I stared at the papers. The lines and dots blurred together.
"What about Cal?" I asked. "He's bonded to me. Of course he'd respond—"
"Cal's data is the same, but his improvement is steady." Neal's eyes met mine.
"This doesn't make sense."
"It makes perfect sense if you accept the premise." He set down his pen. "Something about you is doing this, Lumi. Something biological, chemical, maybe something we don't have words for yet. But it's real. It's measurable. And it's consistent."
I should have felt validated. All those weeks of wondering, of sensing something I couldn't explain—here was proof. Evidence that I wasn't imagining things.
Instead, I felt sick.
"So I'm a variable," I said. "A data point."
"What? No—"
"That's what this is." I gestured at the papers, the charts, the clinical documentation of my effect on damaged wolves. "You've turned me into a research subject."
"Lumi, that's not—"
"How long have you been tracking this? How long have you been watching me, measuring my presence, documenting what I do to them?"
"I was trying to understand—"
"Without telling me." My voice cracked. "You've been studying me for weeks and you didn't say anything."
Neal's face fell. "I wanted to be sure before I—"
"Before you what? Presented your findings? Published a paper?" I stepped back. Put distance between us. "This isn't random. Something about you is doing this. Do you hear yourself? I'm not a phenomenon, Neal. I'm a person."
"I know that."
"Do you?"
He flinched.
The silence stretched between us. I could feel his hurt through the bond—genuine, raw, confused. He hadn't meant to make me feel this way. I knew that. But knowing didn't make it better.
"I have to go," I said.
"Lumi, please. Let me explain—"
"Not right now."
I turned and walked out.
The hallway blurred around me.
I didn't know where I was going. Didn't care. I just needed to move, needed to put space between me and that office and all those charts that reduced me to lines on a graph.
Something about you is doing this.
What was I? A cure? A tool? Some kind of feral whisperer that the council could deploy whenever a wolf went rabid?
Neal's words echoed in my head.
Specific. Variable. Data point.
