"Where did you find this?" she asked without looking up.
"Old Frosthaven archives. Records from before the transition."
"Before the Healing Center."
"Yes."
Rae kept reading. Her movements slowed as she reached the pages with the clinical classifications. The repeated phrases. The list of names.
"Developmental instability," she read aloud. Her voice was flat. Controlled. "Preemptive intervention. Transfer approved." She looked up at Neal. "Approved by whom?"
"The signatures are mostly illegible."
Rae set the folder down. Her hands were steady, but I could see the tension in her shoulders. The careful way she was holding herself together.
"Explain what you're thinking," she said. "All of it."
Neal took a breath. "The ferals in the east wing. Based on physical assessment, they're between twenty-five and twenty-seven years old. They would have been student age during the years right before the council fell."
"Go on."
"I went looking for them in your records. Any patient who might have shown early signs of instability, any case that couldhave progressed to feral state. There's nothing. No references to feral wolves in any of your healing documentation."
Rae nodded slowly. "Because I never treated any ferals."
"That's what I thought." Neal gestured at the folder. "So I went looking earlier. Into records from before your time. Before the Healing Center existed."
"And you found these classifications."
"Thirteen students," Neal said. "Flagged over two years. Identical language in every file. And then nothing. No follow-up. No recovery notes. No deaths. No referrals to you or anyone else." He paused. "The ages line up, Rae. These students would be the same age as our ferals now."
Rae was very still.
I watched her process it. Watched the implications hit her one by one, like waves breaking against rock.
"You're suggesting," she said slowly, "that these students were targeted. Deliberately."
"I'm suggesting it's possible."
"And you're suggesting that whatever was done to them—whatever 'preemptive intervention' means—might be connected to the feral wolves we're treating now."
"Yes."
Rae turned back to the window. Her reflection in the glass showed an expression I'd never seen on her face before.
"These records predate my authority," she said quietly. "I didn't know they existed. I didn't know—" She stopped. Started again. "When I took over the Healing Center, I was given access to everything related to bond trauma. Every case file. Every treatment protocol. Every patient who had been harmed by the old council's policies."
She turned to face us.
"This was not included."
"You never saw this language?" Neal asked. "Developmental instability? Preemptive intervention?"
"Never." Rae's voice was sharp now. Hard. "These classifications were not part of my work. These students were never referred to me. Whatever happened to them—" Her jaw tightened. "It happened before I ever had the chance to help."
She picked up the folder again. Read through the pages more slowly this time, her eyes scanning every line, every date, every redacted name.
"The timing," she said. "These flagged cases. They cluster in the years right before the revolution."
