My footsteps echoed in the empty corridor. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in that flat, clinical glow that made healthy people look sick and sick people look dead.
I wondered which category I fell into now.
The observation room outside Stone's cell was small — enough space for a chair, a monitoring station, and a window that looked into his containment area.
It had already been tested.
I could see the marks on the inside surface — scratches, smears, the evidence of violence that hadn't quite broken through. He'd been throwing himself at the barrier. Again and again. Trying to escape, or trying to hurt himself, or maybe just trying to feel something other than rage.
I stood at the window and watched.
He was pacing. That same restless circuit I'd seen yesterday — back and forth, back and forth, his massive body eating up the small space in three strides before turning and doing it again. His claws clicked against the floor with each step. His breath came in harsh pants, visible in the cold air of the cell.
They kept it cold in there. Something about feral physiology, Neal had explained. They ran hot. The cold helped keep them calm.
It wasn't working.
His ribs showed through his coat — more prominent than the other four. He'd been giving them his food, I realized. All those years on the mountain. Eating last, eating least, making sure his pack survived even if it meant he didn't.
The bond between us pulsed. Distant. Painful. Like pressing on a bruise that went all the way to the bone.
I felt his rage. His confusion. The desperate, grinding need to escape that had no outlet and no end. He didn't understand where he was. Didn't understand why he couldn't leave. Didn't understand anything except that he was trapped, and I was responsible.
He stopped pacing.
His head swung toward the window. Toward me.
For a moment, we just looked at each other. His eyes were gold and wild, full of things I couldn't name. Hatred, maybe. Or fear. Or something older than both.
Then he lunged.
Three hundred pounds of muscle and fury, launching himself at the barrier with a force that made the whole wall shudder. The impact was enormous — a crack like thunder, followed by the scrape of claws against the reinforced surface. He was snarling, snapping, throwing his whole body against the thing that separated us.
Trying to get to me.
Trying to kill me.
I didn't flinch.
I should have. Any sane person would have. But something kept me rooted to the spot — the bond, maybe, or just exhaustion so deep it had burned away my survival instincts. I stood there and watched him rage, and I felt... nothing.
No. Not nothing. Sadness. A grief so heavy it made my chest ache.
This was what they'd done to him. Years of isolation, years of fighting to survive, years of being forgotten by everyone who should have helped. He'd held his pack together through sheer force of will, and this was his reward — a cell barely bigger than a closet, and a woman he hadn't asked for standing on the other side of the glass.
Stone hit the barrier again. And again. And again.
I watched until my legs started to shake. Then I pulled the chair closer to the window and sat down.
"I don't really know what I'm supposed to say."
My voice sounded strange in the small room. Thin. Uncertain. Stone was still throwing himself at the barrier, but the impacts were getting weaker. Even rage had limits.
"They have protocols for this, apparently. Feral rehabilitation. Structured interactions, carefully managed exposure, gradual trust-building." I leaned back in the chair, let my head rest against the wall. "Neal tried to explain it to me. Lots of medical terminology I didn't understand. The gist was: be patient, be consistent, don't expect too much too fast."
Stone snarled. His claws scraped against the barrier, leaving fresh marks.
"I'm not very good at patient," I admitted. "Ask anyone. I see a problem, I want to fix it. I see someone hurting, I want to help. It's probably a character flaw."
