POV: Sylra
Ithara closed the door and set a clay cup on the table between us.
"The threads stabilize by anchoring," she said. "Not by force. You open fully, he opens fully, and the threads extend into the damaged structure of his wolf and hold it in place while the antidote does its work.”
She paused, closing her mouth for a second then speaking again. “Without the anchor, the antidote treats and the wolf degrades faster than the treatment holds. With it, the degradation slows enough for the compound to take."
"How do I control the depth?"
"You don't control it. You manage it." She sat across from me and placed her hands flat on the table. "There is a difference. Control implies you can stop it. You can't — once you open at full depth, the threads move on their own logic. What you can do is manage the rate. How fast you widen. Where you hold. When you've gone far enough."
She picked up the clay cup and set it in front of me.
"Put your hand on it. Open the threads — not toward a person, toward the object. Feel what it's made of. The density, the fractures, the places where the structure is weakest."
I put my hand on the cup. The threads moved before I asked them to — immediate, eager, like they had been waiting. I felt the clay's grain, the hairline crack near the base, the glaze thinning on the inner wall.
"You found the crack," Ithara said. She wasn't asking.
"Near the base."
"Good. Now widen slowly. Feel the edges of the crack without pressing into them."
I widened. The crack's shape became specific — length, depth, the angle where it had started. Ithara watched my face.
"Stop there," she said. "That register — that specific depth — is where you hold during the first stage. If you push past it before his wolf has time to accept the anchor, you'll flood the connection and the threads will extend further than you can manage. The warning sign is heat. Not in your hand. In your sternum. If you feel heat there, you've gone too far too fast."
"What happens if I go too far?"
"The threads lock at whatever depth they've reached. You don't get to pull back and try again at a shallower register. Every inch of depth you open is permanent." Her voice was flat and clinical.
No softening. I was grateful for that. "This is why the rate matters more than the destination. You will reach full depth eventually. The question is whether you arrive there gradually enough for both systems to adapt, or whether you crash into it and overwhelm his wolf before it can accept the anchor."
We practiced for the next while. She moved me through three more objects — a wooden box with a warped lid, a glass vial with a sealed stopper, a leather strap with old stitching. Each one had a different internal structure. Each one required a different rate of opening.
I learned fast. The threads responded to intention more than effort — the lighter I held them, the more precisely they moved.
Ithara watched me finish the leather strap and sat back.
"You are a fast learner," she said. "Faster than the texts describe for any carrier. The full line is not subtle in you."
I set the strap down. "Is that a problem?"
"It is an advantage, if you use the speed for precision rather than depth. The temptation will be to open fast because you can. Don't. His wolf is damaged. It needs time to recognize the anchor as stabilization rather than intrusion."
I nodded and stood up. The nervousness I expected wasn't there. What I felt instead was clarity — sharp and focused, the way I felt before a council session where the outcome mattered and I had done the preparation.
"I'm going to tell him," I said.
Ithara didn't try to stop me. "He needs to consent to a full opening from his side. If he holds anything back, the anchor won't seat. Make sure he understands that."
I walked to the medical room.
Vedran was sitting up. Reading. He set the papers down when I came in, and I watched him read my face the way he read intelligence — fast, thorough, already forming conclusions before I opened my mouth.
"Ithara found something," I said. I pulled the chair to the bedside and sat. "The dark threads can stabilize your wolf while the antidote works. They anchor the damaged structure and slow the degradation enough for the compound to hold."
He didn't interrupt. His eyes stayed on mine.
"It requires full opening," I said. "From both of us. I open the threads at full depth into your wolf, and you open completely to receive them. No managed distance. No selective access. Everything I am reaches everything you are, and it stays that way. The opening is permanent. Once the threads extend to that depth, they don't retract."
He processed it. I could see him running through the implications — not just the medical mechanics, but what it meant for every wall he had built between us since the day we met.
"You're asking me to let you in," he said. "Not partially. Not the way I've allowed it before."
"I'm asking you to let me save your life. The cost is that neither of us gets distance afterward. Ever."
Silence. He looked at the window. Then back at me.
"Is Ithara confident the anchor will hold?"
"She's confident the technique is sound. She trained me this afternoon. I practiced on objects. She says I'm fast." I held his gaze. "I'm not asking because I think it's simple. I'm asking because the window is closing and this is what we have."
"I know the window," he said quietly. "I've known it longer than you have."
That landed. Frustration flared — at him, at the months of silence, at the information I should have had and didn't. I let it pass through me without letting it reach my voice.
"Then you know this isn't a conversation we get to have twice. Are you willing?"
He looked at me for a long time. Not calculating. Something I rarely saw in him — uncertainty. Raw and visible.
"Are you prepared to receive me completely?" he asked. "Not the version I've shown you. Not the operational distance. Everything."
"That's what full opening means, Vedran."
"That's not what I'm asking." His voice dropped. The control he carried like armor shifted, and underneath it I saw something I had never seen in him before — fear.
Not of dying but of being known. "I have kept this managed and closed for a reason. Not because I didn't trust you."
He stopped as his jaw worked. The silence between us was thick with everything he had never let through.
"Because I was afraid," he said. "That if you saw the full depth of what I carry, you would see how much of it is about you. How much of it has always been about you. And I have never said that to anyone."
His hands were still on the sheets. His eyes were wet. He didn't look away.
Neither did I.