Whose Child

He's bigger than you remember.

That's your first stupid thought, standing frozen beside a shopping cart with a wolf pup in it. Five years have taken the last of the boy out of Caius Redmayne and left only the man. He's six foot four of broad shoulders and long legs in a black wool coat, silver-blond hair a little too long and darkening in the rain, a jaw shadowed with stubble like he hasn't bothered to shave in days. The sleeve of his sweater is shoved up one forearm, and there's ink there now, a wolf running through cedar.

And his eyes. God. Those amber eyes, bright as a struck match, already locked on you across twenty feet of wet asphalt.

The teenager collecting carts has stopped walking. The woman with the paper towels has a hand pressed flat to her chest. Humans don't know what he is, but every animal part of them knows. They go still the way rabbits go still when a shadow crosses the grass.

Caius doesn't move either. He stands beside the open door of the SUV with the rain hitting him and looks at you like he's seeing a ghost walk out of a river.

"Ava."

He says it low. Not a question. It sounds like it hurts him.

Under your ribs, the dead thread jerks, and you have to grip the cart handle to stay standing.

No. No. You are not doing this. You don't get to feel anything for him. He stood in a circle of stone and tore your heart out in front of everyone you'd ever known, and then he sent men to put you over a border in the dark.

You turn the cart toward your car.

"Don't," he says.

You keep walking. Your hatchback is three rows away. Your keys are in your pocket. In the cart, Wilder's pup whines and scrabbles at the coat, his tiny claws catching.

"Ava. Stop. He's in fever. I can smell it from here."

That stops you. Because he's right. Underneath the rain and the wet asphalt, there's a scent coming off your son, hot and coppery, the smell of a body burning itself up from the inside.

You turn around.

Caius has crossed half the distance without you hearing him move. He stops when you look at him, close enough now that you can see the rain on his eyelashes, the muscle working in his jaw.

"Let me help him," he says. "Then you can run. I won't stop you. But let me help him first."

Behind him, the passenger door opens and another man climbs out. Dark curls, green eyes, a face that used to make every girl at Thornvale walk into doorframes. Evander Halloway. Caius's best friend. His beta now, you'd guess, from the way he moves without being told.

Van takes one look at you and his mouth falls open.

"Holy hell," he breathes. "You're alive."

"Van," Caius says, without turning his head. "The humans."

"Right. Yes. On it." Van shakes himself, pastes on a grin that could sell ice in Alaska, and strolls toward the woman with the paper towels. "Ma'am, I am so sorry, that's my buddy's malamute pup, he's got the zoomies, you okay? Did he scare you?"

Caius shrugs out of his coat.

He holds it the way you hold something out to a frightened animal, slow, telegraphing every movement. "He's going to shift back," he says quietly. "Soon. When he does, they shouldn't see a naked kid in a cart in the rain. Let me cover him."

You look at the coat. Then at him.

"Please," says Caius Redmayne, Alpha of Thornvale, who you have never once in your life heard say that word.

You step aside.

He leans over the cart and lifts your coat back, and the pup goes rigid. Then your son, all twelve pounds of silver-gold fluff and fury, bares his milk teeth at the largest wolf in the Northwest and growls.

It's the tiniest, fiercest sound you've ever heard. Your heart cracks right down the middle.

Caius goes completely still.

Then he does something you'd never expect. He lowers his head until he's eye to eye with the pup, and he makes a sound low in his chest. Not a growl. Something softer. Something you remember hearing wolves make to their newborns in the den, a rumble that means safe, safe, you're safe.

Wilder's growl stutters. Stops.

He stretches his little neck forward, sniffs Caius's knuckles very seriously, and licks his hand.

Caius makes a sound like someone has hit him.

He covers it fast. He spreads the coat over the cart, and under it you feel the shift start again, the small pained cry, the bones moving, and you're there with your hand under the coat on your son's back as fur becomes skin and paws become hands.

"Mama?"

Your boy's face pops out of the top of the coat, hair wet and sticking up, cheeks flushed scarlet. He's swimming in it. The sleeves hang past his hands by a foot. He looks around, dazed.

"Mama, I turned into a doggy."

"A wolf," you whisper, and your voice breaks. "You turned into a wolf, baby. You did so good."

"I'm hot," he says, and then his eyes roll back.

You catch him before his head hits the cart. He's limp and burning, so hot you can feel it through the wool, and his breathing has gone quick and shallow, and every healer's instinct you have is screaming.

"Shift fever," Caius says. His voice has changed. It's all command now, the Alpha voice, the one that makes wolves move before their brains catch up. "How long has he been warm?"

"Three days."

"Three days." He swears under his breath. "And you didn't take him to a pack?"

"I am with a pack. I'm the healer at Sallow Creek."

"Sallow Creek has twenty wolves and no moon lodge. A first shift that early, without an Alpha—"

"I know what it does," you snap. "I'm a healer. I know."

You do know. You've read Calla's notes a hundred times. A pup's first shift is like a match struck inside him. A pack Alpha's presence and a moon lodge's warm spring keep the flame steady. Without them, the fever can climb and climb until the small body can't hold it.

Caius isn't listening. He's leaning in over the cart, close to your son, and he's breathing in.

You watch it happen. You watch him catch the scent beneath the fever, the one you've spent four years hiding with bitter herb teas and scent-masking oils, the scent you stopped masking two weeks ago because a pup needs his pack to smell him.

You watch Caius Redmayne go white as paper.

He straightens slowly. He looks at the boy in his coat. At the little face, the stubborn chin, the silver-blond hair plastered to his forehead. Then he turns those burning amber eyes on you, and his voice comes out low and rough and absolutely, terrifyingly calm.

"Whose child is this, Ava?"