Chapter 175 Building Bridges
Jolie pov
The first healing session with Elena is brutal.
Not because she resists—conditioned wolves don't have enough emotional capacity for resistance—but because watching Mara witness her sister's complete emptiness is heartbreaking.
"Tell me about your childhood." I start gently, my moonfire connecting with Elena's damaged neural pathways. "What do you remember about growing up?"
Elena's response is mechanical. "I have memories of a residence, two parental figures, and a sibling. They are catalogued appropriately."
"Catalogued." Mara's voice breaks. "Elena, we used to build forts in the backyard. We'd stay up all night telling ghost stories. You were terrified of thunderstorms and I'd hold you until they passed."
Elena looks at her sister with polite confusion. "Those memories exist in my recall, but they do not generate emotional response. Is that incorrect?"
"Yes." I keep my voice gentle. "That's incorrect. Those memories should make you feel happy, or nostalgic, or connected to your sister. The Council damaged the part of your brain that processes those feelings."
"I see." Elena accepts this information without apparent concern. "Can it be repaired?"
"We're going to try." I extend my moonfire deeper into her neural networks, finding the familiar devastation. Years of systematic conditioning have reduced her emotional centers to fragments. "This might feel strange. Tell me if it becomes painful."
I begin the delicate work of encouraging neural connections to reform. Elena gasps slightly, her first spontaneous reaction since arriving.
"Something is happening." She reports clinically. "Unusual sensations in my cognitive centers."
"That's your brain waking up." I maintain the connection carefully. "Parts of you that have been asleep for years."
Mara watches with desperate intensity, her hands clenched so tight her knuckles are white. I can feel her hope and terror through my empathy gift—hope that her sister can be saved, terror that the damage is too extensive.
Then I touch a buried memory. Two young girls, maybe ten and twelve, laughing hysterically while covered in mud. Their mother is scolding them but can't quite hide her smile. The joy in that moment is pure and uncomplicated.
Elena makes a sound. Not quite a sob, but close. The first crack in her emptiness."I remember that." Her voice loses some of its mechanical quality. "We were trying to catch frogs in the creek behind our house, we slipped and fell in the mud."
"Yes!" Mara leans forward eagerly. "And mom was so mad, but dad thought it was hilarious. He took pictures before making us shower."
"Dad." Elena repeats the word slowly, like she's testing its weight. "I had a father."
Mara's crying now. More memories surface as I work. Birthday parties, family dinners, inside jokes that only siblings share, each one brings a small flicker of response from Elena's damaged emotional centers.
The session lasts two hours. By the end, Elena is exhausted and confused, experiencing sensations she doesn't understand.
"I feel strange." She touches her chest. "Like something is expanding inside me. Is that normal?"
"That's feeling." I explain gently. "Emotions starting to return. It's going to be overwhelming at first."
"I don't like it." Elena's expression shows the first hint of distress. "It's uncomfortable."
"I know." Mara takes her sister's hand without thinking. "But it gets better. You learn to manage it. And eventually, feeling things becomes natural again."
Elena looks down at their joined hands like she's not sure what to do with the connection. But she doesn't pull away.
Over the next week, I conduct daily sessions with Elena while Mara hovers nearby, offering support and encouragement. Watching them work together creates something unexpected—a genuine bond between Mara and me that goes deeper than pack loyalty.
"I don't know how you do this." Mara says one evening after a particularly intense session. We're sitting outside the medical bay, giving Elena time to rest. "Carry other people's pain like this. Feel what they're feeling. It must be exhausting."
"It is." I admit. "But it's also necessary. I can't heal them without understanding what they're experiencing."
"You're stronger than I thought." She looks at me with new respect. "When you first arrived at Iron Fangs, I thought you were too soft to survive here, coupled with the fact Ryder chose you."
"And now?" I ask.
"Now I think I was an idiot." She laughs shakily.
"You're being plenty gentle now." I point out. "The way you talk to Elena, the patience you show when she doesn't understand emotions. You're learning."
"You're teaching me." Mara says quietly. "Not just how to help Elena, but how to be better than I was. I spent years thinking strength meant being hard, aggressive, intimidating. But you're the strongest person I know and you lead with kindness."
"I lead with necessity." I correct. "These wolves need healing, not intimidation. Gentleness is just the most effective tool for the job."
"Maybe." She considers this. "But you choose gentleness even when aggression would be easier. That's character, not just strategy."
We sit in comfortable silence for a while. The evening is cool, the compound settling into nighttime routines. In the distance, I can hear laughter from the dining hall where pack members are gathering for dinner.
"I'm sorry." Mara says suddenly. "I know I have not really apologized all this while, but here I am saying I am really sorry for how I treated you when you first arrived. I made everything harder than it needed to be. I thought I was protecting the pack, but really I was just scared of change."
"You were protecting what you loved." I turn to face her. "I understand that now. You saw an outsider coming in and changing everything familiar. Of course you resisted."
"Still." She meets my eyes. "I was cruel sometimes. Made you doubt yourself when you needed support. That wasn't protection, that was just me being an asshole."
"Accepted." I reach out and squeeze her hand. "We're pack. We forgive each other and move forward."
"We're more than pack." She squeezes back. "We're friends. Real friends. And I want you to know that if anyone ever tries to hurt you, they go through me first."
"Same." I promise. "Anyone threatens you or Elena, they deal with me."
That gets a real laugh. "Terrifying, I almost feel sorry for them."
The next morning, Elena has a breakthrough. We're in the middle of a healing session when she suddenly starts crying—real tears, accompanied by actual emotional release instead of mechanical function. "I miss them." She sobs. "I miss mom and dad and our house and everything we had. They told me my family was dead, that I had no one. But they lied. They took me away and broke me and I lost eight years."
Mara holds her while she cries, her own tears flowing freely. I maintain the healing connection, supporting Elena's neural pathways as they process grief too big for one person to handle alone.
"You're feeling again." Mara whispers. "Really feeling. That's good, Elena. That's healing."
"It hurts." Elena clings to her sister. "Everything hurts."
"I know." Mara rocks her gently. "But you're not alone anymore. I've got you. Jolie's got you. We're going to get through this together."
The crying eventually subsides into hiccupping breaths. Elena pulls back, wiping her face with shaking hands.
That night, Mara finds me in the command center reviewing treatment schedules. "Thank you." She says simply. "For giving me my sister back."
"She's not all the way back yet." I remind her. "The healing process takes months."
"But she's crying." Mara's smile is radiant. "She's feeling things. She misses our parents. A few weeks ago, she couldn't remember why those memories should matter. Now she wants to see them. That's my sister returning."
"It is." I agree. "She's making faster progress than most conditioned wolves. Having you here, being able to anchor to genuine family connection, it's accelerating her healing."
"Whatever you need from me, I'll do it." Mara says firmly. "Extra sessions, emotional support, documentation for Doc's research—anything that helps Elena and the others."
"Actually." I pull up a schedule on my tablet. "I could use help with some of the newer cases. Wolves who are just starting to experience emotions again. They need someone who understands what they're going through but isn't drowning in their own healing process. You've been watching Elena's progress, learning how to support someone through this. Would you be willing to work with other conditioned wolves?"
"Me?" Mara looks surprised. "I'm not a healer, I don't have empathy gifts or moonfire."
"You don't need divine abilities to help." I explain. "You need patience, understanding, and the willingness to sit with someone through their pain. You've got all three."
"I spent years being the opposite of patient and understanding." She points out.
"And now you're learning gentleness." I counter. "That's exactly what these wolves need—someone who understands that strength and compassion aren't opposites."
She considers this, then nods slowly. "Okay. I'll try. But if I mess something up."
"Then we'll fix it together." I promise. "Just like everything else."