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“Actual scent blockers dull the identifying markers produced around the wrists, throat, and upper torso. Good ones are regulated, formulated specifically for our biology, and difficult to purchase without documentation. Your human hunting spray does something cruder. It suppresses skin odor, sweat compounds, and environmental transfer.”

“That sounds effective.”

“It’s effective at making you smell less human. It does not make you smell more wolf.”

My remaining optimism quietly left the room. “So everyone should still know.”

“Yes. Normally, they would.” Patty selected the third bullet. “Then you covered yourself in that pine oil.”

I sniffed my sweater and caught nothing but the faint woodsy fragrance I had become accustomed to wearing. “I don’t think it’s that strong.”

“You’ve gone nose-blind. I could locate the bottle in a landfill.”

I laughed despite myself.

Patty fought a smile and lost. “The blocker suppresses your natural scent. The oil overwhelms what remains. Together, they create a confusing chemical disaster that doesn’t register as clearly human or clearly shifter.”

She clicked the final bullet.

CONFIRMATION BIAS enlarged until it occupied most of the screen.

“This is the biggest reason,” Patty said. “Grandma Ruth added you to the chat as Loany. Everyone knows Loany exists. She was in the old chat, traveled constantly, and didn’t attend many family events. By the time anyone met you in person, they already believed they knew who you were.”

“So their noses believed what their brains told them?”

“More or less. Scent isn’t a written label. It’s information that must be interpreted. They smelled something strange, but strange didn’t automatically mean human. It could’ve meant medication, illness, hormone changes, international travel, exposure to another pack, weak scent production, excessive blocker use, or a private medical issue.”

She glanced at the screen. “The important part is that your disguise works only because several unlikely factors are overlapping. Weak baseline scent, odor suppression, pine-based chemical warfare, and a family that has no reason to question your identity.”

“And your weaker sense of smell helped you catch me?”

Patty considered that. “Kind of. I don’t process scent the same way they do. Active wolves receive so much sensory information that they get very good at categorizing it quickly. Hilary and Hudson smelled something unusual and filed it under unfamiliar shifter.”

“But you couldn’t categorize me.”

“No. My wolf is latent. I catch pieces, but I rely more heavily on behavior, context, and what people say.”

I thought back through every conversation we’d had. Every basic question I had attempted to disguise as curiosity. Every time I had reacted a second too late or asked for an explanation no one else needed.

“You knew because I acted human.”

“You acted like an alien conducting field research.”

“That bad?”

“Hell yeah.” Patty laughed, then became more serious. “They trusted their noses. I didn’t have that luxury, so I paid attention to everything else. You didn’t understand pack hierarchy. You didn’t recognize scent marking. You talked about shifting without ever contributing a personal story. You reacted to ordinary details like someone had dropped classified military files into the chat.”

“I thought I hid that better.” I looked at the slide again. “So, your latency helped you see something they missed?”

Patty’s amusement faded. She glanced at the laptop, but her attention had gone somewhere else. “I guess it did.”

“You know that means you’re better at this than they are,” I said.

Patty snorted. “Better at identifying fraudulent graphic designers?”

“Better at noticing what doesn’t fit.”

She picked at a loose thread on the cuff of her sleeve. “Maybe.”