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She retrieved the remote but didn’t click it. Instead, she studied me with growing concentration. “What’s your blood type?”

“Why?”

“Because I asked.”

I tried to remember the last time I’d seen the information. “O-negative.”

Patty slapped the remote against her thigh. “There it is.”

“There what is?”

“The answer.”

“To what?”

“To how you infiltrated a wolf pack using a bottle of internet perfume and poor decision-making.”

“I did not infiltrate⁠—”

“You knowingly entered an alpha’s territory under a false supernatural identity.”

“When you describe it that way, you remove a lot of the emotional nuance.”

Patty clicked the remote. The bloodhound disappeared, replaced by a slide titled:

GOING UNDETECTED AS A HUMAN IN A PACK OF WOLF SHIFTERS

She pointed the remote toward the slide. Bullet points appeared one at a time.

WEAK BASELINE SCENT PROFILE

SCENT SUPPRESSION

ENVIRONMENTAL MASKING

CONFIRMATION BIAS

Patty tapped the first item. “Wolf shifters don’t literally smell blood types. That’s a common misconception.”

“I didn’t have that misconception until thirty seconds ago.”

“Blood type correlates loosely with several parts of human scent chemistry. Skin secretions, hormone metabolites, iron-related compounds, immune markers, and other things scientists still argue about because studying how wolves identify humans isn’t a priority for those who have the funding.”

“Wait, scientists know about shifters?”

“Shifter scientists do.”

“Right. Of course. Sorry. Please explain why my blood has made me invisible.”

“It hasn’t made you invisible.” Patty advanced the slide, revealing a chart with several colored bars. “Certain humans naturally produce weaker identifying markers. O-negative tends to appear more often in that group. Not always. This isn’t a universal rule. You could line up ten O-negative humans and nine of them might still smell unmistakably human.”

“But I’m the tenth.”

“You appear to be the tenth, which is deeply irritating because you already behave like the universe personally adjusts probability to reward bad choices.”

She returned to the slide. “Your natural human scent is unusually faint. That explains why I sensed something wrong but couldn’t immediately identify it. Then you added the pheromone blockers.”

She clicked again, emphasizing SCENT SUPPRESSION.