The sound was loud enough to make me flinch. Loud enough to echo through the hallway, cutting through the controlled chaos of the medical response.
Then it came again. And again.
Stone.
I felt him through the bond before I consciously identified the source of the noise. His end of our connection was a maelstrom—fury and fear and something that felt like betrayal, all of it churning together into a storm of rejection so violent it made my head pound.
"Go," Cal said. He squeezed my hand once, then released it. "He needs you."
I ran again.
Stone's observation room was on the other side of the east wing. Far enough that the staff hadn't reached him yet—they were all focused on the gray one, on the miracle happening in room four. But I could hear him long before I saw him.
The impacts. The snarls. The sound of a body throwing itself against barriers that weren't designed to break.
I rounded the corner and stopped.
Stone was destroying himself.
He'd always been violent. Pacing, growling, lunging at anyone who came too close. But this was different. This was a wolf who had decided that the only enemy left to fight was his own body, and he was committed to winning that war even if it killed him.
He threw himself against the reinforced barrier. Bounced off. Staggered. Threw himself again before he'd fully regained his footing. Blood smeared the transparent surface where he'd split the skin above his eye. More blood on his shoulder, his flank, places where the repeated impacts had opened wounds that hadn't finished healing from the last time he'd done this.
"Stone!" I pressed both palms against the barrier. "Stone, stop!"
He gathered himself for another charge.
"Stone, please—"
I didn't mean to scream. Didn't mean to pour everything I had through the bond—all my fear, my desperation, my love for this broken creature who wouldn't let himself heal.
But I did.
And he stopped.
Not gently. Not willingly. He froze mid-motion, every muscle locked, trembling with the effort of holding himself still against the tide of violence that wanted to carry him forward.
His eyes found mine through the barrier.
Golden. Feral. Full of something that might have been rage or might have been grief—they looked the same, on him.
He made a sound. Low. Wounded. Not a growl and not a whine but something between—the noise an animal makes when it doesn't have the language to express what it's feeling.
Then his legs gave out.
He collapsed where he stood. Not unconscious—I could still feel him through the bond, still see the rapid rise and fall of his chest. But spent. Empty. He'd burned through everything he had in those few minutes of violence, and now there was nothing left.
On the other side of the barrier, Stone lay in a heap of blood-matted fur, breathing in shallow pants.
He didn't respond. But slowly, painfully, he shifted his weight. Dragged himself across the floor, inch by inch, until his body was pressed against the barrier on his side.
Right where I was sitting.
Chapter twenty
Neal looked like hell.
I noticed it the moment he walked into Stone's observation room with my breakfast tray—the shadows under his eyes darker than usual, the tension in his jaw that meant he'd been clenching his teeth for hours. His movements were precise but mechanical, like he was running on training instead of rest.
