Chapter 1

The room went black. My body pitched forward, and my forehead struck the padded rail of the donation cot.

The needle shifted under my skin. Blood leaked beneath the tape and traced a warm line down my arm.

"Lyra?"

Tessa caught the collection bag before it hit the floor. Her first glance was not at my face or my breathing. It was at the digital scale.

[102 mL]

Not even a quarter of a standard unit.

She pulled out the needle and slapped a wad of gauze over the puncture.

"Wake up. You cannot sleep here."

I heard her, but my eyelids would not obey me.

Deep inside my mind, my wolf had curled into a tight, trembling shape. Normally she surged forward whenever danger came near. Now she did not have enough strength even to answer me.

"Tessa, she does not look right," a young wolf waiting behind me said.

Tessa pressed two fingers to my pulse, barely checking before pulling her hand away.

"Vasovagal reaction. Some donors faint when they see a needle. She will recover if she lies flat."

Another volunteer picked up the registration tablet.

"Her chart says marrow insufficiency. That should disqualify her."

Tessa snatched the tablet away.

"Her hemoglobin screening passed. The old diagnosis is not controlling if today's numbers are normal."

I had almost gone to Mom. She was standing beneath the quota display with Council officials around her, checking the figures again and again. Fatigue shadowed her eyes. Her hand clutched the promotion review so tightly that the pages had bent.

So I said nothing.

Mom reached the cot and bent over me: "Tessa, what happened?"

"Temporary fainting spell," Tessa said. "Her physical indicators are fine. She became upset because I would not let her stop at one hundred milliliters. She said being your daughter meant no one would question a smaller donation."

I tried to shake my head.

I had never said that.

My body hung limply over the edge of the cot, and I could not move so much as one finger.

Worry slowly disappeared from Mom's face, replaced by disappointment.

"Lyra, open your eyes."

She held my shoulder.

"I know you feel unwell. But everyone is watching us today. For years people have whispered that you received the Council fellowship because you were my daughter. If you are the first person to demand an exception at a drive I supervise, they will say I protected you again."

So she remembered my anemia. She could see the color had drained from my face. She simply believed I could not truly be dying.

Mom had raised me alone. She had gone through three rounds of IVF before she conceived me, and I arrived early enough to spend my first weeks beneath the blue lights of a neonatal incubator. When I was little, a mild fever could keep her beside my bed all night, checking my temperature every thirty minutes and pressing her ear to my chest to make sure I was breathing.

Then she rose through the Regional Pack Relief Agency. The higher she climbed, the more she began to look at me as if I were a conflict of interest she had to manage.

Other people were allowed to need help.

I was not.

Because I was hers.

Mom wiped the blood from my arm with a clean pad.

"Let her rest for ten minutes. If the medical staff confirms she is stable, she can finish the remainder."

Tessa adjusted my arm.

"I have her. You need to update the Council representative."

Mom hesitated. Then she stood.

Before leaving, she looked back.

"Hold on, Lyra. When this is over, I will take you home myself."

As her footsteps faded, I forced my eyes open to a narrow slit. Tessa was already unwrapping a new needle.

I tried to tell her not to continue. My breath had become too shallow to shape the words. A cold metallic taste coated my tongue.

Applause burst from the far side of the hall. The Council representative announced that Silverpine Pack needed only three more standard units.

Through the gap in the privacy curtain, I saw Mom surrounded by officials.

Only three.

If my bag counted, she might finally receive the position she had waited seven years to earn.

I let my hand fall away from the line.

It is all right, Mom, I told her silently.

I can hold on a little longer.