The word came out broken. Barely a whisper. But it was a word. A real word.
"I know." I cupped his face in my hands. His skin was hot—fever-warm, the shift still burning through his system. "I know it hurts. But you're okay. You're safe."
His brow furrowed. Like the concept didn't translate. Like safe was a word from a language he'd forgotten.
"Where..." He stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. "Where am I?"
"The Healing Center." I kept my voice soft. Steady. "You've been here for weeks. Do you remember?"
Something flickered in his expression. Pain. Memory. The feral weeks bleeding back into his newly-human consciousness.
"Wolf," he rasped. "I was..."
"Yes. For a long time. But you're human now. You shifted back."
He looked down at his hands. Stared at them like he'd never seen fingers before. Slowly, shakily, he turned them over. Examined his palms. The lines there. The scars.
"No." The word came out strangled. "No, I can't—I don't—"
Panic spiked through the bond.
"Stone, look at me." I grabbed his hands, pressed them between mine. "Look at me. Stay with me."
His eyes snapped to my face. Wild. Terrified.
"I can't be human," he said. His voice was getting stronger, but the words came out fractured. Wrong. "Human is where they—human is when—"
"I know." I didn't know. Not really. But I knew enough. "I know something happened. I know human feels dangerous. But you're not there anymore. Wherever they hurt you—you're not there. You're here. With me."
"You." His hands tightened on mine. His eyes searched my face like he was trying to memorize it. "You came inside. The barrier. You..."
"I came to get you. I wasn't going to let you die."
"Should have." The words were barely audible. "Should have let me—"
"No." I leaned closer. Fierce. "I don't accept that. You wanted to live. I felt it. Underneath everything else—underneath all the fighting and the fear—you wanted to live."
His jaw clenched. His eyes squeezed shut. Through the bond, I felt something cracking open inside him. Years of walls. Years of defenses. All of it crumbling under the weight of being seen.
"I don't remember," he whispered. "I don't remember how to do this."
"That's okay. We'll figure it out together."
"What if I can't? What if I—" His voice broke. "What if the wolf is all that's left?"
I thought about the gray one. Four seconds of human form. Recognition in his eyes before he collapsed back into wolf.
"Then we work with what we have," I said. "However long you can hold human form—minutes, hours, whatever—that's enough. That's more than anyone thought was possible."
Stone opened his eyes. Looked at me with an expression I couldn't read.
"Why?" he asked.
"Why what?"
"Why do you care? I'm—" He gestured weakly at himself. At the scars. The damage. The broken thing he'd become. "I'm nothing. I'm no one. I don't even remember my own name."
The words hit me harder than his teeth against my throat had.
