"What happened?" he asked quietly.
"RJ triggered. Stone talked him down."
Cal's eyebrows rose. "Stone?"
"They were in the same facility. Before." I watched as two staff members approached RJ carefully, waiting for Stone's nod before helping the exhausted wolf to his feet. "Stone knew things. Shared experiences. He used them to break through when nothing else worked."
"That's..." Cal trailed off.
"I know."
RJ was escorted out. He moved like a sleepwalker, all the fight drained from his body, leaning heavily on the staff members supporting him. As he passed through the door, he looked back.
At Stone.
Something passed between them. Not words—something older than language. An acknowledgment. A promise, maybe.
Then RJ was gone.
Stone stayed on the floor.
I crossed the room and lowered myself beside him. He didn't look at me, his gaze fixed on the door where RJ had disappeared.
"You knew him," I said quietly. "From before."
"Yeah."
"You never mentioned—"
"I didn't remember. Not until today." His voice was rough. "When Gray started talking about memories coming back, something clicked. I looked at RJ and I just... knew."
"The counting game."
"It was the only way we could tell if someone was still alive. In the dark. Between sessions." His hands clenched against his thighs. "RJ could never keep count. Too damaged even then. But he always tried."
"And you used that to reach him."
"I used the only thing I had." He finally turned to look at me. His eyes were gray, fully human, but haunted in a way that made my chest ache. "Lumi, this place—these protocols, these sessions, the way they're trying to help—it's not enough."
"I know."
"They can't understand what's inside our heads. What the facility did to us. They can study it and document it and develop treatment plans, but they'll never actually know." His jaw tightened. "I knew what RJ needed because I needed the same thing once. Someone who'd been there. Someone who could speak the language of what we survived."
I thought about the sanctuary. The plans being drawn up, the construction starting in spring. Would it be any different? Or would it just be a nicer building with the same fundamental problem—people trying to help from the outside, unable to reach the wolves trapped on the inside?
"The sanctuary needs wolves like you," I said. "Wolves who've been through it and come out the other side."
"There aren't many of us."
"There's you. There's Cal. There might be others—wolves who recovered enough to help the ones who haven't."
Stone shook his head slowly. "It's not that simple. What I did with RJ—it worked because we have a shared history. I can't do that with every feral. I don't know their stories, their triggers, the specific things that might break through."
"But you know the shape of it. The general territory." I reached for his hand. "That's more than anyone else has."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"Then we train more," I said. "Wolves who've recovered, wolves who are recovering—we help them become what you just were for RJ."
