. If there was any doubt of that, all a person had to do was take a look at Sage’s living arrangements, and the truth was obvious.
Since she was prone to violence, staying in one of the normal dorm rooms like he did was out of the question, so John Loughlin had turned one of the outbuildings into a small efficiency apartment of sorts. Her bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and living room took up the back half of the building while the front was part medical facility, part guard station. In between the front and back sections was a wall of steel bars as thick and heavy as anything you’d expect to see in a real prison.
It wasn’t the nicest way to treat a woman who’d never asked for any of this to happen to her, and Tanner hated it more than anyone, but there wasn’t anything else they could do. Sage gave in to her animal rages once every few days. The deep scratches along the walls and floors were a testament to that. A petite, slender girl with long, wavy, dark hair and expressive gray eyes, she looked like she wouldn’t hurt a fly. But when the animal inside took over, Sage turned into something extremely dangerous.
That was why Dick kept two armed guards there 24-7. Currently, both men were standing outside the steel bars of Sage’s cell watching them, disdain on their faces. They both hated and feared Sage. The only reason they treated her halfway decently at all was because the DCO might be able to use her later. That said, the thought of Sage escaping and going on a rampage through the training complex terrified the new director.
Honestly, it terrified Tanner, too. If she got out of here, it would be up to him to stop her, and he wasn’t sure if he could stop a raging hybrid without losing control of his own inner animal.
“We’re going to do the door exercise again, Sage,” he said quietly. “Just like we’ve been doing for the past few weeks, okay?”
Sage gently wrapped her graceful fingers around the silver cross on a chain around her neck, her lips moving in a silent prayer. She’d told Tanner that she had grown up in a very religious family and that her father was a pastor of a church back in her hometown. In fact, the first things she’d asked for after she’d calmed down enough to talk to anyone were a cross and a Bible.
After a few moments, Sage nodded, letting him know she was ready.
“I want you to imagine that you’re standing in front of a door in a dimly lit room. It can be any kind of door you want. It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s something you can easily remember.”
She frowned, then relaxed again.
“Do you have the door set in your mind?” Tanner asked.
“Yes,” she said, the tips of her fangs clearly visible.
“Relax, Sage,” he said softly. “We’re in no rush. Take a minute and center yourself. Concentrate on the door as you breathe in and out.”
That was the thing with Sage. All it took was a word or a noise or a bad memory, and the beast was off and running.
“Can you describe the door for me?” he asked.
Sage nodded. “It’s a white door with a pink unicorn hand-painted in the middle, like the one to my sister’s bedroom. I can see it so clearly I feel like I can reach out and touch it.”
Tanner glanced at Zarina. She looked just as concerned as he was about Sage’s choice of imaginary doors. This wasn’t the one Sage usually described.
He didn’t know much in the way of details when it came to what Sage had been through during her captivity, because she refused to talk about it, but he was almost certain she’d watched her younger sister die a painful, horrible death as a result of being injected with a previous version of the hybrid serum. Focusing on her late sister’s bedroom door probably wasn’t a good idea for a hybrid who wanted to stay in control, but there wasn’t anything Tanner could do about it now. With the image already in her head, there was no way Sage would be able to forget it, even if she wanted to.
“That’s good, Sage,” he told her. “Remember that on your side of the door, you have a handle that you can open or close. On the other side, there is no handle. That’s where the beast is. It can’t get through the door unless you open it. You’re in charge, okay?”
Sage nodded.
“Can you feel the beast on the other side of the door?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered, her fingers tightening around the cross. “It’s always there.”
“It’s okay,” he said soothingly “You’re in control. And to prove that, I want you to open the door a crack.”
Sage tensed visibly but kept her eyes closed. “I thought you were going to show me how to keep it locked away forever?”
“That’s not something I can do,” he said. “You need to learn how to get the beast under control.”
“I can’t,” she said brokenly.
“Yes, you can.”
