Chapter 7

Four Years Later

Nicole pov

The knock came just as I was finishing my notes, and when I looked up, Marlon was already pushing the door open.

He was still in his meeting jacket, which means he had come straight here. "It passed," he said.

I set my pen down. "The evaluation board?"

"Clinical trials." He crossed the room and dropped the stamped file on my desk. "Approved, Nicole. Your research is going to trials."

I stared at the stamp, then at him, and he grinned wide, relief moved through me as Professor Parkville's face came to mind immediately. Even with him being on a wheelchair, with the tremor in his hands on bad mornings, he still came to the lab every single day and called it keeping busy, when what he was really doing was waiting to see if my work would become something worth the wait.

It would now.

"He's going to be insufferable about being right," I said.

Marlon laughed. "I'm already preparing myself." He checked his watch and then straightened. "I have a funding review in ten minutes I can't miss, but I needed to tell you first." He paused at the door. "You did it."

Then he was gone.

Four years ago

I still thought about that night sometimes. I had stood at the edge of the northern forest in the dark with my heart in my throat, a small bag over one shoulder and a vial of my own blood in my coat pocket, and I had waited.

The three days between sending that message to Marlon and actually standing there had been the longest of my life, moving through the mansion as normal, setting Tate's table and pressing his suits and swallowing everything, while underneath it I was already gone.

Marlon had arrived first, coming through the tree line with a torch he kept angled low, and behind him two institute staff I hadn't known.

Professor Parkville had been there too. That was the part that undid me, finding him waiting in the vehicle at the forest's edge, wrapped in his coat, refusing to be anywhere else. He had looked at me through the window for a long moment when I reached him, and then simply said, "Get in, my dear. We have a drive ahead of us."

The body had already been arranged, a female brought from the institute's morgue, similar build, positioned at the tree line where a patrol would find her within a day. Marlon pressed the syringe into my hand, I had done it quickly, not letting myself think about what I was doing or why, and then it was done and we were moving and the South River Pack border was disappearing behind me in the dark.

It wasn't until the vehicle crossed into institute territory, until the barrier settled over us that I finally released a breath of relief. I had actually made it out.

Mummy! My deep thoughts were interrupted. The twins arrived the way they always did, loudly and ahead of the caregiver, Maple through the door first with his hair going every direction and a scrape on his chin that hadn't been there this morning, and Rosy a half-step behind him, her hand finding the back of his sleeve the moment she was inside.

"Dr. Carter." The caregiver folded her hands. "There was an incident at the nursery this afternoon. Maple was involved in a physical altercation with two other children, and the supervising staff felt you should be made aware. We would ask that you speak with him about appropriate ways to handle conflict."

Maple stared at the floor, saying nothing while Rosy was watching the caregiver's face.

"Thank you for bringing them back," I said. "I'll speak with them tonight, and if anything needs to be addressed with the other families, I'll come by in the morning."

The caregiver nodded, glanced once more at Maple with practiced patience, and left.

The door had barely closed before Rosy's face crumpled.

She didn't make much sound, just pressed her lips together and let the tears come quietly, the way she always cried and my heart a little. Maple turned immediately and pulled her into a hug, his chin over her head with the effort of holding himself together.

"Maple," I said gently, crouching to their level. "Tell me what happened."

He shook his head, still holding his sister.

"Rosy?"

She pulled back just enough to look at me, wiping her face with her sleeve. "They took my toy," she said, her voice wobbling. "The one Marlon gave me. And when Maple said to give it back, they said" She stopped, swallowed. "They said we don't have a father, they said that's why we don't belong there."

I kept my face still, because they were both watching me, and what I felt underneath was cold, specific fury I had no intention of letting them see.

The nursery at the Federal Research Institute was for researchers' children. These were not pack children raised on cruelty and hierarchy. They were supposed to be raised better than that.

I knew some of their parents resented me. A single woman raising two children alone and still publishing research. I had seen it in the way certain colleagues looked at me, and I had made my peace with it. Adults could think what they liked about my life.

But they had let it reach their children. And their children had brought it into that nursery and aimed it at mine. The institute was supposed to be different from the pack world, the one place where none of that ugliness was supposed to follow you in.

Somewhere along the way, some of them hadn't gotten that message.

"Come here," I said, and opened my arms, and they both came, Maple still stiff with wounded pride and Rosy still sniffling, and I held them for a long moment on the floor of my lab. "You did the right thing," I said quietly, to Maple especially. "Standing up for your sister is never wrong. Do you hear me?"

He nodded against my shoulder but didn't speak.

"And those children were wrong," I continued. “I'll be at the nursery first thing tomorrow," I said. "What was said to you will not go unanswered, You belong there. You belong everywhere you want to be."

I had swallowed many things in my life. Humiliation, grief, years of silence that cost me more than anyone here would ever know and I had made my peace with.

But my children were a different matter entirely. My children were the line I had drawn in the ground the day I escaped, the reason I had walked into a forest in the dark with my heart hammering and never looked back. Every decision I had made in four years had been built around keeping them safe, keeping them whole, keeping them from inheriting the weight of what I had survived.

So no. I would not sit quietly while someone used their innocence against them. That was the one thing I had never learned to swallow and had no intention of learning now.

Maple held on for another second and then something in him gave way, all the bravery dissolving at once, and he started to cry properly, pressing his face into my neck the way he used to as a baby, and Rosy cried harder because he was crying, and I held them both and said nothing more.

When they finally quieted, Rosy lifted her head and looked at me. "Mummy," she said. "Where is our father?"

My heart started beating in fast thuds as I could barely find my words.

Maple went still against me. He had asked before, both of them had, and each time I had found a gentle way around it and each time they had accepted the non-answer with a grace that was beyond their years, and eventually they had stopped asking. But tonight the wound was fresh and they were tired and the careful restraint they usually showed me had run out.

I stroked Rosy's hair back from her face and looked at them both, at Maple's dark eyes that were his father's eyes exactly, and Rosy's hazel ones that were mine, and I felt a bit guilty.

"He can't be with us right now," I said, which was the truest version of the answer I could give them.

"Does he know about us?" Maple asked, very quietly.

I pressed a kiss to the top of his head and pulled them both closer, and I did not answer, because there are some silences that are kinder than the truth, and my children had already carried enough for one day.