Gwen

Chapter 1

Gwen:

We found it."

Those two words hit me before the Doctor even finished sitting down. I held on to the edge of the chair to stop myself from getting up.

"Found what exactly?" I said. My voice, faint.

The doctor folded his hands and looked forlorn. The kind of gesture doctors made before they told you something that would change your life forever.

"A way to suppress Josie's shift cycle. Not permanently we're not there yet but enough to stop the spontaneous triggers. If we can regulate when her wolf surfaces, we stop the fevers, the seizures and the bleeding episodes." He paused.

"She could have a normal childhood, Gwen."

I pressed my fingers harder into the chair edge. Normal. I had forgotten what that word sounded like.

"Tell me what it involves."

He did. I heard they gave a mix of medicines to young shifters with problems controlling their powers, then watched them closely for a while with check-ups every week for three months. The process itself was considered minimally invasive and Seventy-eight, out of a hundred times it worked. I listened to all this, measuring what they said against the problems I knew I would face.

which came with the last sentence.

"I have to be transparent with you about the cost."

There it was.

I didn't let my face change. I had trained my face over five years of marriage to Cole not to change when something gutted me.

"How much?"

He slid the estimate across the desk. I looked at the number for a long time.

"I will sort it out." I said, looking up at the Doctor.

He nodded like he believed me and I was really grateful for that.

She was awake when I walked into the room, lying on her side. An IV line was taped along the inside of her arm with her hair loose and tangled against the pillow. She was five years old and looked as delicate as a paper doll that had been through too much. When her eyes met mine they became as sharp as a wolf's during a full moon.

"Mummy,." She pushed herself up slightly.

"Don't." I walked over to her in four steps and gently pressed her back down.

"Stay."

She let me wrap the blanket around her again. Her eyes stayed on my face, reading me like she always did, like she had been doing since she was a kid and learned to focus to discover the hidden lies behind adult words.

"Did the doctor say something good?"

"He said something very good."

I sat on the edge of the bed and smoothened her hair back, from her forehead. Her skin was warm, not scary hot like it was last week.

"The doctor is going to make you better, baby." I said

She paused. Then:

"Is Daddy coming?"

I kept my hand moving, slow strokes through her hair.

"What made you think of Daddy?"

"I want him to come." She said it like a kid would you know, straightforward.

"I want him to see me when I'm not sick so he stops thinking I'm broken."

I said nothing for a moment.

"I will call him." I added

I waited until she was sleeping then stepped outside. I stood outside in the hallway, the lights humming as I dialed Cole's number. He answered on the fourth ring.

"I'm at the hospital." I kept my voice flat, calm.

"Josie's condition is escalating. The Doctor found a treatment that could actually help her but we need to move on it quickly and I need, "

"Stop." His voice bored in a way that had always made me feel like I was standing on ice.

"Stop doing this."

"Cole, "

"You call me every time you want to delay the divorce. I'm not stupid, Gwen."

The word divorce landed between us with its full weight.

"Our daughter is in a hospital bed. Whatever is happening between us has nothing to do with"

"I am busy."

There was silence, then I heard some noise in the background. Music, laughter and the low sound of a party. He was not at the office.

"Sign the papers. We can talk about whatever you want."

The call ended.

I stood there in silence, in the corridor that smelled like old coffee mixed with antiseptic, with the phone in my hand. A nurse walked past me hurriedly like someone was going to die if she spared me a look. I covered my mouth with the back of my hand for a second, put my hand down and went back inside to lie to my daughter that her father was on his way.

She fell asleep while holding my hand. Her grip loosened slowly until her fingers were just barely holding on. I waited for twenty minutes before gently removing my hand from hers.

Back in the corridor again, I called Lewis.

Cole's personal assistant who had worked for him for eleven years, and somewhere along the way developed a guilty conscience or maybe just a dislike of watching Cole be cruel and doing nothing about it. so, he always answered my forbidden questions.

"He is at the Salem house, " Lewis said, before I had even finished what I was saying. His voice was low and careful.

"There's a gathering. He's been there since afternoon."

A gathering. Of course.

"Thank you, Lewis."

I took the bus. I couldn't afford a cab, not with every account frozen, not with the cards that stopped working three weeks ago when Cole had made a few phone calls and systematically locked me out of every joint resource we had. I sat on the bus, hands folded in my lap, watching the city go by outside the window in a blur of light and color. I tried not to think. It was better that way.

The Salem house announced itself. Light poured from every window. Heavy European music played loudly through the walls, the kind that people play to impress. Many cars costing more than most people's homes were parked along the road.

I stood on the sidewalk to take a moment to look at the house I visited many times but never felt welcomed in.

Then I walked through the gate.

Nobody stopped me or even looked at me again.

I moved through the crowd with my head held high walking past servers, with food and drinks and groups of people laughing loudly and easily.I checked the ground floor, terrace and side rooms. Cole was not in any of them, so I went upstairs.

The master bedroom door was the one on the left. I already knew that.

I stood outside it for a moment listening before I opened the door.

“Yes! Yes! Fuck!” She screamed as he pounded her.

I wanted to say I felt something. Maybe rage. A grief so strong it physically hurts.

But the truth was, when I looked at Cole in that bed, fucking her, with her legs hanging in the air as he rammed her, with her hands in his hair, what I felt was nothing. I was too used to it.

He saw me. He didn't stop.

"Josie needs the procedure," I said from the doorway. "I need you to approve the payment. That's all I'm asking."

“I’m cumming! I’m cumming!” she screamed

He groaned and finished inside her, removed his dick and wiped it on her stomach before he glanced back at me.

"She will die no matter what. I'm not throwing money at a dead end."

I heard the words. I felt them try to get inside my head. I wouldn't let them.

"She is your daughter."

He lazily left the bed, walked over to me naked without caring, placed his hand on my chest and pushed me back through the door. I managed to stop myself from falling by holding onto the wall in the corridor. He just turned away.

"Security."

“Why do you do this? Why do you always want to hurt us? A divorce in the middle of a health crisis? I don’t care if your fucking the whole ton but I do care about how my daughter sees things and a divorce is not happening because it will hurt Josie even more.” I yelled at the top of my voice.

“I don’t give two fucks about that sick child and you better leave before I have them throw you out.” He snarled at me.

Cole was a useless man and I was a mother hoping that her child got better. We’d been married six long years and had a five years old. He never loved me neither did I but the bounds of marriage and our daughter had kept us together.

He’d cheated several times after Josie was born and I’d known and I had stayed, not because I was scared of what people would say but because my daughter also deserved the love she gave her father.

He’d hit me countless time and running away had been an option but I’d stayed because Josie loved her father and wanted that love back.

Recently he’d grown tired of the marriage and he’d asked for a divorce. I should have jumped at the divorce but Josie loved her father too much and I was scared she was going to be hurt and she may never recover from the hurt. I’d refused. I still refuse even if every bone in my body wants to leave this hell hole of a marriage.

I stood outside in the cold night, on the pavement the music still bleeding through the walls.

I looked at my phone.

There was only one person left. One number I had sworn to myself, over and over, that I would never call.

It rang once.

“What do you need?”

Xavier Holt, Alpha of the Hollow Pack, Cole's stepbrother, and the man I was supposed to have married.

I opened my mouth, closed it. Then the words formed slowly.

"I need help."