Chapter 8

Nicole's POV

The Huang parents sat across from me in the nursery's small conference room, their hands folded.

"We're so sorry," Mrs. Huang said, glancing briefly at her husband. "Benjamin knows it was wrong. We've spoken to him very seriously about it."

"Thank you," I said, keeping my voice even. "I appreciate that."

Mr. Huang nodded, offered a thin smile, and they stood together. I rose and saw them out, said everything that needed saying at the threshold of the conference room and watched them step into the corridor.

I had barely turned back inside when I heard it.

"She's raising them alone and expects us to take parenting advice from her." Mrs. Huang's voice was low but not low enough. "Please."

"The board probably passed her research to keep Marlon happy," Mr. Huang said. "Everyone knows he did the real work."

I stood very still in the doorway until their footsteps faded, and then I went back inside and sat down in one of the small chairs and stared at the wall for a moment.

Four years, years of late nights and revised drafts and grant applications rejected multiple times before they went through, years of building something real from nothing and that was the conclusion people had reached. That I was here because someone liked me enough.

"That was painful to watch." Marlon's voice came from the doorway, and I turned to find him leaning against the frame with his jacket slung over one arm and his expression making it very clear he had heard all of it.

I stood before he could cross the room. I did not want to sit in that chair a moment longer than I already had.

"Walk with me," he said.

We moved through the corridor and up toward my office without speaking.

He waited until the door was closed as he crossed the room and dropped into the chair beside me. "For the record, you passed the board because your methods were flawless and your trial projections were better than anything they'd reviewed in years."

"I know that," I said.

"I know you know." He looked at me steadily. "I wanted to say it out loud anyway."

I pressed my lips together and nodded, because if I said anything else right now it was going to come out wrong.

"I have something that will either cheer you up or make today worse," he said, and handed me a folded letter. "The institute wants you to give the keynote at the centennial. Your work on the neurological rehabilitation project — what it means for bonded wolves who've lost their mates. They're calling it the most significant research the institute has produced in a century, they want the lead researcher standing at that podium. They want you."

I looked at the letter. Then at him. "No."

"Nicole."

"Marlon, no." I handed it back. "You give it. You've presented our work before, you're comfortable in front of a crowd, you actually enjoy it. Give the speech."

"They asked for you specifically."

"Then they'll be pleasantly surprised when you show up instead." I stood and moved toward the window, needing distance.

"Nicole, I was there. Every late night, every rejected grant, every revision. I watched you build this from nothing. You deserve to stand at that podium — and I think somewhere underneath all of this you know that."

“I'm not declining the centennial”

Marlon was quiet for a moment. "The centennial runs for two weeks," he said carefully. "There'll be visitors from every allied pack."

He didn't say the rest, he didn't have to, because we had both already thought it.

I turned back to face him. "I know."

"The barrier handles scent completely, you know that. Anyone who comes in registers as neutral pack affiliations, bloodlines, bonds, all of it goes silent at the perimeter." He watched my face. "He won't know it's you."

"He might," I said.

"Not through the barrier, he can't."

I turned back to the window, the institute grounds stretched out below me, quiet in the mid-morning light, and I let myself think about it properly — something I had been refusing to do since the centennial announcement came through the institute newsletter a few weeks ago.

Tate would come. Alpha of South River Pack, at a gathering of the entire alliance's leadership of course he would come. And then the questions I had been pressing down for years rose up all at once, sharp and uninvited. Had he remarried? Had he found someone the pack approved of, someone without a dead traitor for a father and an omega ranking that embarrassed him in every room? Had they given him children a legitimate heir, one he could look at without thinking of bloodlines he wanted erased?

I wondered if the years had softened any of it — the resentment, the contempt, the particular coldness he had reserved specifically for me. Or whether time had only hardened it into something permanent.

I had been careful not to give him anything to find, years of keeping my face out of every interview, every publication photo, every institute announcement. Dr. Carter existed in papers and grant records and colleague memories — never in images, never in anything that could travel beyond these walls. My name was Carter now, not Locker. But a name change and years of careful invisibility meant nothing if he walked into a room and looked at my face.

The barrier would help. The masks would help. But fear, I had learned, is not particularly interested in logic.

The thought produced a pain I wasn't prepared for. I had left. I had chosen to leave, and I had built something real on the other side of that choice, something I was proud of. I did not regret it. But grief, I had learned, does not much care about your reasons.

I thought about his words. The ones I had carried every day since. The blood of a murderer. I am not certain I could look at that child.

Rosy. Maple. Three years old and entirely innocent of everything — of the bond, of the history, of the war their existence represented to a man who did not even know they were alive. If Tate ever found out about them, I couldn't finish the thought.

But underneath the fear was something else. Something I had been turning over quietly for longer than I wanted to admit.

The bond was still there, years of a new name and a new life and two children I would die for, and it was still there

I had thought about the formal rejection before. The words spoken aloud that severed a fated bond completely and permanently. If Tate said them, if I could somehow get close enough, masked and anonymous and protected by the barrier, and hear them spoken it would finally go quiet.

The pull would stop. Rosy and Maple would grow up without that thread ever finding them.

Maybe that was why I needed to go. Not for the institute. Not for the research. Because I needed to look at him one last time from behind a mask he couldn't see through, and decide whether I was brave enough to walk away with the bond intact forever or whether I was finally going to ask him for the one thing that would set us both free.

"The masquerade," I said.

Marlon blinked. "What?"

"You mentioned full masks." I turned from the window. "If I came only to the ball"

"Everyone wears masks," he said carefully. "The institute provides them to all guests. Full masks, no names, no ranks, no affiliations. That's the whole point of the centennial masquerade — it's been tradition since the first one." He raised an eyebrow. "If he walked past you he would have no way of knowing."

"Give me the speech," I finally said.

Marlon blinked. "What?"

"You're giving the speech, that doesn't change." I held his gaze. "But I'll come to the ball. I'll be at the social hour, I can do all of that. But I'm not standing at a podium with cameras and a room full of people I don't know."

His face broke into relief, and he reached out and squeezed my shoulder once before standing. "That's all I'm asking. I'll sort everything else."

I nodded, and he left, and I stayed at the window for a moment longer thinking The blood of a murderer. I am not certain I could look at that child.

The bell on my desk chimed twice, pickup time.