The Compatibility Question

Chapter 23

Sable closed the door behind me.

Roman wasn't there.

I noticed immediately, and for reasons I couldn't explain, his absence made me more nervous than his presence would have.

Sable crossed the room and placed a thick folder on the examination table.

"It's time you understood what's actually happening to you."

I stared at her.

"What does that mean?"

For a moment, she said nothing. Her gaze shifted toward the closed door, as though she expected someone to interrupt us.

Then she looked back at me.

"It means I've waited too long to tell you."

My stomach tightened.

"Is something wrong with my baby?"

"Not that I can see."

"Then why do you look like you're about to tell me something terrible?"

"Because I don't have all the answers, Mira. And I won't insult you by pretending I do."

I folded my arms across my chest.

"Then start talking."

She gestured toward the chair beside the examination table.

I remained standing.

"I've spent months listening to people tell me I'm fine while refusing to explain what they're checking for," I said. "Roman keeps asking questions he won't answer. You disappear into your office with my test results. And every time I ask what's happening, somebody tells me not to worry."

My voice sharpened.

"I'm tired of being the only person in this situation who doesn't know what's going on inside my own body."

Something shifted in Sable's expression.

She nodded once.

"You're right."

That admission caught me off guard.

She opened the folder and removed several sheets of paper.

"Your earliest compatibility tests produced results I couldn't classify. At first, I assumed there had been a problem with the samples. I repeated the tests, changed the equipment, and had the laboratory verify the results independently."

"And?"

"The results remained the same."

I looked down at the papers she offered me.

Numbers. Symbols. Medical terminology that meant nothing to me.

"Explain it in words I can understand."

Sable pulled out a chair and sat opposite me.

"I've studied wolf bloodlines for decades. I've examined hereditary markers from established packs, documented rare genetic variations, and treated families whose bloodlines carry unusual characteristics."

She paused.

"Your results don't match any of them."

I looked up.

"None?"

"None."

"How many bloodlines did you check?"

"Every documented bloodline available in Blackthorn's records."

The room seemed to grow smaller.

"So you're saying I'm not from a recognized wolf bloodline?"

"I'm saying your markers don't fit the classifications we have."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"No."

Her bluntness unsettled me more than another carefully worded reassurance would have.

I lowered myself into the chair.

"Does it mean something is wrong with my child?"

"The pregnancy isn't showing signs of distress. Your examinations have been stable, and I haven't found evidence that the unusual markers are harming the baby."

"But you don't understand them."

"No." She held my gaze. "I don't."

At least she wasn't lying about that.

I looked at the chart again, trying to force the numbers into something meaningful.

"Then why was I chosen?"

Sable's fingers tightened around the edge of the folder.

There it was.

The question she'd been avoiding.

"Sable."

"Your compatibility results were unusual from the beginning."

"Unusual enough that Roman selected me?"

She hesitated.

"Yes."

The word landed between us.

For several seconds, I couldn't think of anything to say.

I'd known my selection wasn't entirely ordinary. Roman had made that clear without ever explaining why. There had been medical examinations, compatibility assessments, and conversations that stopped whenever I entered a room.

I'd assumed he had chosen me because the tests showed I could safely carry his child.

Now I wasn't certain that had ever been the whole truth.

"Was I selected because of my blood?"

"Something in your markers interacts with Roman's lineage in a way I haven't documented before. That made your compatibility results stand out."

"Did you tell him?"

"I told him the initial results were unusual."

"But not this."

"No. I haven't given him the full extent of my findings."

Anger rose through me, hot and immediate.

"Why not?"

"Because I couldn't explain them."

"That didn't stop you from keeping them from me."

Sable flinched.

I hadn't intended to hurt her, but I wasn't interested in making this easier for anyone except myself.

"You've known for months that something about me was different," I continued. "You watched me undergo examination after examination. You let me believe everything was normal."

"I never said your results were normal."

"You let everyone else say it for you."

Silence settled over the room.

For the first time since I'd known her, Sable seemed uncertain of what to say.

Then she leaned forward.

"I was wrong to wait this long to tell you. I thought I needed a definite explanation before I brought you something that might frighten you without giving you answers."

"And now?"

"Now I think you have the right to know what I've found, even if I can't explain it yet."

I searched her face, trying to decide whether I could believe her.

"Did Roman ask you to keep it quiet?"

"Roman asked me to be cautious."

"That's not what I asked."

"No," she admitted. "He didn't specifically instruct me to hide these findings from you. But he knew the results were unusual, and he wanted to understand them before making any decisions."

I let out a humorless laugh.

"Of course he did."

"Mira"

"He decides when I know something. He decides which questions deserve answers. And everyone around him seems perfectly comfortable with that arrangement."

"Not everyone."

I looked at her.

Sable held my gaze.

"I'm not betraying Roman by telling you this. I'm choosing my patient."

For the first time since entering the room, I felt as though someone was finally speaking to me instead of speaking around me.

Then I noticed the second stack of papers.

They were tucked beneath the medical reports, their edges yellowed and brittle. Unlike the clean, carefully printed charts, these pages looked old enough to crumble if I handled them carelessly.

I reached toward them.

"What are those?"

Sable's hand moved instinctively to cover the top page.

That small movement told me more than she probably intended.

"Historical records," she said.

"What kind of historical records?"

"Texts describing unusual bloodlines and hereditary characteristics."

I looked from the papers to the medical charts.

"You're comparing my blood tests to centuries-old documents?"

"Because nothing in the modern records explains your results."

A chill crept along my arms.

"What do the old texts say?"

"Not enough for me to draw a reliable conclusion."

"That's a convenient answer."

"I know how it sounds."

"Then help me understand."

Sable slowly withdrew her hand from the papers.

"Some of these texts describe individuals whose blood markers couldn't be traced to any recognized pack lineage. There are references to unusual compatibility patterns, too. In certain cases, those patterns were associated with hereditary characteristics that modern researchers no longer understand."

"Individuals like me?"

"Possibly."

"How many?"

"I haven't established that yet."

I stared at the yellowed pages.

Until that moment, I'd thought the problem was medical. An unexplained result. An unusual pregnancy. Something that would eventually make sense once the right person examined the right chart.

But old records didn't belong in a routine medical investigation.

Neither did the careful way Sable avoided looking at me whenever I asked what they meant.

Pieces of the past began pressing against the present.

Roman's strange protectiveness.

His private investigation into my background.

The questions he'd asked about my mother's family.

The documents stolen from Lyra's study.

And Tessa's warning about old blood.

I'd dismissed those things as separate problems because that was easier than imagining they were connected.

Now I couldn't ignore the possibility that they weren't separate at all.

"Does Roman know about these records?"

"Not all of them."

"Does he know you've been investigating my family?"

Sable didn't answer quickly enough.

My chest tightened.

"You're researching my family, too?"

"I'm trying to establish whether your unusual markers have appeared before."

"Without telling me."

"Yes."

I looked away, swallowing the bitterness rising in my throat.

Everyone seemed to know something about me that I didn't.

My mother had left me questions I could no longer ask her. My family history was incomplete. And now the very circumstances that had brought me into Roman's life might have been shaped by something hidden in my blood.

I pressed my palms against my knees.

"Is my baby in danger?"

Sable's expression softened, but she didn't reach for the easy reassurance I'd grown accustomed to hearing.

"I can't promise that every aspect of this pregnancy is safe. I won't lie to you about that. But I haven't found evidence that the unusual markers are harming your baby."

"Then what are you afraid of?"

She looked down at the documents.

"Not knowing what we're dealing with."

The answer settled heavily inside me.

I could live with uncertainty. I'd been doing that for months.

What I couldn't accept was being expected to trust people who kept deciding which parts of the truth I was allowed to hear.

"Why me?" I whispered.

Sable looked up.

"Out of everyone Roman could have chosen, why was I the one whose blood matched his?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think someone knew?"

"I think it's possible that someone recognized something unusual about you before we did. But I have no proof that anyone understood what it meant."

"Someone might have known enough to choose me without knowing what I was?"

"That's one possibility."

I closed my eyes briefly.

It was a possibility I hated.

Because it meant my selection might not have been a coincidence. My place in Roman's life might have been decided by people who understood something about me that I'd never been given the chance to discover for myself.

And if that was true, I needed to know who had made that decision and why.

I pushed back my chair.

"I need some air."

Sable stood, but I was already moving toward the door.

"Mira, wait."

I stopped with my hand on the handle.

"I want you to know something before you leave."

I turned.

Her expression had changed. The uncertainty was still there, but beneath it was a determination I hadn't seen when I first entered the room.

"Roman knows your compatibility results were unusual," she said. "He knows there are questions about your blood that we haven't answered."

I waited.

"But he doesn't know how far outside our established classifications your results actually fall. He doesn't know how closely they resemble the descriptions I've found in these older records."

My fingers tightened around the handle.

"Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because the longer we wait, the more likely it is that someone else will discover the connection before we understand it."

A cold sensation spread through my stomach.

"Someone else?"

"I don't know who. I don't even know whether anyone else has noticed the same things I have."

"Then why do you think they might?"

"Because your compatibility wasn't the only unusual result in the records I examined."

I turned fully toward her.

"What does that mean?"

Sable glanced at the folder.

Then she looked back at me.

"It means there may be a reason someone was looking for a woman with your particular markers long before your pregnancy began."

For a moment, the room went completely silent.

I couldn't make myself move.

All this time, I'd been asking why Roman had chosen