CHAPTER 06

“Are you finally awake?”

The voice came before my eyes even fully opened, but I did not answer immediately because my mind was still negotiating with the fact that I was lying on something that felt like real comfort, something that did not resemble the ground, the road, or the endless strain of running through a world that never once softened for me.

“Good,” the same voice continued, measured and controlled, as if it had already decided what I was allowed to feel. “Stay still. You are safe for now.”

“You always say that,” another voice replied from somewhere closer to the door, lower and more impatient, as though safety was a concept that had to be enforced rather than offered. “And yet she keeps waking up like she expects knives in the ceiling.”

“I do expect knives in the ceiling,” I said before I could properly stop myself, my voice rough with sleep and confusion and the strange weight of being alive in a place I did not recognize. The words slipped out without permission, and the room shifted in response, not physically but socially, like attention tightening around me.

“Good,” the first voice said again, and now I could hear footsteps moving closer, slow and deliberate, as if whoever owned them wanted me to track every inch of their approach. “That means your instincts are intact.”

“That does not answer where I am,” I added, forcing myself to sit up slightly even though my body protested with a dull ache that spread through my side and down into my legs. I remembered trees, sharp branches, impact, running that turned into falling, and then nothing clean enough to explain how I had ended up in a bed instead of the ground.

“You are not in immediate danger,” the second voice said, though the way he said it made it sound less like reassurance and more like a conditional statement waiting to be revised. “That is the only information you need right now.”

“That is not how information works,” I replied, and this time my voice steadied slightly as my eyes adjusted enough to understand that the room was too structured to be accidental. It was not a prison in the obvious sense, and it was not a home either, which made it worse in a way I could not immediately name.

“Observe her,” a third voice said, quieter but sharper, and I realized then that I was not speaking to two people but to more, positioned in ways that made me the center of a controlled geometry I had not agreed to enter. “She is assessing the exits.”

“I am allowed to assess the exits,” I said immediately, turning my head just enough to confirm that there were in fact multiple figures in the room, each standing with the kind of stillness that suggested discipline rather than comfort. “That is basic survival awareness.”

“You are allowed nothing yet,” the second voice replied, and now I could see him more clearly as he stepped into partial view near the edge of the bed, broad shoulders, red hair catching what little light the room allowed in without revealing too much of itself. “Not until we know what you are.”

“That is an insulting thing to say to someone who is already injured,” I answered, and even as I spoke I could feel my side reminding me of the truth of it, a deeper ache that made me inhale a little slower than I intended.

“You were found unconscious at the border line,” a different voice added, and when I looked toward it I saw the one I remembered, the man from the road, the one whose presence had already been cataloged in my mind as dangerous in a quiet, procedural way. “We brought you in because leaving you there would have been inefficient.”

“Inefficient,” I repeated, letting the word settle in my mouth like something foreign. “So I am not a patient, I am a logistical decision.”

“You are both,” the red-haired man said, as if correcting me was a routine task. “And currently, you are also unverified.”

“I am a healer,” I said immediately, because that was still the only structure I had ever been allowed to use to define myself. “That is verification enough in any pack that understands basic protocol.”

A pause followed that statement, not of confusion but of evaluation, and I could feel it again, that tightening pressure of being assessed rather than heard.

“Your status is under review,” the man with silver eyes said, and when he finally stepped forward into full view I noticed the way his gaze did not move like the others. It stayed steady, fixed, as though distraction itself was a weakness he refused to entertain. “Until then, you remain here.”

“I was not given a choice,” I said, and my hands curled slightly against the fabric beneath me, feeling the texture of something too clean to belong to the world I knew. “That is usually the part where someone pretends I had one.”

“No one is pretending,” the red-haired man replied, and there was something almost tired in the way he said it, like this conversation had already happened too many times in his life. “You are not a prisoner.”

“That is exactly what prisoners are told at the beginning,” I answered, and I watched the smallest flicker of reaction pass through the room like a shift in temperature. “Then later they are told it was for their protection.”

“You speak as if you have experience,” the silver-eyed man said, and for the first time his voice carried something closer to curiosity than control.

“I speak as if I have lived long enough to recognize patterns,” I replied, and the silence that followed felt heavier than any confirmation could have been.

“You should rest,” the first voice said again, softer now, though not less authoritative. “Your body is still recovering from impact trauma.”

“I do not trust rest in unfamiliar environments,” I said, and even as I said it I felt the fatigue pulling at me in a way that made resistance harder to maintain than it should have been. “Rest is when people decide things about you without your input.”

“That is not entirely incorrect,” the red-haired man admitted, and that honesty unsettled me more than denial would have. “But you will still rest.”

“Is that a decision or a warning,” I asked, but my voice had already started to lose some of its edge as the room began to feel slightly further away than it had a moment before.

“It is an outcome,” the silver-eyed man said simply.

“I do not accept outcomes I did not negotiate,” I replied, though the words felt less anchored now, as if my thoughts were beginning to drift under their own weight.

“You are fading,” the first voice observed, stepping closer again, though I could no longer clearly track his exact position. “Do not fight it.”

“I am not fighting anything,” I said, but it came out slower, like it had to travel further than before to reach my mouth. “I am simply… still here.”

“That is enough,” the red-haired man said, and his voice softened in a way that did not match the structure of the situation. “For now.”

“You are not allowed to decide what is enough for me,” I tried to say, but the sentence fractured somewhere in the middle, slipping out of alignment with my intention.

“We already did,” the silver-eyed man replied.

And that was the last thing I fully registered before the room tilted in a way that did not feel like movement so much as removal, as if the world had quietly decided to step away from me without asking permission.

“Keep her stable,” someone said, distant now, almost underwater.

“Don’t let her slip again,” another voice added, closer but still dissolving at the edges.

“I am not slipping,” I tried to insist, though the words no longer held their full shape, and the bed beneath me felt less like an object and more like an idea I was slowly losing access to.

“Then why is she not responding,” the red-haired man asked, and there was something sharper in his tone now, less controlled.

“Because she is out again,” the first voice answered, final and certain, as everything narrowed into darkness