Rafe didn’t interrupt.Neither did Dorian.They sat still, present, the room held in a careful silence that didn’t press her to fill it.
“Halfway through my shift, there was a transport reroute due to the weather,” she continued.“It was a last-minute schedule change, and no real explanation as to why.For me, it was just a name added to the incoming patient manifest and a warning that he was ...unstable.”
Her hands twisted together in her lap.
“When they brought him in, I knew something was wrong almost immediately.His injuries didn’t make sense.Bones that should have shattered hadn’t.Muscle density that didn’t match his frame, and with what he had suffered, he should have died.”She swallowed.“At first I thought I was imagining it.”
She took a breath to calm herself.
“I tried to set his arm,” she said.“And it moved under my hands.Not just shifted—changed.Like the structure itself was ...rearranging itself into the right place.”
Her voice wavered, but she forced herself on.
“When he woke up, his eyes—” She shook her head.“Gleamed a pale blue like nothing I have ever seen before.Not light reflecting but almost as if they were emitting light.”
Rafe’s jaw tightened.Dorian’s fingers curled slightly, then stilled.
“He looked at me like I belonged to him,” Riley said.“Not gratitude.Not confusion.It was total and utter possession.”
She took a breath.“His name was Christian Bidois.”
Both men reacted to that, not visibly, but she felt it, the air in the room tightening.
They asked questions then.Calm ones.Clarifying ones.
“How long were you alone with him?”Rafe asked.
“About twenty minutes,” she said.“Longer than protocol allowed, but we were short-staffed and he was crashing.”
“Anyone else see what you saw?”Dorian asked.
She shook her head.“Not the bone movement.Not the eyes.A nurse noticed his vitals stabilizing too fast even for shifters, but she brushed it off.”
“Did he speak when he woke?”Rafe pressed, voice steady.
“Yes,” Riley said quietly.“My name.He knew it.I hadn’t told him, but he probably read it on my ID.”She swallowed.“He said it like he was testing how it sounded.”
Riley felt a surge of anger within her.
“I knew I had to report what I had seen, and my boss fired me for it,” Riley said.“Not because he thought I was wrong—because what I described wasn’t on any list he was allowed to acknowledge.He said if something like that existed, it would be controlled.Filed.Accounted for.And if it wasn’t, then the problem wasn’t the thing I saw, it was that I’d seen it at all.”
Her jaw tightened.“When I insisted, when I refused to amend my report, he terminated my contract.I didn’t lose my job for being wrong.I lost it for being inconvenient.He cited mental instability that effectively put my career on hold and said I should seek evaluation.”
She huffed a humorless breath.“That label follows you.Turns out it’s real useful for discrediting people.”
Rafe felt something dark and hot twist under his ribs.He kept his face neutral, but the wolf surged, offended on her behalf.
“Fucking bastard,” Dorian muttered.
After that, she told them about the fear.The sense of being watched.The shapes in reflections.The way her phone battery drained too fast.How she stopped sleeping, stopped trusting familiar streets.
“And then he took me from the parking garage of my apartment,” she said.
This time, she couldn’t keep her hands from shaking.
“Forty-eight hours,” she whispered.“He beat me.Dragged me from place to place.Told me I was his.That I’d been fated to him, his mate.”Her voice cracked.“I saw him shift.Fully.Into a massive wolf.”
She flinched despite herself.
