The Doctor's Secret

Iron made my teeth hurt.

Doc Ellis’s clinic was clean, human-clean, which meant iron in the doorframes, steel in the tables, and fluoride in the water. My skin crawled the second we walked in. Valeria felt it too — she kept her hand near the knife at her thigh, even though Doc was technically pack-approved. Humans who knew about wolves were rare. Humans we trusted were rarer.

“You’re late,” Doc said without looking up from his chart. He was sixty, gray, and smelled like antiseptic and old coffee. He’d stitched Bronte up three times and never asked why a man needed rabies shots monthly. “And you brought company. I charge extra for bodyguards, Wellie.”

“She’s not —” I started.

“She’s my sister,” Valeria cut in smoothly. “From out of town. I’m just paranoid.”

Doc snorted. He finally looked up, and his eyes went straight to my throat. To Bronte’s ring. His face did something complicated. Grief, then guilt, then wiped blank.

“Heard about Bronte,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, kid.”

The word kid broke something. I’d held it together through Rhys, through Silas, through becoming Alpha with blood still on my hands. But Doc had known me since I was eighteen and sprained my ankle falling off the library ladder. He’d known Bronte longer.

“Thanks,” I managed.

Valeria stepped closer to me. Protective. “We need a test. Pregnancy. Discreet. Now.”

Doc’s pen stopped moving. He looked at me, then at Valeria, then back to me. “Both of you get in the back room. Now.”

---

The back room was worse. More iron. A chair with stirrups that made my fae side hiss. I didn’t sit.

Doc locked the door. Checked the windows. Then he turned to me, and his hands were shaking.

“Bronte made me promise,” he said. “If you ever came in here asking for that test, I was supposed to give you this first.”

He pulled a key from around his neck. Old, brass, on a leather cord. He pressed it into my palm.

“It’s to a safety deposit box. Haven National Bank, downtown. Box 217. He put it in your name the week you got married.”

My throat closed. “What’s in it?”

“I don’t know. I never asked. He just said if anything happened to him, you’d need answers. And you couldn’t get them from the pack.” Doc ran a hand through his hair. “Wellie… are you pregnant?”

I couldn’t lie to him. Not to the man who’d lied for us for years. “I don’t know. Maybe. I need to —”

“Then we do the test.” He was all doctor now. Brisk. No nonsense. “But you should know, your blood work was never normal. Bronte told me to bury it. You heal too fast. Your white count’s insane. If you are pregnant, I don’t know what that means for you or the baby.”

Valeria was statue-still. “Do it.”

---

Peeing on a stick while a werewolf Alpha and a human doctor stared at the bathroom door was a new low.

I came out, set the test on the metal tray, and we waited. The three minutes felt like three years.

Two pink lines.

Positive.

The room tilted. I grabbed the counter. Bronte’s ring burned against my chest.

Not yet, love. You’re not ready yet.

“I’m ready now,” I whispered to no one. “You bastard, I’m ready.”

Valeria exhaled. It sounded like relief. Like grief. “The heir is real. The Courts will come for her. The Hunters will too.”

“Her?” My voice cracked.

Valeria tapped the test. “Fae-wolf pregnancies present differently. That shade of pink? It’s a girl. Always a girl with Wild Court blood.”

A daughter. Bronte’s daughter. Our daughter.

I put my hand on my stomach. Still flat. But she was there. Gold and green and impossible.

Doc cleared his throat. “Wellie. There’s something else. The reason Bronte trusted me? Why he made me promise?”

He rolled up his sleeve.

There, on the inside of his forearm, was a tattoo. Old. Faded. A crescent moon with thorns around it.

Valeria sucked in a breath. “You’re Court.”

“Was,” Doc said. “Half-blood. My mother was Wild Court. She ran. Hid with humans. I’ve been hiding for forty years. Bronte found me when he brought you in with that fever at sixteen. The one that almost killed you.”

I remembered that fever. I’d been burning up, screaming about trees and wolves. Bronte carried me here. Doc gave me a shot and I slept for three days. When I woke up, Bronte was there, holding my hand.

“You bound me,” I said. “You and Bronte. That’s why I didn’t remember.”

Doc nodded. “We had to. Your fae side was coming in too early. The Courts would’ve sensed you. Killed you or taken you. Bronte begged me. Said he’d do anything to keep you safe. To keep you his.”

His. The word tasted like iron and honey.

“So what now?” Valeria asked. “The binding’s broken. Silas found her. The Hunters have her scent.”

Doc looked at me. Really looked. “Now you decide. You can run. I can help you disappear. New name, new life. I’ve done it before.”

“And my pack?” I said. “And my daughter?”

“Then you fight,” Doc said simply. “But you won’t be fighting just wolves, Wellie. You’ll be fighting the oldest war there is. Fae against Iron. Wild against Court. And Hunters who think they’re righteous.”

He pulled a vial from his desk. Green liquid, glowing faintly. “This will suppress the fae signature for 48 hours. It’ll make you sick. But it’ll buy you time. Time to get to that box. Time to decide.”

I took the vial. It was cold. “What about the baby?”

“It won’t hurt her. Wild Court babies are tougher than they look.” He smiled, sad. “Trust me. I was one.”

---

We didn’t make it back to the safe house.

Valeria smelled them first. “Blood,” she said, yanking me into an alley. “Blackwood. A lot of it.”

My phone buzzed. Marcus. One text.

Den compromised. Hunters inside. They have a wolf. He says he’s Bronte.

The world stopped.

“What?” Valeria grabbed my wrist. “Wellie. Breathe.”

“He’s dead,” I said. “I buried — I didn’t bury him. Rhys took him. I never saw —”

“Could be a trick,” Valeria said, but her eyes were wrong. She was thinking the same thing I was.

Wolves don’t always stay dead. Not if the body isn’t burned. Not if the Hunters get there first.

“We go,” I said.

“Wellie, if it’s a trap —”

“Then I walk into it.” I pulled the vial from my pocket. Drank it. It tasted like dirt and lightning and went down like broken glass. I doubled over, retching.

Valeria held my hair. “You good?”

I wiped my mouth. The gold in my vision dimmed. The vines under my skin went quiet. I felt… human. Small. Weak.

“Yeah,” I lied. “I’m good. Let’s go get my husband.”

---

The den was a slaughterhouse.

Hunters in tactical gear, faces covered, moving with military precision. Silver nets. Iron bullets. Blackwood wolves chained in the center of the ring, muzzled, bleeding.

And in front of them all, on his knees, was Bronte.

My heart stopped. Then restarted, too fast.

He looked like Bronte. Same dark hair, same scar on his left eyebrow from when we were hiking and he slipped. Same hands. Same everything. But his eyes…

His eyes were empty. Glass. No gold. No brown. Nothing.

“WELLIE!” Marcus roared from the chains. His face was bloody. “Don’t! It’s not him! It’s —”

A Hunter kicked him in the ribs. Marcus went down.

The Bronte-thing smiled. It was wrong. Too wide. Too many teeth.

“Hello, love,” it said. In his voice. Bronte’s voice. “Miss me?”

I took a step forward. Valeria grabbed my arm. “Don’t. That’s not him. That’s a Skinwalker. Hunter tech. They wear faces. They wear scent.”

Skinwalker. I’d heard the stories. Hunters peeling faces off dead wolves, wearing them with magic and science to infiltrate packs. To destroy from inside.

But it looked like him. It sounded like him.

“Not yet,” the thing said, tilting its head. Bronte’s exact mannerism. “You’re not ready yet.”

I broke.

I ripped out of Valeria’s grip and ran. Not smart. Not Alpha. Just a girl who missed her husband.

The Skinwalker opened its arms. “Come here, Wellie. Let me hold you. Like before.”

I was ten feet away when the real Bronte’s voice whispered in my head.

The ring, love. Use the ring.

I didn’t think. I grabbed Bronte’s ring off my neck and threw it.

It hit the Skinwalker in the chest.

The thing screamed. Not human. Not wolf. Something insect-hive and wrong. Its skin bubbled. The Bronte face melted, revealing something underneath. Pale. No eyes. Just holes. A mouth full of needles.

“WILD FAE ARTIFACT!” one of the Hunters yelled. “CONTAIN IT!”

They shot at me. Valeria moved faster. She was wolf before she hit the ground, tearing out a Hunter’s throat. The pack surged, chains breaking, frenzy hitting.

I hit the dirt, crawling for the ring. It was glowing, burning a hole in the Skinwalker’s chest. The thing was dissolving, shrieking.

“WELLIE!”

That voice.

Real. Raw. From the back of the den.

I looked up.

A cage. Iron bars. And inside it…

Bronte.

Chained. Bloody. Alive.

His eyes were brown. Human. His. And they were locked on me.

“Run,” he mouthed.

Then the Hunters threw a grenade.