Chapter 5

Esther

The clinic smelled like antiseptic and stale coffee.

I pushed through the front door still half-running, my bag slamming against my hip.

The receptionist pointed me toward the back without asking. She knew me. Everyone here knew me — I'd been coming through these doors every month for two years, and one look at her face told me the news had beaten me inside.

Ethan met me in the hallway. He was young, soft-spoken, the kind of man who delivered terrible news with his hands in his pockets because he didn't know what else to do with them.

"They're stable," he said before I could ask. "The episode passed about an hour ago. We administered the suppressants, and they responded well."

"But." He hesitated. That one beat of silence took a year off my life.

"The current protocol isn't going to be enough much longer." He pulled his hands from his pockets and folded them in front of him. "Their wolves are developing faster than we projected. We need to adjust the medication — stronger suppressants, more frequent doses." He met my eyes. "The cost will increase."

Of course it would. "How much?" I asked.

He told me. I kept my face still and nodded like the number didn't just gut me.

My children had been diagnosed with lupine dysregulation two years ago. A rare condition where the wolf matured too early, before the body could handle it. During episodes, their muscles seized and their bones ached as the wolf pushed against a body too small to hold it. I'd held them through episodes before — my son's body rigid in my arms, teeth clenched so hard I was afraid they'd crack. My daughter clawing at her own skin because the wolf underneath was trying to get out.

There was no cure. Only management. Monthly treatments that drained every dollar I earned and still weren't enough. Without the suppressants, the deterioration would accelerate. And if they shifted before their bodies were ready, the wolf would consume them. Feral. Permanent. Irreversible.

I'd spent two years holding that word off with money I didn't have. And now I had even less.

"Thank you," I said. "For everything you've done for them."

He gave me a look that said he wished he could do it for free. But clinics in the Yards ran on thin margins, and imported medication cost what it cost.

"I'll figure it out," I said. That's what I always said. He nodded like he believed me, and I loved him a little for that.

I found them in the recovery room at the end of the hall. Rita sat between the two beds, scrolling her phone with one hand and holding my daughter's fingers with the other. An empty chip bag sat crumpled on the chair beside her, and her jacket was draped over the foot of my son's bed.

My son was asleep on his side, knees drawn up, one sock half off the way it always slid when he slept. My daughter's face was flushed, her lips parted, her breathing shallow but steady. The suppressant drip hung from a metal stand beside her bed, the line taped to the inside of her small arm. The monitor beside her beeped in slow, even intervals.

"Hey." Rita stood when she saw me, kept her voice light. "They're good. Doc said they responded fast this time."

I sat on the edge of my daughter's bed and brushed the damp hair from her forehead. She didn't stir. Her skin was warm under my fingers, too warm, but the flush was already fading.

"She was calling for you in her sleep," Rita said quietly. "Mama, mama, mama. Then —" She stopped.

"Then what?"

Rita shifted her weight. "Then she called for papa."

My heart gave one hard, ugly crack and kept going.

"The kids have been asking me," Rita said, watching my face. "When I pick them up from school. They want to know why they don't have a dad."

She crossed her arms. "I told them not to worry about it. Told them if they get better, their mama will find them a new one."

She said it like she was apologizing. Like she knew it wasn't her place and did it anyway because someone had to answer the question I couldn't.

I gave her the bar smile. The one that worked on drunks and landlords and well-meaning friends who said the wrong thing at the right time.

"Thank you, Rita."

She squeezed my arm, grabbed her jacket off the chair, and left me alone with them.

I sat there watching my children breathe. My son's sock had slid all the way off now. I reached over and pulled it back on, tucking the edge under his heel the way he liked. He stirred, pulled his knees tighter, and went still again.

Their father was thirty floors above us in a glass office that cost more than every building on this block. Close enough to find. Too far to reach.

I left the room to pay the bill.

The corridor was empty. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. My shoes squeaked against linoleum that had been mopped too many times, and the whole hallway smelled like floor cleaner and old coffee. No windows. No noise. Just my footsteps and the hum of the lights and six years of things I couldn't say.

Aaron found me in hallways like this. He always did. The walls were thin and the lights were bad and there was nothing to distract me from remembering.

When I first found out I was pregnant, I thought our baby would be born into love. I was going to tell Aaron, and he'd be scared, maybe angry. He had a temper back then. But eventually he'd hold me and say we'd figure it out.

I was nineteen and dumb enough to think love counted as a plan.

I was on my way to his study when I heard voices through the door. The pack house was big enough that sounds carried in strange ways, and I almost walked past. But the voice was too clear, too close. His friend — I couldn't remember the name now, only the tone. Casual. Confident.

"You're not seriously going to throw away the Whitmore arrangement for her, are you? Celeste is the Beta's daughter. You marry her, the succession is locked. She's your strongest play."

I stopped walking.

He had a marriage arrangement with Celeste.

The thought barely formed before Aaron's voice cut through it.

"Stella's a human." His voice came through the door with brutal clarity. "I'm not going to sacrifice my future for a human."

I don't remember walking away. I remember the wall against my back. The cold of the plaster through my shirt. My hands going to my stomach before I could stop them.

He'd summed up everything I was in a single sentence, and none of it was enough.

I spent six years trying to forget that sentence. It found me anyway. Every time I walked a corridor like this one, every time my daughter's face sharpened with a temper she'd inherited from a man she'd never met.

I rounded the corner toward the payment desk, fishing in my bag for my wallet.

And stopped.

A man stood in the clinic lobby. Tall. Charcoal suit. Dark hair pushed back from his forehead. He was talking to the receptionist, and even from the back I could see the way people in the waiting area were staring — because men in charcoal suits didn't walk into Yards clinics.

I blinked. The fluorescent lights played tricks in this place. I'd seen Aaron in strangers before. Every tall man with broad shoulders became him for a split second before reality corrected itself.

This time reality declined to help. Because the man turned, and I was looking at Aaron Blackwood standing in the middle of a Yards clinic he had no reason to be in.

I froze. My heart didn't.

His eyes found mine. He looked surprised, then confused, then something harder settled in.

"Miss Hale." His voice was clipped. "Why aren't you at your post?"

My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"The luna fired me."

Three hours ago I'd been organizing his files. Now I was standing in front of him in a Yards clinic with my children sleeping twenty feet away.

Aaron's brow creased. He looked confused, not angry.

"What are you talking about?" His jaw worked like he was biting back a word. "I don't have a —"

A door opened behind me. Small footsteps on linoleum.

"Mama?"

My daughter stood in the hallway in her hospital gown, rubbing her eyes with one fist. The suppressant tape was still stuck to the inside of her elbow.

She looked past me at Aaron. At his height, his dark hair, his eyes — the same gray-green as hers.

She tugged my sleeve.

"Mama," she said. "Is that man our new daddy?"