"Medical is coming. Don't move."
He speaks into his radio. Clipped. Professional. But his voice shakes on the last word.
I don't know how long I lie on the hallway floor before they move me. Long enough for the convulsions to stop. Long enough for the howling to go quiet behind the common room door. Long enough for the silence afterward to be worse than the sound.
Someone helps me up. Not Sven — a staff member I don't recognize. They walk me to a room that isn't mine — medical, maybe, or a holding area. A cot. A blanket. A locked door.
I lie on the cot. Pull the blanket over me. My body is wrung out. Every muscle aches. My side throbs where the charge hit.
Three hits and he still didn't let go until his muscles physically couldn't hold the command.
That's not compulsion.
That's a man who chose me over electricity.
And I chose him back.
Chapter ten
Cal's lab isn't what I expected.
It's in the admin building, down a corridor past Gavin's office, but the room itself looks nothing like the rest of this facility. No reinforced doors. No bolts. There's a long table with mismatched chairs. A whiteboard with someone's half-finished math problem still on it. Bookshelves — real ones, stuffed full, spines cracked. A laptop open on the desk. A coffee maker in the corner that's seen better days.
It looks like a teacher's room. Inspirational posters, extra school supplies, soft seating and a table. The kind of room where someone actually gives a shit.
Cal is at the desk. He stands when I walk in and the first thing I notice is that he moves like Stone. That fluid economy that comes from a body that learned how to be two things and settledinto the space between them. It's subtle. Most people wouldn't catch it.
I catch it.
He's average height. Tall. Slim. He's wearing a flannel over a henley — no lab coat, no uniform. There's a pen behind his ear and coffee rings on the papers in front of him.
"Alex." He smiles. Actually smiles — not the controlled non-expression I've been getting from Sven, not Gavin's clinical appraisal. A real smile, warm and a little tired around the edges. "Grab a seat. Anywhere's fine."
I sit at the long table. He sits across from me. Not behind the desk. Across. Like we're having a conversation, not an intake.
"I'm Cal. I run academic support and behavioral assessment. The guys come here for homework help, GED prep, reading — whatever they need. Today I'm supposed to do your intake evaluation." He pushes his glasses up. "Which means I'm going to ask you some questions, you're going to answer them on paper, and I'm going to send the results to a team of specialists. They'll interpret them. Write a report. Put it in your file."
"So you don't evaluate me. You just collect the paperwork."
"I administer standardized assessments. I don't interpret them — I'm not a licensed psychologist." He says it straightforward. No defensiveness. "What I am is someone who's been where you are. And I mean that literally."
I look at him.
"I was feral," he says. He holds up his left hand. There's a scar across the back of it — old, faded, the kind that comes from something that healed fast and imperfectly. "I attended Frosthaven Academy and ended up feral on Denali – it’s a long story. Hurt someone. Woke up in a medical facility."
He says it easily. Not performing pain. Not minimizing it either. Just — this is what happened. This is who I am.
"You're a shifter," I say.
"Was feral. Now stable." He leans back in his chair. "I work here because I wanted to be here where young people need the most help."
Something in my chest loosens. Just slightly. The way it did when Lumi said test it anyway.
"The assessments," I say. "What kind?"
"Behavioral inventory. Emotional regulation scale. Trauma screening. Cognitive baseline." He pulls a stack of forms from a folder. "It's a lot of bubbles. You'll feel like you're taking the SATs, except the questions are about whether you hear voices and how often you feel like punching walls."
"So every day and constantly."
