— Sera —
Night shifts suited me.
The center was quieter after midnight — not empty, never empty, wolves got themselves hurt at all hours — but the energy was different. Focused. No politics, no posturing. Just injuries that needed treating and people who needed help.
I was good at this. I'd always been good at this.
For the first time in a while, that felt like enough.
The intake alarm went off at 1:47 a.m. on my third shift.
Two wolves, brought in by car. The driver was unhurt. The passenger had a deep laceration across his left shoulder and upper arm — claw marks, the kind that came from a fight that had gotten serious.
The driver I didn't recognize.
The passenger I did.
Nate Calloway. Pinecrest Pack Alpha. One of the voices in the group chat. One of the men who had laughed at photos of me and typed things I'd read on a kitchen floor while my hands shook.
He recognized me too. I saw it in the way his face shifted — something between surprise and the specific discomfort of a person confronted with evidence of their own behavior.
I put on my gloves.
"Lay back," I said. "This is going to need cleaning before I can close it."
"You're the —" He stopped.
"The healer on call, yes." I uncapped the antiseptic. "Hold still."
He held still.
To his credit, he didn't say anything else. No jokes, no comments. He stared at the ceiling and let me work and when I was done and the wound was closed and dressed, he said, very quietly, "Thanks."
I peeled off my gloves.
"That's the job," I said.
I was writing up the intake notes when I heard the entrance door open. The draft of cold air. The particular weight of footsteps I'd know anywhere.
I didn't turn around.
Cole's voice came from behind me. "Nate, what — " A pause. "Sera."
I kept writing.
"You work here." Not a question. He sounded genuinely thrown. "Since when?"
I capped the pen. Closed the chart. Turned around.
He looked the same. Of course he did. Two weeks wasn't long enough to change a face. He was wearing the gray jacket I used to borrow on cold mornings and he was looking at me like I was something that had appeared where he hadn't expected it.
"Since last week," I said.
"You blocked me." He said it like it was a problem I'd created for him. "Your number, your socials, everything."
"Yes."
"I need to talk to you."
"I'm working."
"Sera." He stepped closer. I stepped back. He stopped. Something moved through his expression — frustration, but underneath it something rawer that I didn't want to look at too closely. "I haven't been sleeping. I don't know what's wrong with me. I keep — I can't stop —" He exhaled. "I need you to come home."
I looked at him.
"Home," I said.
"Yes."
"To do what, exactly? Cook? Clean? Sleep in your bed until Talia decides she wants you back?" I kept my voice even. "Be your free maid again?"
"It wouldn't be like that." He said it fast. Too fast. "I'd make it official. Just between us — no one else has to know. I'll keep it quiet, I'll tell the guys to back off, you'd never have to deal with any of that again. I promise."
I stared at him.
And then I laughed. Genuinely. A big, full, helpless laugh that surprised even me, because I hadn't laughed like that in weeks and apparently this was what did it.
"Thank you," I said, when I could breathe again. "That is the most generous offer I have ever received in my entire life."
His eyes went flat. "Sera —"
"A secret girlfriend. You'll tell your friends to be slightly less awful to me. In exchange for what — me just being quietly grateful that someone is willing to have me?" I shook my head. "No."
"You're not exactly in a position to be picky." His voice had changed. Harder now, under the surface. The Cole I'd seen in the group chat, not the one who used to bring me coffee and sit in the front row of my class. "An Omega with no wolf, no pack standing, no family — you know how that looks. I'm the one offering you a way out. Most guys wouldn't bother."
"Right," I said. "I should be grateful. For the secret. For the borrowing. For being wanted just enough to keep but not enough to claim." I picked up my chart. "We're done here, Cole."
He grabbed my wrist.
Not rough, exactly. But firm. The kind of grip that said I'm not finished. I looked down at his hand and then up at his face and he pulled me toward him and put his mouth on mine and I felt —
Nothing.
Which somehow made it worse.
I put both hands against his chest to push him back.
And then the room changed.
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't movement. It was more like a pressure shift — the way the air feels right before a storm breaks, when everything goes very still and the hairs on your arms lift. Every wolf in the room felt it. Nate sat up on the exam table. The intake nurse by the door went rigid.
Cole let go of me.
I turned around.
He was standing in the doorway.
Tall. Still. The kind of still that isn't peace but the total absence of wasted movement. Dark coat, no urgency, nothing on his face that I could read.
But the entire room had rearranged itself around his presence the way iron filings arrange themselves around a magnet. Automatic. Helpless.
His eyes moved from me to Cole.
Just that. Just a look.
And then, very quietly, in a voice that didn't need to be loud to fill every corner of the room:
"Cole Reed."
Cole went still.
"On your knees."
I watched Cole Reed — Alpha, future head of Redstone Pack, the golden boy who had never once in his life looked small — fold at the knees and go down onto the floor of the emergency center without making a sound.
The man in the doorway hadn't raised his voice.
He hadn't moved.
His eyes came to me then. Dark and steady and completely unreadable.
"Who told you," he said to Cole, but he was looking at me, "that nobody wants her?"
The room held its breath.
I held mine.
I had no idea who he was.
