Chapter 9 What should not exist
Tasha:
“Don’t move,” Neel said quietly, his voice calm in a way that made the room feel smaller.
I didn’t answer him. I sat still on the narrow medical bed, my hands resting on my knees, my spine straight even though my body wanted to curl inward. The clinic smelled clean, too clean, like disinfectant layered over old metal and cold walls. The lights above me were soft but relentless, exposing everything I wished to keep hidden.
Neel moved around the room without urgency, opening drawers, setting instruments aside, adjusting a screen that glowed faintly blue. He did not rush, and that bothered me more than panic ever could. He acted as if what sat in front of him was something he had prepared for, something he had studied, something that belonged in a room like this.
I watched him from under my lashes.
The wolf inside me watched too.
She did not snarl or claw this time. She observed him with interest, with possession, with the slow attention of a predator that had already decided something was hers.
“You’re safe here,” Neel said, still not looking at me. “Nothing I do will hurt you. If it does, you tell me immediately.”
I almost laughed at that, but the sound never came out.
Safe was a word that no longer fit my life. Safe was a memory from another time, another version of me that had not been dragged out of death and dropped back into a world that no longer wanted her.
“You keep saying that,” I replied, my voice steady even though my chest felt tight. “Everyone who said that before lied.”
He paused then. Just for a second.
When he turned to face me, his expression did not change much, but his eyes softened in a way that felt deliberate. He was tall, neatly dressed even in a clinical coat, black hair falling slightly over his forehead, round glasses perched low on his nose. He looked human. Entirely human.
That alone made him dangerous.
“I won’t lie to you,” he said. “But I also won’t promise things I cannot control.”
I studied his face, searching for fear, disgust, hesitation. I found none. There was curiosity there, deep and focused, layered with something else that unsettled me.
Respect.
“Sit back,” he added gently. “Let me see the wounds.”
I hesitated before lying down. The wolf stirred, not in alarm, but in warning. My skin felt too tight, too cold, as if it did not fully belong to me anymore. The fabric of the blanket brushed against my arms, and I felt it more than I should have.
Neel noticed.
“You’re hypersensitive,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “That happens with severe trauma, but this feels different.”
He rolled the stool closer and adjusted the light above me. When his fingers hovered near my shoulder, I stiffened without meaning to.
His hand froze in midair.
“May I?” he asked.
The question caught me off guard.
Most people stopped asking permission when they decided I was a monster.
I nodded once.
His touch was careful, precise, clinical. He peeled back the fabric covering my shoulder, revealing skin that should have been scarred, torn, ruined. Instead, it looked pale, almost translucent, veins faintly visible beneath the surface.
Neel inhaled sharply.
“That’s not possible,” he said under his breath.
I followed his gaze, my stomach tightening.
The wound was there, but it was wrong. The claw marks that had nearly ripped me apart were sealed, the skin smooth where torn flesh should have remained. There was no inflammation, no bruising, no sign of infection.
Only a faint silver line beneath the skin, pulsing slowly.
My heartbeat slowed.
I could feel it, the rhythm dragging, stretching time between each beat until breathing felt like work.
Neel pressed two fingers gently to my wrist.
His brow furrowed.
“Your pulse is…” He stopped himself, then checked again. “It’s dangerously slow.”
“I know,” I said quietly. “It feels like my chest forgets what it’s supposed to do.”
He looked up at me sharply. “How long has it been like this?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Since I woke up.”
He nodded, processing, and reached for a monitor. He attached sensors with quick efficiency, watching the screen as the line crawled across it.
His calm cracked for the first time.
“This shouldn’t be sustaining consciousness,” he said. “You should be unconscious. Or worse.”
“But I’m not,” I replied.
“No,” he agreed softly. “You’re not.”
Silence stretched between us, heavy and electric.
The wolf leaned closer to the surface, her presence filling my chest with a slow, dangerous warmth. She liked that he was confused. She liked that he could not explain me.
I liked it too.
Neel moved to my other side, examining my ribs, my abdomen, the faded traces of wounds that should have destroyed me. His hands never lingered, but I felt every movement as if my nerves had been rewired.
“You said you were attacked by rogues,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you lost consciousness?”
“I think so. I remember fighting. I remember pain. Then nothing.”
“And you woke up in a cave.”
“With an old werewolf who spoke like he already knew how this would end.”
Neel’s jaw tightened slightly.
“Did he perform anything that looked like a ritual?” he asked carefully.
I shook my head. “I don’t remember. He said I woke too soon.”
Neel exhaled slowly and removed his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“This regeneration,” he said, gesturing to my shoulder, “it’s not lycan healing. It’s not warlock regeneration either. It’s something else.”
I watched his reflection in the metal cabinet across the room. He looked fascinated. Disturbed. Alive in a way most doctors weren’t.
“That’s bad, isn’t it?” I asked.
“It’s unprecedented,” he replied. “Which makes it dangerous, but not inherently bad.”
The wolf scoffed inside me.
Dangerous had always been my fate.
Neel turned back to me. “I need to run more tests.”
“How many?” I asked.
“As many as it takes to understand what’s happening to you.”
“And if you can’t?”
He met my gaze without flinching. “Then I protect you while we figure it out.”
Something tightened in my chest at that.
People did not say things like that to me anymore.
“You don’t seem afraid,” I said quietly.
He hesitated before answering. “I grew up watching my mother be feared for things she didn’t choose. Hybrid blood makes people uncomfortable. Monsters are easier to hate when you stop seeing the person inside them.”
My wolf shifted.
“So you see me,” I said.
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation.
The room felt warmer after that.
He stepped away to wash his hands, and I sat up slowly, watching him through the reflection of the glass. My gaze lingered, sharpened, possessive in a way that surprised me.
The wolf whispered, low and deliberate.
Mine.
I clenched my jaw and forced the thought away.
Neel turned back with fresh gloves, holding a vial and needle.
“This will sting,” he warned.
I nodded, bracing myself.
The needle pierced my skin, and pain bloomed sharply before vanishing almost instantly. Neel frowned as he watched the vial fill.
The blood was wrong.
It was darker than it should have been, thicker, moving sluggishly as if resisting containment.
Neel stared at it, his breath shallow.
“This shouldn’t coagulate like that,” he murmured.
The monitor beside us beeped, the line faltering.
My vision dimmed at the edges.
Neel looked up sharply. “Tasha?”
The wolf surged.
Power rushed through my veins like lightning, sharp and burning, then ice-cold. The room vibrated faintly. The lights flickered.
Neel stumbled back a step, eyes wide now, no longer able to hide his shock.
I sucked in a breath, forcing control, pressing the wolf down with sheer will.
The room stilled.
Neel stared at me like he was seeing something that should not exist.
“You’re reacting to distress by triggering a surge,” he said slowly. “That’s not fight-or-flight. That’s something else entirely.”
“What?” I asked.
He swallowed. “It’s dominance.”
Silence crashed between us.
I looked at my hands, still trembling faintly.
The wolf smiled.
Neel stepped back, his voice low and careful. “We need to keep you here tonight.”
“For observation?” I asked.
“For containment,” he replied honestly.
The word should have angered me.
Instead, it thrilled something dark inside my chest.
He turned toward the door, reaching for a tablet on the wall.
“I need to secure the warding systems,” he said. “Just in case.”
“Just in case of what?” I asked softly.
He paused with his hand on the panel and looked over his shoulder at me.
“Just in case you stop holding back.”
The wolf laughed inside me, deep and satisfied.
And for the first time since I came back from the dead, I didn’t know whether I wanted to be saved.
But whatever may occur,I'm not letting Neel go away from me now.