Chapter 6 – What the Herbs Hide

(Angelique)

Twenty minutes to dismantle a life.

It's not as hard as it should be.

That's the part that hollows me out, how little there is.

Zack's clothes.

The shoebox of his drawings.

One good blanket.

My documents, the fake ones and the realer ones, taped inside a vent I pried open with a butter knife while a wolf in a suit watched me do it and said nothing.

Zack's narrating the whole thing to a Beta named Cole, who has the decency to look like he'd rather be anywhere else.

"-and that one's a shark but it's also a truck, and my mom said I can't bring the rocks but I'm bringing one rock, the gray one, it's my favorite-"

"Sure, kid," says Cole.

I keep my hands moving and my face boring and my whole body pointed at the one thing in this trailer that matters more than my son's lungs.

The tin.

Top shelf, behind the rice, a dented Altoids tin with maybe four doses left in it.

My emergency stash.

The thing I never touch, the thing that exists for exactly this situation.

The day it all goes wrong and I need to keep Zack covered while I figure out the next impossible thing.

I drift toward it trying to look casual.

A woman grabbing pantry staples she can't afford to leave behind.

I get two fingers on the shelf.

"That one too?"

Cole's right beside me.

He's already reaching past my hand, and he's got the tin, and he's turning it over with a little frown because there are no mints rattling around inside.

"It's vitamins," I say. Too fast.

"Just a supplement. For my son. He's sick, he-"

He thumbs it open. Looks at the grayish-green powder. Looks at me.

And I watch the suspicion arrive on his face.

"Nothing goes near the Alpha that I can't name," Cole says, not unkindly, and pockets it.

"Sorry. He'd have my head."

"Cole. Please. It's for Zack, I swear to you, it's medicine, he needs it!"

"Then the pack doctor'll sort him out. We've got a great one."

He's already moving toward the door with my four doses in his jacket.

I can't chase it, I can't fight him for it, because the only argument that would work is the one that blows my secret wide open.

It's not vitamins. It's the only thing keeping you from smelling what my son really is.

I stand in the middle of my emptied-out trailer and feel the floor drop away.

Because here's the math I've been trying to avoid since Rene staked his claim on me this morning.

I gave Zack the last of the juice herbs at breakfast.

The dregs.

I told myself it was fine, I'd resupply after work, the witch always has more for the right price.

The emergency herbs don’t get touched.

Now the witch is forty minutes behind me and getting further every second.

And that breakfast dose, the last full masking he's got, doesn't last that long.

Twelve hours, maybe fourteen if I'm lucky and he sleeps.

I've timed it a hundred times over four years, watched the edges of his real scent start to bleed through by bedtime like a stain coming up through fresh paint.

It's past noon now.

By tonight, by the time they've driven us into a house packed wall to wall with the sharpest noses in the territory, the herbs are going to thin out.

And then they're going to fail.

And when they fail, my son isn't going to smell like some stranger's pup anymore.

He's going to smell like what he is.

He's going to smell like his father.

That's the part nobody knows but me.

The herbs don't just hide that Zack's a wolf.

They rewrite him, bury the bloodline, smudge the scent that says whose.

It's why Rene stood three feet from his own son in the dirt outside and looked at him with nothing but thinly veiled disgust.

It's the whole reason I’m still breathing.

Because the moment Rene Beck finds out I ran away with his son in my belly he’s going to take Zack and kill me.

He won’t stop to ask for explanations.

He won’t be able to imagine there’s one in existence that could defend my actions.

"Mom!"

Zack's at the door, vibrating, Cole's big hand on his shoulder.

"They said I can sit by the window!"

He's so happy.

He thinks we're going on an adventure.

He thinks the giant scary man with the black car is the start of something good, and I have to smile back at him like my chest isn't caving in, because that's the job.

That's always been the job.

Protect my baby no matter the cost to myself.

I won’t fail him now.

Somehow I’ll make a plan, because the alternative is unacceptable.

If the pack finds out who Zack truly is, his life is in mortal danger.

"That's great, baby," I say. "That's so great."

I climb into the SUV beside my son and pull him into my side.

He babbles about wolves and windows and the gray rock in his fist, and I stare at my cheap watch, keeping a countdown in my head.

Twelve hours. Maybe fourteen.

If I don’t get those herbs back, every wolf in that house is going to smell the truth on my little boy.

And the first one to smell it will be the man who promised to make a pet of me.