Twilson pushed harder. Asked sharper questions. Watched with an intensity that made my skin crawl.
And he watched Cole too.
Every interaction between us. Every glance, every word, every moment Cole positioned himself between me and potential danger. Twilson noticed all of it, his pale eyes tracking, his pen moving across the page.
By the time the inspection ended, I was exhausted.
The ferals were worse. Gray had retreated to his room and refused to come out. Stone had locked himself in his quarters, and I could feel him through the bond—hovering on the edge, fighting to keep the wolf contained.
"I think we have enough for today," Cole said finally. “I’ll escort you out Twilson.”
Chapter nine
Neal's office was covered in paper.
Charts on the walls. Graphs spread across his desk. Printouts stacked on every available surface. He'd pushed his laptop to the corner to make room for more—handwritten notes, color-coded spreadsheets, timelines marked with dates I recognized.
Stone's treatment dates.
"You've been busy," I said from the doorway.
He looked up. His hair was a mess, glasses slightly crooked, sleeves rolled past his elbows. He looked like he'd been at this for hours. Maybe days.
"Close the door."
I did.
"Sit down."
I didn't. "What is all this?"
"Data." He stood, crossed to the wall where the largest chart hung. "I've been tracking the ferals' responses for weeks. Heart rates, cortisol levels, shift stability, behavioral markers. Everything measurable."
"Why?"
"Because after the run, I couldn't stop thinking about what Cal said. About how they respond to you like pack." He tapped the chart. "I needed to see if it was real or if we were all just... seeing what we wanted to see."
My stomach tightened. "And?"
"It's real." His voice was strange. Excited and worried at the same time. "Look at this."
He pulled me toward the desk, pointed at a graph covered in colored lines. Red, blue, green, yellow. Each one labeled with a name.
Stone. Cal. Gray. Ben. And the other 2 feral wolves.
"This is Stone's cortisol over the past six weeks," Neal said, tracing the red line. "See these spikes? That's when he has episodes. Nightmares, flashbacks, moments when the wolf pushes too hard."
I saw them. Sharp peaks scattered across the timeline.
"Now look at this." He overlaid another sheet. A different pattern—small dots marking specific points. "These are the times you were present. In his room, in the common area, anywhere within his sensory range."
The dots clustered in the valleys between spikes.
"Every time his cortisol drops significantly, you were there," Neal said. "Every time he stabilizes after an episode, you were there. The correlation is almost perfect."
"That could be coincidence."
"That's what I thought. So I checked the others." He pulled out more charts. Gray. Ben. "Same pattern. Every single one ofthem shows measurable improvement when you're present and decline when you're not."
