After My Alpha’s Mistress Took My Luna Seat

I've always been good at waiting.

Not the patient kind of waiting, where you sit with your hands folded and trust that things will work out. The other kind. The kind where you hold yourself very still because moving might make it real.

Dr. Stephen Turner set the lab results on the table between us like he was placing something fragile. His voice was steady — it's always steady — but his eyes stayed on my face a half-second too long when he said the words. Voss-Hemolytic Syndrome. Progressive. Advancing faster than the initial markers suggested.

The fluorescent light in the clinic hummed. That was the only sound for a while.

I looked at the papers. Rows of numbers I mostly understood and one I didn't want to. I pressed my fingertips against the inside of my wrist and felt my pulse moving, steady and small, and I thought: okay. Okay. It's just information. You can work with information.

"How long?" I asked.

Stephen didn't hesitate, which I appreciated. He never softened things to make them easier to swallow. He told me. He talked about treatment options, about the pup, about timelines. I nodded in the right places. I kept my fingers on my wrist.

When I walked out to the clinic's waiting room, I sat down in one of the hard plastic chairs and stared at the scuffed linoleum floor for a moment. Then I took out my phone and called Damien.

It rang twice.

A woman answered.

"Hello?"

Smooth voice. Unhurried. A little amused, like she'd been expecting the call.

I knew the voice. Everyone in Crescent Hollow knew that voice, even those of us who'd never met her. Mariah Reynolds. The name Damien's mother said with a particular softness she never used for mine.

"He's just pulling the car around," Mariah said pleasantly. "JFK is a mess today. Can I take a message?"

I sat there with the phone at my ear for three seconds. Maybe four. I counted them without meaning to.

Then I ended the call.

I sat in the plastic chair for a little longer. The clinic smelled like antiseptic and old coffee. A toddler across the room was trying to pull a magazine off the table. Normal things. Everything was normal-shaped except the inside of my chest.

I put my phone in my pocket and went home to wait.

---

The pack house at midnight is a different place than it is during the day. During the day it's full of noise and motion and the low-level hum of pack life — voices down the hall, the kitchen always used by someone. At midnight it's just space. Just rooms.

I sat at the kitchen table with chamomile tea I'd made and didn't drink. My notebook was open in front of me, the page blank. I had things I meant to write. I couldn't find where to start.

By two in the morning the tea was cold.

By four I'd stopped pretending I was