The medical center sits near the heart of Silvercreek’s main street. It’s a two-story building with wide windows and a freshly painted sign that reads “Silvercreek Medical” in dark green letters. I find a spot on the roof of the hardware store across the way and settle in to watch.
Skylar steps through the front door, and within seconds, a young woman with a rounded belly rushes over to greet her. Fern, I think her name is. Connor’s mate. The human who stumbled into Silvercreek a few months back and ended up bound to one of our security officers after the lottery matched them. She pulls Skylar into a hug, and Skylar melts into it.
Something in my chest twists at the sight because she has friends here. Real ones. Not just colleagues or acquaintances, but people who care about her and worry about her and wrap their arms around her when she’s hurting. People who showed up for her in all the ways I didn’t.
I gave that up. I gave her up. And for what? A decade of blood and death and hunting wolves through every corner of the region until there was nothing left of me but the mission.
The morning crawls by as I watch through the windows. Skylar checks charts and consults with other staff members and disappears into examination rooms for stretches of time that leave me tense until she emerges again. At one point, she stopsto laugh with a nurse in the hallway, and the sound carries faintly across the distance between us. I haven’t heard her laugh in ten years. I forgot what it did to me, that sound. How it used to make my whole chest feel too small to contain everything I felt for her.
Around midday, a mother brings in a young boy with his arm cradled against his chest. I can see the fear on the kid’s face from here and hear his whimpers when Skylar approaches. But she crouches down to his level and says something that makes him laugh through his tears, and within minutes, she’s examining his arm while he chatters away.
She’s gentle with him. Patient in a way that seems completely natural, like kindness is simply part of who she is. Her fingers move carefully along his forearm as she checks for pain points, and I remember a girl who used to talk about becoming a healer someday. Who spent hours studying her mother’s old medical texts and practicing bandaging techniques on anyone who would sit still long enough. She would spend hours wrapping my knuckles after training sessions and then scold me for being reckless, while her touch made every rational thought drain out of my head.
I thought she would be amazing at this work. I was right. She’s more than amazing. She’s extraordinary.
When she finishes splinting what looks like a minor fracture, the boy throws his good arm around her neck. Skylar hugs him back without hesitation, and something behind my sternum aches as I watch her comfort a child she barely knows with more tenderness than I’ve shown anyone in a decade.
This is who she became while I was gone. This is what she built from the rubble I left behind.
The afternoon brings a steady stream of patients. An elderly man with a persistent cough takes up almost an hour of her time, and I watch her sit beside him and hold his hand while she explains something about his treatment. A teenage girl comes in with a twisted ankle from training, and Skylar wraps it while asking about the girl’s progress with her wolf. The girl beams under the attention, clearly thrilled that the senior healer knows who she is.
A pregnant woman arrives for what seems to be a routine checkup but ends up staying much longer. Through the window, I can see Skylar pull up a chair and sit across from her as she listens. The pregnant woman’s hands move constantly as she talks, gesturing and fidgeting, and Skylar just lets her go. Lets her get it all out. When the woman finally stands to leave, she hugs Skylar tight, and Skylar hugs her back just as affectionately.
The other staff members treat her with deference that can’t be faked or demanded. They seek her opinion, wait for her judgment, and look at her with the kind of respect that only comes from watching someone earn their place day after day. She’s not just a healer here. She’s a leader. Someone the pack depends on, someone they trust with their most vulnerable moments.
Thomas told me she was the youngest wolf to ever hold the senior healer position in Silvercreek’s history. That she threw herself into the work after I left and never stopped.
I didn’t fully understand what that meant until now. Until I spent a day watching her in this clinic, like she was born to be here, touching lives, easing pain, and making people feel seen in ways I never learned how to do.
She built this. All of this. While I was out there killing and hunting and telling myself it was necessary, she was herebecoming someone who matters. Someone who saves lives instead of ending them.
The weight of everything I gave up settles over me as the afternoon wears on.
When Skylar finally emerges from the medical center, the sky has gone orange and pink along the horizon. She pauses on the front steps to say goodbye to Fern, and I catch fragments of their conversation.
“...if you need anything,” Fern is saying. “I mean it. Day or night.”
Skylar’s voice carries a weariness that wasn’t there this morning. “I know. I’ll be fine. I just need some time to figure things out.”
“Ruby wants to have you over for dinner this week. She’s worried about you.”
“Tell her I’ll call her tomorrow. I just... I can’t tonight. I need to be alone.”
Alone. The word burrows under my skin as I trail her through the streets of Silvercreek. She doesn’t know that being alone isn’t an option anymore because Rafe’s wolves are out there waiting for another opportunity. Skylar would hate to know that I’ll be watching her every move until the threat is neutralized, whether she wants my protection or not.
She takes the long way back to the cabin as she cuts through the park near the old mill and pauses by the pond where we used to sit as teenagers. I hang back in the trees and watch her stand at the water’s edge with her shoulders curved inward and her arms wrapped around herself.
The mate bond aches in my chest as it demands that I go to her. That I close the distance and pull her into my arms and promise her that everything will be okay.
But I can’t make that promise. And she wouldn’t believe me if I tried.
She stays by the pond for almost twenty minutes before she continues on to the cabin. I circle around and approach from a different direction as I time my arrival so it looks like I’ve been there the whole time.
When she walks through the door, I’m sitting on the couch with a book I grabbed from the shelf at random.
She doesn’t acknowledge me or even glance in my direction as she drops her bag by the door and heads straight for the bedroom. A few minutes later, she’s in the kitchen, and I hear cabinets opening and closing and the clatter of pots and the rush of water from the tap.
“How was work?” I ask.
