Chapter three : Isolde Vale

Five Years Later

Sable

The man I had spent five years hiding from had asked for me by name seven times, and I had never once said hello.

"Your terms are insulting," said Bram, leaning across the glass table of my conference room. He was six and a half feet of Cinder fall pack muscle, and he was trying to threaten me into negotiating at a better price. "My wolves have been buying human medical supplies for forty years."

"At forty percent markup," I said, turning a page. "Because nobody ever told you that you could negotiate."

His countenance changed in an instant.

Isolde Vale never raised her voice. That was the first rule, and it was the one that made grown Alphas sweat. Wolves respected power but trusted paperwork, and I had become very good at handling both. Vale & Associates occupied the fourteenth floor of a Harlow Bay tower, close enough to the human world to buy from it and close enough to the territories to sell back.

Nobody in that room knew I had once been the girl who ate at the end of the table.

"Sign it," I said, sliding the pen across the glass, "or the shipment goes to Pine gate on Friday."

Bram signed. He did not look happy about it, and I did not need him to.

***

"Ironwood again," said Delphine, my assistant, the moment he left. She stood in the doorway holding a slim black folder with a silver crest pressed into the leather. "Seventh proposal since spring."

I did not look at the crest. A tree, a crescent moon, a border of thorns. Five years ago, I embroidered that pattern onto a pillowcase for Elspeth's birthday.

"Decline it."

"You haven't opened it."

"I know what's in it."

"A three-year exclusive on their medical imports." Delphine hesitated. She was nineteen, jovial, and not afraid of me, which was why I had hired her. "The Alpha's office wants a meeting every month."

"Then the Alpha's office can keep asking."

When she was gone, I dropped the folder into the bottom drawer, on top of the other six, and closed it without bothering to know what it contained.

My phone buzzed. Tamsin.

Pip wants to know if you're coming to pick her up or if she's walking home with a dragon.

I smiled. Tamsin was the only person on earth who knew Isolde Vale's real name. She had found me six months after I left Ironwood, asleep in a bus station with a newborn in my arms. She had not asked questions. She had simply handed me a blanket and a phone number.

Dragon, I typed back. Leaving now.

***

The walk to Pip's preschool was the only part of my day when no one wanted anything from me.

The street was lined with maples, red and gold by October. I passed the same crossing guard, the same dog with the crooked ear, the same bakery that smelled like cardamom. Now I feel a quiet pride, the kind that comes from stacking small safe days until they make a house.

Pip had been born in a rented room with the windows painted shut. My wolf woke that night, hours after the birth, with a roar that nearly tore me in half. She told me later that something old and cold had held her locked away since I was a child. I never learned who put it there. I only knew that my body grew strong, my senses sharpened, and the girl called Sable stopped answering when anyone said her name.

So I paid a forger in a neighboring pack to take her out of every record I had ever touched. School rolls. Medical files. Pack registries. Sable Hart became a blank space, and Isolde Vale filled it in.

It seemed like it was the safest thing that I had ever done.

***

The playground was empty when I turned the corner. That was my first warning.

It was three-thirty, and recess had ended at three. Instead of children, a cluster of teachers stood near the swings, bent over something small, and a red light turned slowly at the edge of the yard.

My bag hit the pavement but I didn't remember dropping it.

"Ms. Vale!" Mrs. Verity, Pip's teacher, caught my arm. Her face was gray. "She's breathing. She's conscious. She went down near the swings and didn't get up."

Pip lay on a folded blanket on the blacktop, small and pale, her braids spread like dark rope. Her lips had a faint blue tinge I had never seen before.

"Mama," she said, and tried to smile. "The sky went sideways."

I dropped to my knees and took her hand. It was cold. "I'm here, baby."

My wolf howled inside me, furious at the world for touching what was hers. I locked her down behind my teeth, not with human paramedics and a dozen watching children.

"Does she have any medical conditions?" one of them asked.

"No," I said. Knowing that it was going to be an avenue for further questions, I added."I don't know. She's always been tired. I thought she was just growing."

***

The cardiologist at Harlow General was a quiet man with kind eyes and a mismatched tie. He waited until Pip was asleep, hooked to monitors with a stuffed rabbit tucked under her arm, then drew me into the corridor and told me, gently, that my daughter's heart was failing.

"A congenital defect," he said. "Very rare, and difficult going by her heritage. If she were only human, we could operate here within the week." He paused. "But she isn't."

"What do I do?"

"Only one facility on the East Coast is equipped for supernatural pediatric cardiology." He wrote a name on a card. "Mercy General. They need to see her within the month. I'll send the referral tonight."

I took the card. My hands were steady. I was very proud of that.

"I know it," I said, and the words came out thin. Mercy General was on the edge of the Ironwood border, the great white hospital where wolves went when they were dying.

I called Delphine from the parking lot. "Pull everything on Mercy General. Ownership. Board members."

Keys clicked. Then she went quiet.

"Ms. Vale. It was sold last month."

My stomach turned over before she said it. "To who?"

"Ironwood. Every wall of it."

I sat with my forehead against the steering wheel. Through the windshield, the afternoon sun lay warm and golden on the asphalt, as if nothing had happened.

Five years of hiding. Seven proposals in a drawer. A hospital with a silver crest above the door.

I told myself there was still a way around it. Another hospital. Another city. Another name.

My phone lit up. Delphine.

"Ms. Vale, I'm sorry. The Alpha of Ironwood just called the office himself." Her voice was careful. "The referral hit their system twenty minutes ago. He knows a patient under your name arrives tomor

row. He's already cleared the entire pediatric wing."

I couldn't speak.

"He said he'll be waiting at the door.”