CHAPTER SIX: Five Years Later

Vera POV

The lobby mirror is the only one in the building I don't look away from.

It runs along the wall behind the security desk, floor to ceiling, and every morning at 8:14

I pass it on the way to the elevator. A tall woman in a charcoal suit. Black hair cut blunt at

the jaw. Gold eyes. Nobody in the Sinclair Meridian lobby looks twice at her, except to

move out of her way.

I used to have brown hair that never stayed where I put it. I used to have green eyes. I

used to take up less space than anyone else in a room, and I was good at it.

Five years ago, in a county hospital bathroom in another state, eleven hours after my

daughter was born, my bones moved. I held on to a metal rail with both hands and bit

through my own lip, and when it stopped I was on the tile and the person who stood up

was somebody else. A nurse found me and went pale. She said she had never seen a first

shift that late. She said it had never come on all at once.

The first winter I worked nights on a loading dock, with June in a carrier by the heater in

the break room. I learned to read a bill of lading by reading three hundred of them. A

foreman named Hector taught me to negotiate by watching him lose arguments on

purpose. I was good at it. Nobody was surprised but me.

My wolf had been asleep my whole life. She woke up the day my daughter needed her. "Morning, Ms. Sinclair," the guard says.

"Morning, Dev. How's the knee?"

"Better. Thanks for asking."

I take the elevator to forty-one.

Dana is waiting at the glass doors with a tablet and a coffee. She hands me the coffee

first. That's why she's lasted three years.

"Cedar Hollow called again," she says, falling into step beside me. "Third time this

month. They want a call with you directly. They said the Alpha's office would make

themselves available at any time that suited."

"No."

"I haven't told them anything."

"Tell them no."

"They're offering terms. Real ones. Port access on the east coast, exclusive. I ran the

numbers last night, and it's—" She catches my face and stops. "I'll tell them you're

booked."

"Tell them I'm booked until the end of the decade."

She writes something on the tablet and doesn't smile, because I'd notice. My office has glass on two sides. From the desk I can see the whole river and the harbor

and the cranes. The company moves freight, land leases, medical supply, legal cover,

anything that two kinds of people need from each other and can't ask for in the open.

Humans on one side. Packs on the other. Me in the middle with a contract and a very

good lawyer. Five years ago I had a duffel bag and six hundred dollars.

Cedar Hollow has wanted a meeting since the second year. First a polite email. Then a

gift basket. Then a man in a gray suit who waited in the lobby for six hours and left a

business card with an Alpha's seal on the back. I put the card in the shredder in front of

him.

I sit. I open my laptop. On my desk, a frame holds a crayon drawing: a purple horse, or

possibly a dog, with my name misspelled VERRA across the top. I turn it face-up when I

sit. It is the only thing in the office I never move.

I don't think about the name on the seal.

That's a lie. I think about it every day. I just don't let myself say it out loud.

At 9:30 I'm in the first meeting of the day, on a shipping dispute with a port authority in

a language I don't speak, translated by a man who is losing his patience. At 10:05 my

phone buzzes face-down on the table. I turn it over.

Dr. Okafor, St. Raphael's.

I stand up. The translator stops mid-word.

"I have to take this."

I'm in the corridor before I hit answer. "Ms. Sinclair." Her voice is steady. They train doctors to do that. "June's fever came back

overnight. It's 103.4. I wanted to call before the rounds so you'd hear it from me."

"I'm coming."

"I think that would be best."

I don't remember the elevator. I don't remember the garage. I'm on the highway with my

hands at ten and two, doing eighty in a zone marked sixty-five, and I make myself ease

off the gas. At a red light a man in the next car stares at me through his window. I realize

I'm growling. I stop. A ticket won't help her. Getting there will.

St. Raphael's is the biggest hospital in the city, thirty-one floors, glass at the front and a

fountain nobody turns on. I take the staff lot and the side entrance and I don't wait for

the security desk to look up. Pediatrics is on eleven.

She's in a room at the end of the hall with the lights turned low. They've put her in a bed

with bars, and the bed makes her look smaller than she is. Five years old. Dark hair that

curls at the ends, which is not from me. A flush across her cheeks. A tube taped to the

back of her hand.

"Mama."

"Hi, baby."

I'm at the bedside before I know I've crossed the room. I put the back of my hand against

her forehead and it's hot. Hotter than it should be. My wolf comes up in my chest,

restless, wanting to do something about it, and there is nothing to do.

"I was asleep," June says. "Then I wasn't." "I know. I'm here now."

"Did you bring Mr. Hopkins?"

"I'll bring him tonight."

"Okay." She closes her eyes and opens them. "It's hot in here."

"I'll ask them to turn it down."

I find the thermostat on the wall and turn it down two degrees, then two more. It makes

no difference. I do it anyway, twice.

Dr. Okafor is standing in the doorway with a tablet held against her chest. She's fifty or

so, with gray in her braids and a way of waiting that doesn't feel like waiting. When I

look up she tilts her head toward the hall.

I kiss June's forehead. "Two minutes."

"Okay."

In the corridor the doctor closes the door softly behind us. She doesn't speak right away.

That's the part that frightens me.

"The blood work came back from the second panel," she says. "It's the same pattern as

the first one. I wanted to be sure."

I put my hand on the wall to steady myself. The paint is cold. My wolf is pacing, and I can

feel every step.

"And?" "It's what we were afraid of. It's called wasting fever. It's a condition of the immune

system, specific to werewolf children, very rare. We see maybe a handful in the country

every year."

"What causes it?"

"We don't fully know." She chooses each word. "There are risk factors. A significant

mismatch in the parents' lines. A wolf-less parent and a high-ranking one. A strained

bond at the time of conception, or during the pregnancy." She stops. "I don't want to

assume anything about your situation. I'm only telling you what the literature says."

I say nothing. I'm looking at the floor. There's a line of tape on the tile that goes down

the hall, and I follow it with my eyes to the end.

A strained bond.

"The treatment is supportive," she says. "We manage the fever. We keep her hydrated. We

watch her organs. The episodes will come back, and they'll get closer together if we can't

stabilize her. Over time, the best long-term outcomes are in children with access to the

father's bloodline. A family history would help. A donor match, if it came to that."

"No."

She blinks. "I'm sorry?"

"There isn't one. A father. There isn't any history." I keep my voice even. "It's only the two

of us."

"Ms. Sinclair—" "It's only the two of us."

She looks at me for a long moment. She is kind enough not to argue. "Then we work

with what we have," she says. "She's strong. She's a fighter. She gets that from

somewhere."

I nod. I can't speak.

"I'll have the nurse bring a second blanket," Dr. Okafor says. "She's allowed ice cream, if

she's asking. It helps with the throat."

"Thank you."

She goes. I stand in the corridor with both hands against the wall.

My daughter is sick because of a man I've kept from her for five years. The thing that

made him powerful is the thing that's making her sick. I think that, and I make myself

think it again, slowly, until I can hear it without my knees going.

He can never find us.

If Gavin finds out June exists, he will take her. Not to hurt her. Because he thinks it's

what he owes. Because there'll be elders, and a council, and a pack that wants an heir

with the right blood. Because he'll look at her and see what he's been missing for five

years, and he will not let go. I know him. I know how he loves. He doesn't let go of what

he has decided is his.

I go back into the room.

June has opened her eyes. She turns her head on the pillow and gives me a look so much

like his that my breath catches. "Mama?"

"Yes, baby."

"Can I have ice cream?"

"Of course you can."

"The strawberry one."

"The strawberry one."

"And next time, can you bring me a bunny? A big one. Not Mr. Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins is a

bear."

"Next time."

"A white one. With long ears."

"A white one with long ears."

"Okay." She smiles, a tired smile, small. "I like when you say yes."

I sit on the edge of the bed and hold her hand. I tell her a story about a fox who works at a

bank, which I make up as I go. She's asleep by the end of the second paragraph. I stay

another ten minutes with my thumb against her wrist, counting the pulse, and then I

stand up and tell the nurse I'll be right back. The cafeteria is on the second floor. The gift shop is in the lobby. I'll try both, because the

strawberry is only sold at one. Strawberry, Dr. Okafor said, as if it were medicine. I have

never been so grateful to be told what to do.

I walk to the elevator at the end of the hall. The button lights when I press it. The

numbers above the door count down from fourteen, slowly. Twelve. Eleven.

The doors open and I step in, and I'm alone, and I put my forehead against the cold steel

wall.

I breathe.

Ten. Nine. Eight. The car stops at six, though I didn't press six. The doors slide open.

A man is standing in the corridor with his phone to his ear, in a dark suit, tall, a

heavy-shouldered man with a short beard that wasn't there five years ago. He's

mid-sentence. He says, "No. I don't care what it costs. Close it by Friday," and he steps

forward without looking up, and the doors begin to close behind him.

My wolf goes completely silent.

I don't turn around. I can't. My hands are at my sides, and I can see my reflection in the

steel, a woman in a charcoal suit with gold eyes and a blank face, and behind her, in the

same shining metal, a man lowering the phone from his ear.

I know that voice. I would know it in the dark.

I know the way he stops walking.

The elevator is suddenly very small.