LOGINQuick question: Do you think John deserves a real chance with Alice or nah..I'd like to hear your reason.
DRAKE'S POVI walked from the training grounds to the Alpha House without stopping and without talking to anybody. The loop in my head came right along with me. Not what she'd said — what her face did on guilty, how her voice thinned out on proof, a woman answering a question nobody in that field had asked her.Callum got the door. A patrol captain was at the desk with the border reports; Benjamin took one look at my face and sent him out. The door shut. Nobody said anything."Well?""Say back to me what you told me this morning."He didn't blink at it. "A delegate from shadow moon. Came recently. Keeps to himself. Nothing she can use.""That's it. Word for word.""I know."Benjamin waited. So I told him. All of it, in order — her coming across the ground, the questions, her deciding out loud that I was Alice's lover, the crest coming out of my coat, what her face did at Shadow Moon, and brother, and baby sister.He didn't interrupt once. Callum stayed at the window with his arms fold
DRAKE'S POVThe pack training grounds sat empty an hour after evening drills ended, out past where the compound quit and the trees started. That's where I waited for a woman who had no idea she was the one being hunted.I’d learned long ago that hunting wasn’t always about chasing. Sometimes you simply stopped moving. The prey came to you, thinking it chose to.Somebody had left the practice dummies out, and the frames creaked every time the wind got around them. It's the only sound that place makes when it's empty.Benjamin's instruction that morning had been simple: give her nothing but true things she couldn't use. A delegate from shadow moon. Came recently. Keeps to himself.I'd already decided I wasn't going to do that.I didn't have to wait very long before I heard familiar footsteps behind me."I was starting to think you were avoiding me."Her voice came across the ground behind me. I turned around slow, because there's no reason to be quick about anything with that woman.She
JOHN'S POVThe cup Alice brought me yesterday was still sitting where she'd set it down, empty. I'd drunk out of it and hadn't moved it since.I'd had the notebook out of that cabinet again before first light — one page, one name.I'd spent an hour that morning trying to talk myself out of it. I'd like to be wrong. A woman who's buried her only child is owed kindness, not a doctor sitting in the dark building a case against her out of one sentence.And the sentence wouldn't leave me alone. So at six o'clock I sent a boy up the hill to fetch Benjamin. They came fast — Benjamin first, Callum behind him, and Drake last, shutting the door behind him.I hadn't expected Drake. I nodded to all three and asked nothing, though the fact sat there anyway — Benjamin didn't sit down. He went straight to the point."The boy said you'd found something.""I've found someone."That got their attention.I slid the council transcript across the desk, open to the page, and put my finger on one line."Her
BENJAMIN'S POVI was awake before the alarm went off, and the first thing in my head was my conversation with Alice last night. She had helped identify the masking scent and now I can’t stop thinking about who would have gone through all that trouble to either cover their tracks or mislead the investigation from the very beginning.I showered and got ready before making it down to my office. The day didn’t wait for an Alpha to sort through his thoughts before it barges in.I barely made it to my seat before the door was thrown open and Callum walked into my office with the morning reports."Northern border's been quiet. The water supply in the northern quarters has been fixed and the new pipe's in place, and the last two of those children who came down with fever went back home this morning." He set the first folder down. “The eastern woodland search found nothing further—the rain washed out most of the remaining tracks."I signed the reports one after another. Border patrol. Supply r
ALICE'S POVThe last patient of the day was a carpenter in his seventies who'd split his own firewood for forty years and wasn't about to stop now.I strapped his wrist while he counted off every reason a man his age didn't need help carrying logs."You'll be young again in two weeks. Only if you stay off the axe."He laughed. "I'll disappoint my sons if I start behaving sensibly.""They'll survive it."I walked him to the door. He stopped in the doorway, his good hand flat on the frame, eyes down on the floor."I shouldn't have believed those things people were saying." It came out rough. "You've looked after my family for years. I forgot that."I didn't make him say it twice."Take the tablets. Stay off the axe."He grinned, and I watched the relief go through him, and he headed off down the path. I waited until he turned the corner before I shut the door.Another one. I'd stopped counting them weeks ago, stopped expecting them, and they kept coming anyway.I was in the examination
JOHN'S POVI was the first one in the building. Nobody had come for the crates yet, so two of them still sat by the back door, empty electrolyte bottles from the northern quarters waiting to go back to the supply house.Twelve children sick, and every one of them home in their own bed. First week in a month where the work had done what work's supposed to do.I went past my desk, past the morning's files, and unlocked the cabinet with her name on it.Lily Scott.The investigation had stopped moving. Cora was dead. Alice was back at work and the pack wanted her back. The council wanted the file shut. Out in the waiting room people were talking about ordinary things again — weather, roofs, whose son was getting married. Nobody had mentioned Lily Scott's name to me in a week.And something in that file wouldn't sit still.So I took it all out and laid it across the desk in order. The toxicology. Every witness statement. My own notes from that afternoon, in handwriting I could barely read b
Alice’s POV"What?""Is this your new plan? To trap me again?" Benjamin’s voice dripped with contempt. "Did you run out of tricks, Alice? Is faking our son’s terminal illness really the best you could come up with?"I couldn’t breathe. The hospital hallway seemed to close in around me, the walls pr
ALICE’S POVThe Blue Moon Festival was Lucian’s idea of heaven and my four-year plan of endurance.He’d been talking about it for weeks—the lanterns, the fireworks, the honey cakes from the booth near the stage. When he’d asked, he’d pressed both hands together like he was praying, eyes wide, and I
ALICE’S POVThe days that followed had a rhythm I didn’t trust.Benjamin came every morning. He actually sat at the table — something I still hadn’t gotten used to — and ate whatever I put in front of him. He returned every evening and stayed until Lucian’s eyes drifted shut.Four mornings in a row
ALICE’S POVBy the time I walked into the hospital room, I had composed myself completely. My face was set.Lucian was awake, sitting up in bed. His face brightened the moment he saw me."Mommy. You came back.""I came back." I lifted him into my arms. He smelled like baby shampoo, antiseptic, and







