When the scream stops, I’m on the floor on my hands and knees, my forehead pressed to the boards. A room with no windows. A cot with rails. The chemical reek of antiseptic that doesn’t quite cover the organic smell under it — the smell of fear soaked into concrete over months.
Not mine.
This isn’t mine.
I bolt out the door to find the compound is lit up. Wolves on porches — sitting, standing, some doubled over. Cameron is on the steps with his arms around his knees, rocking. Dane is braced against the barn wall with both hands, his head hanging between his shoulders.
“What’s going on?” I ask as Willow dashes past me toward the healers’ rooms.
“Mia.” She’s breathless. “It’s Mia.” She’s gone before I can ask for details.
Shit.
I jog toward the children’s room. The images get sharper the closer I get. The latex gloves have powder on them; I can smell it, chalky and chemical. The needle withdraws. A cotton ball presses down. A voice says, “Sample four-seven-two. Mark it and move on.”
Sable is inside, standing at the foot of the cot, one hand braced on the rail. She looks up when I appear in the doorway.
“Give us space.” Brisk, efficient, despite the stiff set of her shoulders.
I back off, watching, feeling like an intruder.
Conner is on the cot with Mia in his arms. Her face is pressed into his neck, her body rigid as a board. Her fists are knotted inhis shirt. He’s got both arms around her, curved over her like a shell, his mouth near her ear.
“I’ve got you, baby. You’re here. You’re with me. Feel my hands? That’s me. It’s Conner. You’re in your bed, and nothing is going to touch you.”
His voice is steady. His eyes aren’t. He’s looking at Willow, and his eyes are the eyes of a man who carried this child out of the place she’s showing them and thought he’d saved her. Now he’s learning that the place came with her. Inside her. At night, it gets out.
Willow is on the bed beside him, tears running onto her jaw.
“Can you reach her?” he asks her. “With your threads… can you get to her?”
“I’m trying,” Willow chokes out. “The thread sense is wide open, but it’s only working one way. Fuck!” She covers her face with her hands. “I can’t… I can’t…” She’s not just getting the images. She’s getting what’s underneath them… pure terror. I know, because I can sense it myself. But Willow is connected to every wolf in her pack. This has to be shredding her.
Another wave. The table, different angle — looking up at the fluorescent tubes and the face leaning over. A man in a surgical mask, only his eyes visible. His gloved hand adjusts something out of sight, and a new pain starts, deep and sharp, in the crook of a tiny elbow. The voice: “Hold the arm. She’s moving too much.”
I gag and turn away. Brenna has come up beside me.
“What’s happening to her?” I swallow bile down. “What is this?”
“It’s been going on since a couple of days after she got here.” Her voice is low. “It started the night after you left. Small at first, the wolves in the nearest cabins said they were having bad dreams. We thought it was trauma. Everyone processing what happened at the facility.”
“It’s not their trauma.”
“No.” She swallows. “It’s hers. She’s projecting her memories. We’ve figured that her magic is telepathy. The stress of the facility and the rescue must have triggered it. She’s never learned to control it. I’ve been working with her, but she’s too little to understand.”
“Make it stop,” Willow sobs as another wave hits. I feel it too. Everyone does.
Conner’s arms tighten. Mia makes a sound against his neck — high, thin, not a word. The sound of an animal in a trap.
“Brenna.” Conner doesn’t look up. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know.” Brenna’s honesty is blunt and terrible. “I’ve never seen a telepath this young. She’s three. She doesn’t even know what she’s doing.”
“Then we ride it out. We stay with her. We ride it out.” He’s stroking her hair, which is clinging damply to her forehead. “Wake up, baby. Wake up.”
I’m standing in the doorway watching a man hold a child through the memories of what was done to her in a facility that men like him delivered her to. His code on the intake forms. Sample four-seven-two on the needle. And Conner — who drove the families to the junction, and then went home to dinner — is on a cot absorbing his share of the bill.
He shouldn’t be the only one.