The following days passed quietly, almost suspiciously ordinary, as if both forest and city had decided to grant them a brief reprieve after the tension of the last full moon. Thiago stayed with Kidd longer than originally planned. He took the downstairs guest room, joined them for breakfast, helped with small repairs around the house, and tried not to show how often his thoughts returned to that night. Each subsequent shift took place under controlled conditions—on the same clearing, beneath the watchful eyes of the alpha, Zane, and the twins. Every time it was painful, but predictable. Bones broke and reset in a natural rhythm, muscles tightened without unnatural spasms, and his eyes never darkened with the shadow that had etched itself so clearly into Ithilien's memory. No black veins surfaced beneath his skin. There was no loss of awareness. No blind, directionless fury.
Kidd observed carefully, yet with each passing day his vigilance became less strained, more routine. The shadow of unease that had taken root after his brief conversation with Ithilien began to fade. Perhaps he had overinterpreted it. Perhaps it had simply been a brutal first transformation, amplified by stress and the presence of a new she-wolf on neutral ground. Adrahil, once restless at the memory of that night, no longer stirred at it. Relief came slowly, like a breath drawn after holding still for too long.
Ithilien did not share that relief.
The calmer the days became, the more sharply the details returned to her—details that did not fit the pattern of a typical first shift. The noise Thiago had described. The fraction of a second when the skin beneath his fur had moved in a way that defied biology. The dark pulsing beneath the surface. If it had been coincidence, she needed proof. If it hadn't, she needed to understand how far the problem reached.
The name came to her during a lecture at the university.
Zeke Martin was a second-year student in environmental biology. Intelligent, quiet, with that distinctive blend of distraction and heightened sensitivity that Ithilien had begun to recognize as the sign of an approaching transformation. A few weeks earlier, during a field exercise, she had sensed the wolf in him—still dormant, but close to the threshold. And something else. A subtle instability, like a minor misalignment in a mechanism that should have been functioning perfectly.
Marco required little explanation. An official letter summoning Zeke for routine bloodwork was sent out that same day. Everything followed proper procedure, without unnecessary attention.
Zeke arrived at the hospital two days later. He stepped into Marco's office with a backpack slung over one shoulder, attempting to mask his unease with an easy smile. He immediately asked whether something was wrong, mentioning that a few months earlier he had received a similar summons to the RiverBend Medical Center. Marco reassured him in a professional tone, explaining that it was part of a regional screening program funded through grants. It all sounded logical. Coherent. Safe.
Ithilien watched him through the tinted window of the adjacent room. She focused not on the words, but on the rhythm of his heartbeat, his scent, the tension beneath his skin. He was closer to his transformation than Thiago had been on the night of the full moon. The energy within him pulsed faster, less stable.
The blood draw took only a moment. Zeke left reassured, convinced it had been nothing more than a formality.
Marco didn't wait long. The laboratory was silent, interrupted only by the soft hum of the analyzer. Ithilien stood beside him, motionless, her arms crossed over her chest. When the results appeared on the screen, Marco felt the air thicken.
The marker was the same.
The same carrier.
Active Fenrir protein.
The concentration was lower than in Thiago's sample, but unmistakable.
This time, there was no room for doubt. It wasn't an isolated case. Not a biological anomaly. Not hormonal chaos.
It was a pattern.
Ithilien stared at the data, feeling her earlier suspicions settle into a cold, logical structure. If Zeke had been at RiverBend months earlier, if blood had been drawn there under the pretense of routine testing, it meant someone had access to young wolves before their first transformation. And that something had been introduced into their systems—deliberately, or disguised as procedure.
Marco braced his hands against the counter, trying to organize his thoughts. If Thiago and Zeke were part of a larger scheme, the question was no longer "if," but "how many more."
Silence filled the lab, and it carried no relief.
The project that had officially been shut down three years ago had not only survived. It had evolved.
And somewhere beyond their reach, someone was likely observing the results.
"We need to talk to the alpha," Ithilien said, pacing restlessly through her brother's office.
She couldn't sit still. She moved in a tight semicircle, like a wolf confined in too small a space, clenching and unclenching her hands in an unconscious response to the mounting stress. Heat pulsed beneath her skin each time her gaze returned to Zeke's blood results glowing on the screen.
This wasn't a single error.
It was a mechanism.
"Routine checkups won't fix anything," she added, sharper now. "We need to find everyone who's been infected. If that gene detonates one day and starts spreading through the city, we'll have a massacre."
Marco leaned back against the lab counter, watching her closely. He had seen this state before—not panic, but operational mode. Cold calculation threaded with anger.
"I'll ask Kidd for a meeting," Marco said calmly. "He should gather the pack."
Ithilien stopped abruptly.
"Zeke has to be there too." Her voice sharpened, precise now, almost military in tone. "With Kidd beside me, I'll have a better chance of maintaining control if something goes wrong. And he doesn't have much time left before his transformation."
She turned and walked to the window, as if she could already see the meeting place forming in her mind.
"It has to be neutral ground. Not our house. There's too much of my scent there. If the virus truly reacts to stimuli, we can't risk an uncontrolled response. Open space would be best. Away from people. The forest. Territory the pack knows."
She spoke quickly, logically, analyzing potential threats one after another.
Six stable wolves. Kidd. Zane. Levi. The twins. Carter.
And one young, unstable one.
They could restrain him.
Couldn't they?
The question slid through her mind like a thin, sharp blade.
Zeke hadn't transformed yet. If Fenrir reacted more violently than it had in Thiago… if the response were stronger…
Ithilien felt a stab of frustration.
I wasn't supposed to be part of this. I was supposed to stay out of it. Stay on the sidelines. Focus on my studies. On a normal life.
The thought tasted almost bitter.
And yet, deep inside her, something else pulsed—an unshakable certainty that this was precisely why she existed. Not to stand by calmly and observe. But to react. To stabilize chaos before it spiraled beyond control.
She did not consider Kidd's pack her own but her instincts suggested otherwise.
Duty. Protection. Balance.
Marco exhaled quietly.
"All right. Give me a moment."
He reached for his phone and stepped into the hallway, leaving her alone with her thoughts and the cold light of the laboratory.
The afternoon at the office moved along in the steady rhythm Kidd knew and appreciated. The plans for the next phase of the Santa Clara development were spread across the large conference table, and he stood over them with a mug of coffee in hand, tracing the future foundation lines with his finger. Through the window he could see the storage yard and part of the mill; men worked as they always did, wood carried the sharp scent of resin, and pale winter light reflected off the metal edges of unfinished structures. There was something soothing about routine. After several tense days surrounding Thiago's first transformation, this predictability felt almost like a reward.
Thiago was doing well. The last two shifts had passed without incident, and the young wolf was beginning to gain confidence. Kidd watched him carefully but saw nothing that exceeded the natural boundaries of the process. In his own thoughts, he admitted he might have connected that night too quickly with Ithilien's warning. She had been firm, nearly unyielding, yet the brief, general update Marco had given a few days earlier had not suggested immediate danger. Gradually, the alpha allowed himself to believe the matter was settling.
His phone vibrated against the tabletop, interrupting his consideration of the plumbing layout. Kidd glanced at the screen more out of habit than curiosity. The sight of Marco's name made his hand pause mid-motion. There was no obvious reason for it, yet something in him reacted before reason caught up. The doctor did not call without cause. If he reached out unannounced, it usually meant something required immediate attention.
Kidd answered, sliding the plans aside and walking toward the window as if he needed more space.
Marco skipped pleasantries. They needed to meet that evening, he said, and it would be best if the entire pack gathered in the forest near Mohawk Valley. His tone was measured, professional, but beneath it ran a tension he did not attempt to disguise with excessive calm. Kidd listened in silence, watching the workers in the yard as though the ordinary scene might counterbalance the weight of the words he was hearing.
When Marco mentioned it was not only about Thiago but another young wolf—Zeke Martin—something shifted in the alpha's mind. The name meant nothing to him, yet the way it was spoken left no doubt about the seriousness of the situation. Marco withheld details over the phone, stating only that they should not dismiss this and that it was best discussed before the entire pack. He also asked that someone go to Zeke's house, as the transformation might come sooner than expected.
Kidd did not interrupt. He listened to the end, asked a few short, practical questions, then confirmed the time and place. After hanging up, he remained by the window for a moment, phone still in hand. The office looked exactly as it had minutes earlier, yet within him a quiet alertness had returned. It was not panic, nor a surge of wild instinct, but the sharpening of focus that had briefly allowed itself to relax.
He reached for his second phone and dialed Zane.
"Talk," Zane answered after the second ring.
"We're about to get a new pup in this cheerful little kindergarten of ours," Kidd said evenly. "His name's Zeke Martin, and you need to find him for tonight. Our neutral doctor wants to meet. With the entire pack."
A brief silence settled on the other end of the line.
"That doesn't sound great," Zane muttered. "Is this about Thiago? The results were fine."
Kidd leaned his hip against the windowsill, watching the gray sky stretching over Eugene.
"I'm guessing the doc knows something about that new shift," he replied evenly. "Maybe it'll be similar to Thiago. I don't know. He insisted on a meeting, and I'm more than willing to find out why."
"And the kid?"
"Find him. And make sure he's not alone if something starts happening earlier than expected."
Zane exhaled quietly.
"Alright. Where and when?"
"West of Mohawk Valley. Six o'clock. Everyone needs to be there."
"Got it."
When the call ended, Kidd returned to the table covered in plans. He looked at them for a moment, as if trying to force his thoughts back into the interrupted project, but he already knew he wouldn't fully focus on work that day. The relief he had felt over the past few days gave way to calm concentration. If Marco was summoning the entire pack and requesting their presence for another young wolf, it meant the situation extended beyond a single failed transformation.
He didn't yet know what he would hear that evening in the forest, but the unease that had stirred when he saw Marco's name on the screen had not faded. It had simply settled deeper, like a stone in a riverbed—not stopping the current, but subtly altering its course.