LOGINALICE'S POVIt’s barely twenty four hours since Lily and I haven’t moved from where I sat on the floor in my room. I wasn't a prisoner. Nobody had said I couldn't leave but I couldn’t get my legs to function without feeling like I was falling.I could still see her face this morning, on her way to school waving at me. How did she end up in my office dead. And to think she had drank from my cup.No matter how much I try, I still can’t wrap my head around what happened. Rather than just sat around wondering, I decided to make my way back to where it all started.The walk to the clinic should have taken five minutes. It took twice that, and not because I walked slow. Every step cost something.The fountain sat empty. The children who usually circled it had been kept home. In the training yard, warriors stopped mid-spar, hands still on their hilts, eyes following me across the compound like I was something that might go off.Sena pulled her daughter in behind her skirt as I passed. Anothe
LISA'S POVSorin walked on my left. Callum a step behind. Nobody said anything the whole way back to my door. Someone had put a coat over my shoulders at some point. I couldn't have told you whose. Whoever did it had meant to shield me from the cold but what about the pain of losing the one person in my life that meant everything to me.I hated every second my feet took me further away from the clinic. But what I hated more is the house behind us still holding somebody's whole family, still breathing like the compound hadn't just lost the reason i was breathing for.At my door they waited to be asked in. I shrugged off the coat off my shoulders and handed it back to Callum and put my hand flat on the frame instead."I want to be left alone."Sorin hesitated. "Lisa—""Please." The word cracked down the middle. "I need to be alone."She nodded, slow. "If you need anything at all—""I know."They left. I locked the door behind them and stood in the dark with my hands folded into fist. Th
LISA'S POVI remember this morning. Every piece of it.Lily had brushed her own hair, tongue caught between her teeth in full concentration, that same fierce look she'd worn every morning for weeks now — telling me she didn't need help anymore. She missed a knot near the back. I should have fixed it. I let her have the pride instead."I want cereal," she said at breakfast. "Not toast.""We don't have cereal, baby.""You said you'd buy some.""I did say that." I laughed, small and warm, the kind of laugh that made forgetting sound like a gift I'd been saving for her. "I forgot.""You always forget." A sigh big enough for a nine-year-old carrying the whole weight of the world. "Fine. Toast."She ate it standing up, crumbs going all over the floor I'd just swept. I didn't scold her. I should have scolded her — should have made her sit, made her chew, made her stay one more minute at that table."Can I visit Dr. Watson after school? I made her a new drawing. A blue wolf. Like the one I ma
BENJAMIN'S POVCallum was already moving when I caught sight of him, and his face said it before his mouth got the chance."Alpha. You need to come.""Alice?"He hesitated. "…The clinic."I was past him before he finished the word.Down the corridor, through the doors, across the compound at a dead run. A groundskeeper stopped mid-swing, the rake still hanging in his hand, and just watched me go. Two women by the fountain went quiet all at once. Somebody said child and I didn't slow down long enough to hear the rest of it. People stepped clear of me the second they saw my face. Nobody near the training yard was talking above a murmur, and that was worse than any shouting would have been.My territory had gone wrong somewhere — that thing every Alpha carries for his own ground, the sense that tells you a death has happened where a death had no business happening. It was not the bond I share with Alice. That had been cut a long time ago, at the ritual words, and this wasn't that grief
ALICE’S POVBenjamin’s message came in while I was still working my arms into my coat. If you have a few minutes before clinic hours. I’d like to discuss something. I stood there with the one sleeve on and read it twice. Then I told him yes — not because I was ready, but because for once the thing to discuss had a name. Lucian.The compound was coming awake around me. Children ran for the school yard with their bags bouncing off their backs, and Lily was right in the middle of them, showing off a fresh scrape on one knee. She spotted me and waved. Her whole arm went up, elbow and all, nothing in it held back.I waved back. She grinned and kept running.—Benjamin was waiting outside the Alpha House. Not in it.“Is everything all right?” he asked.“I spoke with Damian. He agreed. You can visit Lucian’s grave, when the family’s ready.”He shut his eyes. For a few seconds he didn’t say anything, hands at his sides, his breathing gone uneven.“Thank you.” He reached for my hand. Instinct,
JOHN’S POVThe quarterly inventory count was the one job at the clinic nobody ever fought me for.Two hundred line items, a clipboard, a storeroom with no windows, and a whole afternoon of counting gauze. Morwen usually did it. This quarter I’d volunteered before she’d even finished asking, because counting gauze meant three hours where my hands and my head both had somewhere to be that wasn’t Alice’s office.I was forty items in when Drake turned up in the doorway, leaned on the frame, and watched me recount a box of sutures I’d already counted once.“They multiply if you look away?”“I lost my place.”“You wrote the number down. It’s right there on the paper.” He came in, uninvited, and settled onto the one stool like he’d booked it in advance. “You lost your place after you’d already found it. That’s a new thing.”“Aren’t you supposed to be packing?”“Packed. Bag’s by the door. Came to say goodbye.” He said it easy, no weight on it at all. “Damian wants me back at Shadow Moon. Som
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
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 POVI hadn't slept. I'd counted his breaths instead.It had been four hours since Lucian collapsed at breakfast. Four hours since I’d screamed loud enough to wake every wolf on our floor of the western wing. Now the monitors did the counting for me — soft, steady, mechanical as my son slept







