He Isn’t My Son

POV: Eriq

The elevator doors began to close. I caught them with one hand, and for three full seconds neither of us moved.

“You’ve mistaken me for someone else,” she said again. Her voice cracked on the last word, and her face was working hard to hide it.

“Five years, Elva. I’ve had hunters in four territories. Lucan has been through every human clinic within two hundred miles. I stopped sleeping in our bed because it still smelled like you. And you want me to believe I’m wrong about my own mate?”

“I don’t know what a mate is supposed to feel like.” Her chin came up. She used to do exactly that right before she lied to an elder’s face, and it nearly broke me. “Would you let the doors close, please? Sir.”

Sir. I almost laughed. It came out low and rough instead, and she flinched back against the glass.

The lift chimed, impatient. Down the corridor a nurse cleared her throat. I let my hand drop, and the doors slid shut between us. I stood there with my palm still raised like a fool, staring at my own reflection in the steel.

“Lucan.”

He appeared at my elbow with his spectacles already off and wiped on his sleeve. He had heard enough through the door to know what was coming.

“Alpha.”

“Pull every camera on this floor. I want the car she drove, the door she used, and where she parked.”

“That lift has no camera, Alpha, and...”

“Then pull the lobby and work backward.” I started walking, and he fell in beside me, because he knew better than to make me repeat myself. “She had a wallet in her hand. Find out whether she came to buy something or was leaving in a hurry.”

“And if it’s her?”

“Then I bring her home.”

“She left a locked room and five years of silence.” He put the spectacles back on and met my eyes, which took more nerve than most of my warriors would show me on a good day. “That isn’t usually a woman waiting to be collected.”

I stopped walking. He wiped the lenses again, though they were already clean.

“Say what you mean, Lucan.”

“If she ran from you once, finding her might not be the mercy you think it is. I’ll pull the footage. Just remember there’s a child’s name on an intake form in this building. Children don’t run from fathers who were kind to them.”

That landed exactly where he meant it to. I thought of the crib I had let Tomas carry out of her room, and of the nursery door I had closed on her without once asking what she wanted inside it.

Saskia found me in the corridor. The silver gown was gone. She wore green now, the particular shade Elva used to wear, the one I once told her made her eyes look like river water. I had never said that to Saskia. I had never said a word to her about that dress.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, falling into step beside me.

“Where did you get that color?”

“This old thing?” She smoothed the fabric over her hip, too carefully. “I don’t remember. Does it suit me?”

“Take it off.”

“Eriq.” She stopped, and her voice dropped into the register she used when she wanted to sound wounded. “Is this about the woman from the restaurant? Everyone’s talking. You chased a stranger across a dining room, and now Lucan’s running errands like the border war has started again.”

“She isn’t a stranger.”

“She’s whoever you’ve decided to make her, because you can’t accept that Elva’s gone.” She reached for my arm, and I stepped back before her hand could land. Real hurt crossed her face, perhaps. With Saskia I never knew where the performance ended. “Our son asks about you, you know. He wants to know why his father spends more time chasing a memory than...”

“He isn’t my son.”

The words were out before I chose them. Two nurses at the station froze mid-sentence and found urgent business with a clipboard.

Saskia’s face didn’t crumble. It went smooth and cold, which told me more than tears would have.

“Say that again,” she said softly.

“Doctor Pell never rode with the army. He’s been in my cook’s pantry since midsummer, eating pie and dodging every summons I sent him. I learned that the night Elva left. I chose not to ask the next question, because I didn’t want the answer while she was still in the house.” I let the silence stretch. “I’m asking it now. Whose son is he?”

“You’re asking five years too late, because a woman with river-colored eyes looked at you in a lift.”

“She didn’t look at me. She looked like she wanted to vanish through the floor.”

Her eyes flicked past my shoulder, the one unguarded moment I had ever caught in her. At the far end of the hall, Kieran stood with the boy on his hip, his bandaged hand curled under the child’s knees. When the boy saw me, he buried his face in my brother’s collar.

My brother, who had never once looked up at the gate that day.

“Careful, Eriq.” Saskia’s voice thinned. “Don’t pull that thread. Not in a hospital, and not with witnesses.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a kindness. My father holds half your warriors. You’d throw that away for a woman who ran off and left you to clean up her mess.” Her composure cracked just enough to show the fear beneath it, and for a second I almost pitied her. Almost. “Let the past stay buried, Alpha. For everyone’s sake, yours first.”

She walked off before I could answer, heels sharp on the tile. Kieran turned toward the stairwell with the boy, so quickly it was nearly a retreat.

“Kieran.”

He didn’t stop.

Lucan’s voice slid into my head through the pack-link, tight and careful. Alpha. You’ll want to see this. The security office.

He had a laptop balanced on one arm and his free hand pressed flat against his mouth, as if he were holding something in.

“Tell me.”

“Lobby camera. She badged in at ten forty this morning.” He turned the screen toward me. A grainy still showed a woman in a gray coat, her face angled away from the lens. “Her car is on level two of the hospital garage. I ran the plate. It’s registered to a company account.”

“Which company?”

“Lark Meridian Trading.”

I had read that name eleven times in eleven refused letters. Lark Meridian controlled nearly every herb shipment crossing my borders, and its refusal to deal with Blackthorn Ridge had cost my territory more than I cared to calculate. I had assumed its owner was some human with a grudge against wolves.

“Alpha?” Lucan watched my face. “Your heart’s pounding loud enough that I can hear it without the bond.”

“Draft the twelfth letter.”

“She’ll refuse it, sir.”

“Then I’ll deliver it myself.” I was already walking toward the lift, past the pediatric button and whatever waited behind it. “Five years, Lucan. She isn’t getting a twelfth refusal. She’s getting me.”