I made the call at 2:47 in the morning.
Cora had just finished her rounds. The night-shift Delta posted outside my door was half-asleep—I could hear his breathing slow and even through the wall. The infirmary hummed with the particular quiet that only exists in the hours before dawn, when the world forgets to watch.
I closed my eyes and reached.
Not with my voice. With the thread.
Years ago, when I was still pouring every waking hour into building Hudson's pack infrastructure, I had woven a secondary emergency frequency into the pack's mind-link architecture. A ghost channel, buried beneath the standard communication layers. Hudson had never asked how the system worked. He never asked how anything worked. That was always my department—the boring, technical, invisible department.
I found the frequency the way you find a scar in the dark. By feel.
Elliot.
The transmission was fragmented, barely a whisper. I didn't have the strength for more. My wolf was still curled in the corner of my mind like a wounded animal, and every time I pushed even a thread of energy outward, the hollow place where the mate bond used to be throbbed like a bruise pressed too hard.
But Elliot heard me.
We had never spoken directly before. I had cultivated him the way you tend a garden you hope you'll never need—quietly, patiently, over years of small favors and careful trust-building. A smuggler who ran the southern border. Discreet. Professional. Expensive.
I told him what I needed. Medical transport cover. Riley's wing. Four a.m.
He didn't ask questions. That was what I had paid him for.
I lay back against the pillow and pressed my palm flat over my stomach. My pup shifted—just slightly, a small, drowsy movement against my ribs—and I exhaled.
*Hold on,* I told her silently. *Just a little longer.*
---
By morning, Riley was gone.
I knew the moment it happened. Not because anyone told me, but because the particular weight I had been carrying in my chest—the one shaped exactly like my brother's face—lifted, just slightly. Enough to breathe.
Hudson arrived at my infirmary room forty minutes later.
I heard him before I saw him. His footsteps were wrong—too fast, too sharp, the controlled stride of a man working very hard not to run. He pushed the door open without knocking.
His face was white.
Not pale. White. The color of something stripped clean.
"Where is he?" His voice was quiet. That was worse than shouting. Hudson only went quiet when he was genuinely furious.
I blinked at him. Slowly. I had been practicing the expression for hours—hollow, medicated, slightly confused. The face of a woman too broken to scheme.
"Riley?" I said. My voice came out hoarse and thin. It wasn't entirely an act. "I heard the nurses talking this morning. Something about a transfer." I let my brow crease faintly. "I assumed you arranged it. A better facility, they said."
Hudson stared at me.
I held his gaze and let my eyes stay soft and empty.
The silence stretched. He was looking for something in my face—a crack, a flicker, anything to confirm what he already suspected. I gave him nothing. I had learned, over years of living with this man, exactly how to become a blank wall when he needed to read me.
Finally, he turned and left without another word.
The door clicked shut.
I waited until his footsteps faded down the corridor. Then I turned my face toward the window and let out a single, slow breath.
One lever down.
---
Harlow came that afternoon.
I smelled her before the door opened. That was the thing about heightened wolf senses—even wounded, even half-broken, they still worked. The scent hit me like a fist: Hudson's earthy, possessive mating smell soaked into her skin so deliberately, so thick, that it couldn't have been accidental. She had bathed in it.
She settled into the chair beside my bed with the careful grace of someone performing for an audience.
"Sweetie." Her voice was soft and syrupy. She reached out and patted my hand. "How are you feeling?"
My wolf made a sound deep in my chest. Not a snarl. Something lower than that. Something that had no name.
I kept my expression still.
Harlow tilted her head, her fingers lingering on my wrist just a beat too long. "This must be so hard for you. I just want you to know that Hudson and I—we really do want what's best for you."
She paused, letting the scent do its work. I could feel it pressing against my wolf's wound like a thumb on a bruise.
"He's already been thinking about names," she added, almost gently. "For our pups. And the Luna suite—" She glanced around the sterile room with a small, sympathetic smile. "It really does need a fresh eye. I was thinking something warmer. More personal."
I said nothing.
She leaned slightly closer. "You should sign the papers, Morgan. Before the stress does more damage." Her eyes dropped to my stomach. "For the baby's sake."
Under the blanket, my fingers curled into my palm. Nail by nail. Slow and deliberate.
I let her talk.
I let her sit there in Hudson's scent and her borrowed confidence, and I catalogued every word she said the way you catalogue ammunition.
The paperwork was coming.
Just not the paperwork she was expecting.
