The first night I found him there, I thought I was hallucinating.
I came back from the vending machine at eleven — my third coffee run in four hours, the kind of restless pacing you do when sitting still feels like drowning — and Zayd Wagner was in the chair beside my father's bed. Not hovering. Not performing concern. Just sitting. He had a ward report open on his lap and a pen behind his ear. Barnaby was curled against his boot, small body tucked tight, already asleep.
I stopped in the doorway.
Zayd looked up. "Your father's vitals stabilized an hour ago. Dr. Ashford adjusted the IV drip. She'll check again at midnight."
I blinked. "You didn't have to stay."
"I know."
He went back to his report. I stood there like an idiot for another three seconds, then crossed to the other chair. Set my vending-machine coffee on the tray. Noticed the second cup already sitting there. Black. Still steaming.
I stared at it.
"You take it black," Zayd said, not looking up. "Too hot. You never let it cool."
My throat closed. I picked up the cup. Wrapped both hands around it. The heat burned through my palms and I held on anyway.
"Thank you," I said.
He nodded once. That was it. No speech about how hard this must be. No pity. Just a man who had noticed something and acted on it, the way you'd adjust a patient's pillow or dim a light.
I drank the coffee. It was exactly right.
---
He came back the next night. And the night after that.
I didn't ask why. He didn't explain. He just appeared — sometimes before I did, sometimes an hour after — and settled into the rhythm of overnight shifts like he'd been doing it all along. He learned which nurses moved quietly and which ones slammed drawers. He remembered that my father hated the blood pressure cuff on his left arm and made a note in the chart so the night staff would use his right. He brought Barnaby small pieces of turkey from the staff kitchen and pretended not to notice when the pup started following his heels instead of mine.
My father watched him.
Even through the haze of medication and exhaustion, Tomas Carter's eyes tracked Zayd with the sharpness of a man who had spent decades reading rooms for threats. I saw him clock the way Zayd moved — economical, unhurried, the kind of physical confidence that didn't announce itself. I saw him register the scent. Wild sage and woodsmoke. Lycan royal, unmistakable if you knew what to look for.
My father knew.
But he said nothing. He just watched. And on the fourth night, when Zayd made a dry comment about the hospital's terrible coffee and my father actually laughed — a short, rasping sound that turned into a cough — something in Tomas's face softened.
After that, he stopped pretending to sleep when Zayd was in the room.
---
The weeks blurred together. Days I spent brewing wolfsbane in my concrete workspace, fulfilling contracts, keeping my hands busy so my brain couldn't spiral. Nights I spent in room 304, watching monitors, listening to my father breathe, and sitting beside a Lycan Prince who had somehow become the only steady thing in my collapsing world.
We didn't talk much. We didn't need to.
Zayd would arrive with ward updates or a second coffee or a blanket he'd pulled from the supply closet because the hospital kept the temperature arctic. He'd sit. Read. Make notes. Occasionally he'd say something — a comment about a protocol change, a question about a wolfsbane formula I was testing — and I'd answer. Our conversations were short. Practical. But underneath them was something else. A gravity. A pull I couldn't name and didn't trust myself to examine.
He smelled like wild sage and woodsmoke. Every time he leaned closer to adjust my father's pillow or check a monitor, the scent wrapped around me and something low in my chest pulled tight. Not the bond. The bond was dead. This was something else. Something I didn't have words for.
I pushed it down.
---
Three weeks in, my father spoke.
It was two in the morning. Zayd had just returned from the nurses' station with an update on the next day's treatment plan. I was half-asleep in my chair, coffee gone cold in my hand. Tomas's eyes opened. Clear. Focused.
"You're Corvan's nephew," he said. His voice was rough but steady.
Zayd didn't flinch. "Yes, sir."
"Lycan Prince."
"Yes, sir."
My father studied him for a long moment. I sat very still. Tomas's gaze flicked to me, then back to Zayd.
"You volunteer here," Tomas said.
"I do."
"Why?"
Zayd set the clipboard down. Leaned back in his chair. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. Deliberate.
"I was twelve when my parents died. Rogue ambush. I spent three weeks in a ward like this before my uncle found me. Nobody sat with me. I remember what that felt like."
Silence. My father's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes shifted. Recognition, maybe. Or respect.
"You're good to my daughter," Tomas said.
It wasn't a question.
"I try to be," Zayd said.
Another silence. Longer this time. Then my father closed his eyes. His breathing evened out. I thought he'd gone back to sleep.
But his hand moved on the blanket. Just slightly. Toward me.
I reached over. Took it. His fingers closed around mine — weak, but there.
"Good," he whispered.
I didn't know if he was talking about Zayd or the treatment or something else entirely. I didn't ask. I just held his hand and tried not to cry.
Across the bed, Zayd picked up his clipboard again. Barnaby shifted against his boot. And outside the window, the sky began to lighten — just barely — into the kind of gray that comes before dawn.
---
Two hundred miles away, in the Ironridge pack house, Deacon Fox stood in his office and read the border patrol report for the third time.
Rogue incursions. Four in the last week. The wolfsbane barriers were failing. The warriors were slow to heal. Gareth had sourced replacement compounds from three different suppliers and none of them held.
Deacon crumpled the report. Threw it in the trash.
He had a Pack Banquet to attend. Hallie Gray would be there. The alliance was proceeding. He couldn't afford to look weak.
He walked out of his office. The moon-bone charm sat on his desk where he'd moved it from the kitchen counter, tucked in a drawer he opened too often.
He didn't look at it.
He had work to do.
