第2章

I worked through the night recovering backups and restoring the overwritten data.

By 3 a.m., I had restored the last original file.

Only then did I realize my forehead was burning.

My breathing grew shallow and uneven, and deep inside, my dormant wolf began to stir.

The hours I'd spent soaked in the rain had finally taken their toll.

Out of habit, I opened the mind-link to Arthur.

Even forming the words was difficult.

"I have a bad fever. I can't breathe. Can you come home and take me to the hospital?"

I reached for him through the bond, but all I felt was cold silence. Still, I sent the message.

Three years ago, I had my first asthma attack.

Arthur had abandoned the lab's most valuable antibody work and carried me to the hospital himself.

After Lina showed up, all I got was "be more independent."

The mind-link remained silent.

I laughed bitterly, my vision blurring as tears filled my eyes.

The suffocating tightness of blocked airways mixed with the fever burning through my skin, grinding my consciousness to pieces.

I stopped waiting. I forced myself up, called a ride, and went to the hospital alone.

The ER doctor finished the exam and handed me the report.

"An asthma attack, plus a fever of 103.6°F. Have you been caught in the rain recently?"

I nodded, dazed.

"You'll need to stay for observation. You should have someone stay with you tonight, at least."

The doctor glanced at my file.

"Do you have a mate?"

I froze. The word sat on the tip of my tongue for a long time before I finally said,

"No."

In the werewolf world, a mate was supposed to be the one closest to you.

But the one who used to sense my pain wasn't here.

While I lay there with an IV in my arm, my phone lit up.

It wasn't Arthur. It was a new social media post from Lina.

"First animal experiment failed, but at least I have Arthur with me."

The data displayed on her computer jolted me wide awake.

I.A.

The same unpublished data from the manuscript I had submitted.

At the edge of the frame, a man's arm was wrapped around Lina's waist, with a familiar black watch on his wrist.

It was the watch I'd given Arthur as a coming-of-age gift.

Comments piled up underneath.

"Arthur is seriously the best."

"So lucky to have a partner like that in research."

I stared at the photo until my eyes lost focus.

Three years earlier, at the same hour, I had sat in the lab with red-rimmed eyes, trying to redesign a failed animal experiment while my wolf paced restlessly inside me.

Arthur had walked past without slowing down and told me this.

"Irene, you can't expect someone to stay with you every time an experiment goes wrong."

Now another girl had failed.

And he was sitting right there, staying with her until 3 a.m.

The next morning, I dragged myself to the lab with a fever.

The moment I opened my laptop, Lina appeared in the doorway.

"Irene."

Her voice was thin, her eyes rimmed with a fragile redness.

"Did you revoke my access to the database?"

I looked up at her and gave a firm nod.

"The data is still unpublished. It's part of a manuscript I'm revising. You don't have permission to access it."

I pulled up the access logs from the shared database.

Every entry was right there in black and white.

Raw experiment records downloaded 17 times.

Key parameters modified 8 times.

She bit her lip, eyes glistening.

"I just wanted to learn. If you make such a big deal out of this, won't Arthur think you're being too sensitive?"

She had barely finished speaking when Arthur's voice came from behind me.

"Irene, it's just some research data."

I turned around.

He looked at me, but he didn't seem to notice my fever or my pale face.

Instead, he frowned at me in confusion.

"Lina was trying to learn. Don't make this ugly."

I gripped the flash drive in my hand, the cold plastic biting into my palm.

"It took me three years to produce that data.

"It's not just data. It's the research behind my paper, and my name is attached to it.

"You don't get to hand it over just because someone says she wants to learn."

I didn't argue with them any further. I turned, exported all of my raw data, then disabled the shared access.

Then I saved Lina's complete access log, wrote a brief statement, and sent both to the lab group chat.

"This project involves unpublished research. Unauthorized access has been suspended."

The chat went quiet for a few seconds, then messages started rolling in.

"17 downloads?"

"Modified parameters 8 times?"

"Lina, what is this about?"

In the middle of the chaos, a message from my advisor, Dr. Marcus Hayward, appeared.

"All the lab mice in the animal facility are dead. Irene, come to my office. Now."

I stared at the screen as my hands slowly went cold.

Because there had been one last person to enter the animal facility the night before.

It was me.