"It's not safe for you to hear this yet."
"Not safe?" I laughed. It came out wrong. Cracked. "For who? Me or everyone else?"
"Lumi—"
"No." I stepped back. Put distance between us because if I didn't, I was going to scream. Or cry. Or both. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to look at me like I'm a bomb about to go off and then tell me I'm not allowed to know why."
"I'm trying to protect you."
"From what? Myself?" The word tasted bitter. "That's what you meant, isn't it? That's why you keep pulling away. You're not afraid of hurting me. You're afraid of what I might become."
He didn't deny it.
That was the worst part. He just stood there, silent, his face a mask of carefully controlled pain. The bond between us—that quiet, patient thread I'd felt since we met—pulled tight. I felt his anguish through it. His fear.
Not of me.
For me.
It didn't make it better.
"I trusted you," I said. My voice broke on the last word. "I felt something between us and I thought—I thought maybe—"
I couldn't finish.
"Lumi, please." He reached for me.
I stepped back. Out of range.
"Don't."
"Just let me—"
"I said don't."
I turned and walked away.
He didn't follow.
I made it to the stairwell before the tears started.
They came fast and hot, blurring my vision as I stumbled down the steps. I didn't know where I was going. Didn't care. I justneeded to move, needed to put as much distance as possible between me and that office and the words I couldn't unhear.
She doesn't know what she is.
What was I?
The question had been haunting me for weeks. The missing records. The erased classifications. The way the ferals responded to me like I was something more than human, more than wolf.
Now I had my answer. Sort of.
I was dangerous.
Something inside me was waiting to trigger. To snap. To turn me into whatever Cole had seen happen to someone else.
I won't let it happen the way it happened to you.
Who had he been talking to? Who else knew what I was—what I might become?
