Wake Her

CONNOR

The next morning, Doctor Ross rapped once on my office door and walked in like he hadn’t slept in years. I’d ordered him to meet with me as soon as he finished with the girl.

And he’d started on her over twelve hours ago.

“Thanks for coming, Doc.” To give him my full attention, I set aside the interrogation report Travis had just handed me.

He gave a tight nod in my direction, his expression carved from stone as he ignored Travis and Ben entirely. “Alpha,” he said curtly.

“How’s our patient?”

“Honestly, Alpha? She should be dead.” His voice carried admonishment—it always did when he had to nurse back to health those I’d had questioned.

“But she’s not. Right?” My chest constricted, but I couldn’t tell whether it was a reaction to his tone or the thought of her being dead.

“No. She’s alive. Barely.” His fingers danced over his tablet as he scrolled. “I haven’t had to perform this many procedures since med school. Thank Goddess I still remember how.” He sighed. “Her healing will be a lot quicker once we get her off dialysis.”

“Dialysis? Why the hell is she on that?”

“Because someone removed one of her kidneys,” he said casually as if diagnosing a cold.

My head whipped toward Travis, who flinched but said nothing.

“Oh, no,” the doctor said, “that wasn’t us. That happened ~before~ you started brutalizing her.”

There it was—shame in a scalpel-thin slice, drawn clean across the room. My wolf stirred uneasily beneath my skin, pacing and baring its teeth.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Alpha.” Ross’s voice trembled when he met my gaze. “Was it really necessary? I’ve never seen anything like this.” He gestured toward his tablet. “She’s a girl. Defenseless. And you…” He swallowed. “I just want to understand why.”

He was angry, and rightfully so.

Which made two of us.

But the ever-so-slight narrowing of Ben’s eyes and shake of his head reminded me to remain firm. Because now was not the time to second-guess myself, to make myself appear weak.

As angry as I was at Travis and myself—especially myself—I’d done what was necessary to keep my pack safe. No one could say otherwise.

“Tell me the extent of her injuries.” I kept my voice low.

He stared at me for a long beat, saw I wasn’t going to answer his question, sighed, and looked down. “Fine. I’ll start from the top.” And then he began listing the damage with the clinical detachment of someone reading a torture menu in hell.

“Scalp laceration needing stitches. Skull fracture. Likely concussion, but we ran scans and ruled out brain damage. Facial trauma—cheekbone, nose, jaw, all broken. Soft-tissue damage around the eyes. Lacerations from blunt force, probably fists.”

I clenched my jaw. Every word hammered my ribs. Ben seemed to be reacting similarly, but Travis still stood tall.

“Her throat is severely bruised from strangulation,” he continued. “Left collarbone broken, shoulder dislocated. Wrists, both of them, torn up, infected, raw. Likely from restraints. Every finger on her right hand broken.”

A sick, metallic taste coated my tongue.

“She’s got third-degree burns on her breasts and stomach. Round, about the size of a cigarette.” His words caught, and he cleared his throat. “Her back was… Well, I believe a cattail whip was used. One with metal tips. The wounds were infected. Four broken ribs.

“And the kidney removal site? Someone punched her there repeatedly. The stitches were torn out. Also infected.”

I was sinking, drowning in guilt, but I couldn’t show it. Not now. Ben, however, dropped onto the sofa and covered his face with his hands. Travis’s stoic expression finally faltered, his gaze fell to the floor, and he bowed his head.

The doctor shifted on his feet and sighed. “Her left tibia was broken. Right foot crushed, nearly every bone shattered. All toenails on her left foot were removed.” He finally looked up from his tablet.

After a moment of silence, he kept going. “She has three times the lethal dose of wolfsbane in her system. Even for an alpha, that would be fatal. And she’s only got one kidney to process it. Frankly? It’s ~impossible~ she’s alive.”

“She’s strong,” Travis muttered, seemingly trying for redemption. “See? Told you she’s unusually—”

My glare cut him off cold.

Doctor Ross cleared his throat and took it as permission to continue. “Yes. Strong, indeed. But that’s not all. Her body’s covered in scars.” He made a point to look each of us in the eye as he said this.

Because we all knew werewolves didn’t scar; our healing was too fast.

“Besides the hundreds of small ones, she has scars from open-heart surgery,” he said, reading from the tablet again. “Another down her spine. And one perfectly round one on her scalp.” He glanced at me. “These aren’t random. They’re deliberate.”

Ben bolted to his feet. “Wolfsbane! It suppresses the shift, suppresses healing. If someone had been dosing her—for years, maybe—then she wouldn’t heal like one of us. She’d scar.”

Doctor Ross nodded, and Travis and I joined him.

It made sense, but my mind still reeled. The implications here were horrifying, and that knot of unease twisted my insides once again.

“I have a theory, Alpha,” the doctor said.

“Let’s hear it.”

“I think she was experimented on. From a very young age. And whoever did it knew exactly how to suppress her wolf.”

“Well,” Ben said, “the only people who would experiment on a werewolf would be humans.”

~And that’s what I was afraid of~.

My stomach clenched as Ben’s words clung to the air like smoke. Hearing this out loud made it real—for all of us.

A ripple of horror passed through the room. Even though human experimentation was the kind of story pups whispered around campfires, we’d successfully hidden ourselves from humans since the beginning of time.

However, if this were true, it’d seem that would soon be coming to an end. This could be a threat far greater than we’d thought, a threat to more than just our pack’s existence.

“All right,” I said, standing and pacing behind my desk, “let’s try to puzzle this all out.”

From there, the four of us worked through the facts. By the end, we agreed on what the evidence seemed to support.

Her physical state spoke of good nutrition, regular exercise, and top-quality medical care. The nature and location of her scars revealed injuries from both humans and objects, but whether accidental or intentional wasn’t clear for all of them.

The high levels of wolfsbane in her system suggested long-term exposure, but, again, whether it was to condition her to survive it or an upping of dosage to account for a rising tolerance wasn’t clear.

What was clear, though, was that this girl had received systematic conditioning.

But at whose hands, and for what purpose?

Was she a spy for the humans, or a lab rat? Was she sent here by them, or had she escaped? Was she really a threat like the email had said, or had they sent that email after she’d escaped so that we would kill her without asking questions?

This last one sent a shockwave through my system. Because it was what I would do if I were in their position.

Doubt, regret, and shame slammed into me all at once. I knew what I had to do.

Without hesitating, I rounded my desk and made for the door, the force of my alpha aura rolling out.

“Alpha,” Ben said, “where are you going?”

“I’m going to get answers.”

***

As I stormed toward the infirmary, Doctor Ross begged and pleaded behind me. “Alpha, please. She’s in an induced coma for a reason. Waking her would be incredibly—”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.” I reached the double doors and grabbed a handle, but the doctor jumped in front of me.

“Alpha, I ~strongly~ advise—”

“Get out of my way, and wake her. Now.” My alpha command cracked through the air.

The doctor flinched, his will breaking. He bowed his head, opened the other door, and muttered, “Yes, Alpha,” before shuffling away to prep the injection.

Her scent hit me the second I stepped into the room. Thick. Wild. Crushed mint and lavender soaked in vanilla. It stuck in my lungs, and I wondered if it did that to the others too.

In a bed in the far corner of the room, she was restrained, despite her left arm in a sling and the right in a cast to the elbow.

I took slow steps to her, my wolf getting angrier at me with every footfall. Doctor Ross came over and injected the cocktail. And we waited.

Thirty seconds.

Then she moaned. The sound went through me like lightning—sharp and electric. She twisted, her breath catching before a scream ripped out of her throat. She began thrashing, panicked, with pain etched on every bruise of her face.

Her eyes opened. They were brighter than before, an unnatural shade of spring green.

But the instant they locked onto me, her scream cut out.

Inside me, my wolf lunged forward and howled.

“~Mate!~”