Wildblood

Chapter 43

43

Kai

The last thing Kai wanted was to park his ass in Hristina Kruni?’s too-comfortable armchair. He had less than thirty-six hours to figure out how to save Caelan’s life, and each second that passed was a hammer to his temple. Canceling seemed sensible, but he knew that if he did, he might not ever come back. The consistency was the only thing keeping him there, and Miya insisted it would be healthy to stop spinning his wheels for an hour. While dire circumstances warranted professional support, a psychotherapist couldn’t do shit about a doppelganger. So, he settled for something more accessible—trauma and all that.

“Normally, a clinician isn’t supposed to reveal their personal flaws to their patients.” She sat with her hands clasped over her notepad. Always calm, there was something smug and self-satisfied in the way she filled her seat. As if to say knowledge was power, and she had it .

Kai didn’t respond, his blasé attitude dissipating. Suddenly, he didn’t feel so comfortable splaying his limbs across the armchair like some disgruntled teen in detention.

“There are exceptions to every rule,” said Kruni?, “and I endeavor to be flexible, opting for an unconventional approach where I believe it is appropriate. In this instance, I’d like to share one of my personal shortcomings with you.”

Kai’s eyes narrowed to slits. It was only their third session, and she was already switching tactics. That didn’t bode well. “You think I’ll spill my guts if you tell me about how Mommy and Daddy messed you up?”

She smiled icily. “Hardly. But I do think you value honesty. So, I’m going to be honest. I struggle curbing my curiosity. You might say that’s an asset in my profession, but when pursued impulsively, curiosity can…” She measured her words, twirling a finger through the air. “Get you into trouble.”

Kai took a slow, deep inhale. “All right. What’d you do?”

Dr. Kruni? flipped open a file that’d been hiding under her notepad. “I took the liberty of digging up your old records. Your intake mentions you’re from Washington, and while you’re certainly not the only Kai Donovan in the country, there are only a few records on the west coast that correspond to a story like yours.” She glanced up at him, gauging for a reaction.

Fingers digging into the leather, Kai swallowed the sharp scrape of nerves in his throat. He’d known this was a possibility. She’d pried out enough for a half-capable detective with resources and a database to piece a story together. Most people didn’t care to, but Hristina Kruni? wasn’t kidding when she said curiosity was her fatal flaw. Those records were legally protected; she must’ve called in a hefty favor to access them, and she knew he wouldn’t tattle. It would only reveal that he was undocumented.

Her attention flicked back to the file. “Post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, a strong pattern of non-compliance in six years of state-mandated therapy since the age of ten, and then… nothing .” She smacked the folder shut. “You vanished like a ghost at the tender age of sixteen.”

Fifteen fucking years since then. He was legally dead, and he had no intention of changing that. “I lost everything that tied me to that place.”

A statement of fact. A thing easily said when he couldn’t shore up the courage to utter the quiet part out loud.

“Everything,” Dr. Kruni? repeated. “Your parents. Then your caretaker. You would’ve been expelled—likely incarcerated—for beating your classmate to an inch of his life, which I assume prompted your flight from the state.”

“He was an asshole,” Kai offered with a blithe smile, “and Alice had just died. My application for emancipation was rejected.” The assault had also triggered his first transition since his parents’ deaths. He hadn’t learned to control it—didn’t know why it happened or how he was supposed to function in the world. The last thing he’d needed was a stint in juvie. “I had nothing in me but rage.”

Kruni? nodded—affirmation, cold understanding. “You were mistreated. Your choice to run away was perfectly rational.”

Was it? He always thought it was cowardice, an animal instinct to survive. Perhaps he’d thought wrong. Had he stayed and taken responsibility, who, exactly, would he have been accountable to? He didn’t owe anyone anything. Alice was dead, and he harbored no remorse for the harm he’d caused to his classmate —an arrogant trust-fund kid who’d tormented Kai since middle school. No one fucked with him now, but back then, Kai had frequently been on the receiving end of cruelty. Bullying. He was an easy target: orphaned, poor, mentally ill, and academically inept.

“That must be news to you,” Kruni? said when he remained mute. “That you were a victim.”

How Kai hated that word—the weight it carried. He’d been wronged and made to believe he was wrong. Now he understood. Running away hadn’t been selfish. It’d saved him. Surrendering himself to a punitive justice system would’ve only made him worse—more violent, more anti-social, more disenfranchised. And what good would that’ve done? Made a pair of soulless yuppies feel better about their son’s rearranged face? Was that justice? Flagellating a kid who’d lost everything to prove that he was, in fact, a piece of shit who’d never change?

Fuck that. They didn’t deserve his pain.

“Like I said, no one deserves a damn thing. You get what you get.” His own voice sounded foreign to him, a shakiness to the tenor.

Dr. Kruni? nodded. “I understand. If you believe people get what they deserve, then what does that say about you? Not a flattering picture, is it?”

“It’s all moralistic bullshit,” said Kai. “Crap people make up to feel like there’s some sense to the world. There isn’t.”

“Yes, life is quite senseless. You, for example, were ripped from security too soon,” she observed. “Everything about your life has been volatile. You learned that you couldn’t rely on others, so you fostered independence, self-reliance.” She cocked her head. “Sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

“It helped me survive. Don’t see anything wrong it.”

“You told me your independence is the most important thing to you.” She tapped the folder. “I believe you. It seems you protect it at all costs, even when that cost is your relationships.”

Kai snorted, though he mustered no retort. She was right, and there was no point in denying it. “Not exactly news to me.”

“Of course not.” She leaned back. “You think your independence is a strength honed through adversity, but have you considered why you guard it so fiercely? What do you stand to lose if you let go a little?”

Kai sat with the question, the answer more a feeling in his veins than a thing he could articulate. Anxiety, unmooring, uncertainty. His mouth opened, his breath halting halfway in before he spoke. “Control.”

There it was. That self-satisfied smile. “It’s fascinating, isn’t it? We associate independence with detachment, individualism, a desire to live and let live. It’s the opposite of control. Yet when someone experiences as much helplessness as you have, they become hyper-independent, shed their need of others.” She paused, then tossed aside his file. “You’re grasping for control in a world where you have none, and the only thing you can control is how much you let others in. The more you allow yourself to depend on them, the more that little boy in you remembers the violence of being torn from those he needed. Parents. Caretakers. Teachers. Doctors. All of them failed you. Now, you refuse to relinquish control even to those you love because you’re terrified of reliving that little boy’s traumas.” She leveled him with a gaze like tempered steel. “Your traumas.”

Kai remembered that boy. His blood-stained skin, his skinny limbs and shoulders slouched in defeat. He’d stared at Kai, reckoning with the man he’d become—a man with a different name.

That boy was Mikhail Zverev. Kai wasn’t Mikhail, but he carried his corpse in his bones. “I learned something about myself recently,” he forced out.

Dr. Kruni? raised both eyebrows, and after some waffling, Kai relayed a distilled version of the tale. That he’d forgotten his birth name until recently. That he’d remembered how he came to be Kai, and then Kai Donovan. She listened attentively, her expression a flawless mask of neutrality. He told her about the nightmares—the man on the train, the carcasses adorning the walls, the boy bathed in blood who’d been powerless to save his family.

“And you don’t feel like you’re that boy anymore,” Dr. Kruni? said when he was finished.

Kai shook his head. “That kid’s gone. Or so I thought. I guess you could say Mikhail Zverev’s dead, but his ghost is still around. He’s been hanging off my back so long, I’ve stopped noticing the weight.”

“An apt metaphor,” she agreed. “I take it these nightmares have been impacting you quite negatively.”

Huffing, Kai threw himself back, his ankle resting on his knee. “I started lashing out. That’s why my girlfriend made me come here.”

“You wouldn’t let her look at you when you were in pain.” He hated how soft her voice sounded.

“I’m used to being alone when I’m in pain,” he said. “And I take care of business on my own.”

“It must be frightening, having someone so close.” She shifted and ironed out her jacket collar. “That’s why you didn’t want her coming to therapy with you. Much scarier than going by yourself.”

He nodded slowly, the admission providing little reprieve. “It’s just who I am.”

Hristina Kruni? tutted. “Your girlfriend isn’t a threat to your independence, Kai. I’m sure you know that, yet you fight her for it anyway.”

Kai rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Hyper-independence is a trauma response.”

“I’m not sure you do get it,” she challenged.

“Fine,” he sneered. “Enlighten me.”

She leaned forward and locked stares with him, fearless in her verdict. “You’re wounded, and you’re guarding those wounds. Your girl’s trying to show you how badly they’re festering, and instead of grabbing some damn Neosporin, you’re biting her hand off.”

You’re guarding your wounds.

His mind was a dislocated joint popping into place. A jarring thunderclap of pain seized him as it all settled, and finally, something in his fucked-up brain aligned. He was a frightened animal—a wolf in a claw trap, more afraid of the humans trying to help him than the iron maw sawing through his limb. The more he struggled, the closer those iron teeth got to the bone.

“Your girlfriend’s not trying to change you.” Kruni?’s voice shattered his stupor. “Letting the people who love you take care of you won’t change you. It’ll only give you the space to be yourself.”

“I know.” The words scraped against his throat like gravel. He felt raw. Unhinged save for a single fraying thread that kept him tethered to the ground.

Miya.

Hristina Kruni? smiled, a fleck of warmth sparking her eyes. “What would you rather have independence from, Kai? Your girl? Or your trauma?”