She opened a cabinet, pulled a blister pack, and handed it over with a note on dosage. I took it and left before she could reconsider the bloodwork.
Wyatt intercepted me in the hallway. “There you are. Feeling better?”
“Stomach bug.” The lie came easy. “Dr. Elaine gave me meds for it.”
“Take the afternoon off. I’ll tell your father you’re resting.”
“Thanks, Wyatt.”
He smiled. Kind, warm, clueless. A good man in a bad place who didn’t know yet what the bad place really was.
I made it back to my room. Took two of the antiemetics and slept until seven.
The nausea came back at seven-thirty.
Harder this time. I barely made it to the bathroom before my stomach emptied everything I’d managed to eat that day. Knees on tile, forehead against porcelain, the antiemetics doing absolutely nothing.
When it passed, I stood. Rinsed my mouth. Braced my hands on the sink and looked at my reflection.
Just as expected, I was pale and hollow.
But there’s more.
I raised my arms and turned, examining the skin under the bathroom light. The veins beneath my inner arms had changed. Faintly visible before, they were now translucent, tracing blue-green paths that I could follow from wrist to elbow. The skin there was thinner. Not damaged. Just... changed.
The nausea wasn’t behaving the way a virus should. No fever or aches. Just the mornings, always the mornings, and then the bone-deep fatigue that crashed over me by afternoon.
I lowered my arms. Stared at my face in the mirror.
Counted backward.
Back to the cabin and my heat.
Three alphas and a bond at full intensity, all four of us tangled together for hours in a fever that had burned through every rational thought I’d ever had. That was... weeks ago.
How many weeks?
I counted again. My fingers pressed white against the sink edge.
The nausea. The exhaustion. The balance failing during training, my body redirecting its resources to a task I hadn’t asked for and hadn’t noticed. The tenderness. The veins.
This is not a virus or the rejection either.
Shit.
The floor tilted. My hand shot out to catch the doorframe, but the angle was wrong and my knees buckled first. The tile cameup fast, cold against my cheek, and the bathroom light swam above me as the edges of my vision went dark.
My last coherent thought was dread at the realization.
This can’t be happening right now.
40
— • —
Solomon
We ran.
