"Yes."
"When the old council was losing control. When resistance movements were growing. When they were most desperate to maintain order." Rae closed the folder. Her knuckles were white against the paper. "And these students were flagged as unstable. As problems requiring... intervention."
"Rae," I said. It was the first time I'd spoken since we'd entered her office. "What do you think they did to them?"
She looked at me. For a moment, I saw something crack behind her careful composure. Something old and grieved.
"I think," she said slowly, "that the old council was afraid. Emory was afraid she was losing power. Losing legitimacy. And they had students—young shifters—at their disposal. Who might have been harder to control. Who might have been sympathetic to the resistance, or simply different in ways that made them inconvenient."
She set the folder down on her desk.
"I think they decided to remove those students before they could become problems. Before they could form the mating bonds that would have connected them to packs, to families, to networks of people who would notice if they disappeared."
Her voice hardened.
"And I think that whatever they did—whatever 'preemptive intervention' actually means—it damaged these young people so severely that they went feral. Not from bond severance, the way I've treated before. But from something else. Something done to them before bonds even formed."
The words hung in the air.
I thought about Stone. About his terror.
What if he remembered? What if, somewhere in the chaos of his feral mind, he remembered being a student? Remembered being flagged as unstable? Remembered being taken somewhere and—
And what?
"If the old council did this before mating bonds even formed," Rae said quietly, "then they could have caused this. Created ferals deliberately. Or accidentally, through whatever procedure they used." She shook her head.
"Can you find out more?" Neal asked. "There have to be records somewhere. Authorization documents. Facility locations. Something that explains what 'intervention' actually meant."
"There should be." Rae's expression was stone. "The old council documented everything. They believed in records. In evidence of their authority." Her lip curled. "They just didn't expect anyone to look."
She moved to her desk. Started pulling up files on her computer, her movements sharp and purposeful.
"I need the full archive access," she said. "Everything from before the transition. Sealed records, classified documents, anything that was buried during the handover." She looked up at Neal. "And I need you to keep digging in the medical archives. Cross-reference the flagged students with any other documentation you can find. Housing records. Classassignments. Faculty notes. Anything that might tell us who these people were before they were erased."
"What about the current ferals?" I asked. "Stone. The others."
Rae paused. Something softened in her expression—just slightly, just for a moment.
"Keep doing what you're doing," she said. "Your presence is helping them. Whatever was done to break them, you're proving that healing is still possible." She paused. "That matters. It might matter more than anything else."
"And you?"
Rae's jaw set.
"Someone chose these wolves," she said. "Someone decided they were problems to be eliminated. Someone signed off on whatever was done to them, and then someone made sure the records disappeared."
She stood.
"I'm going to find out who. And I'm going to find out why."
We left Rae's office in silence. The corridor was empty—afternoon light filtering through the windows, casting long shadows across the floor.
Neal walked beside me, his shoulder nearly touching mine. Neither of us spoke until we'd reached the stairwell, away from any doors that might be open, any ears that might be listening.
"This changes things," I said finally.
"Yes."
