3. Genevieve
Genevieve
Over the next four days, I reorganize the spare room into a functional workspace.
This is either adaptability or denial. Possibly both.
The folding table came from a storage closet on the first floor. The power strip was already here, thank God, and a borrowed desk lamp leans over my notes at an angle that would make my old laboratory supervisor weep.
My laptop sits in the center of it all.
Getting it here required two Black Harbor wolves, an inspection of my apartment building, and a forty-seven-minute argument with Ronan.
I won. Mostly.
The laptop belongs to the hospital, but the encrypted research environment on it is assigned to me. During one monitored connection, I used the compliance portal to report the stolen credential and preserve the audit logs already available to my authorized review.
Then Callum disconnected every wireless function, scanned the hard drive twice, and built a contained system incapable of communicating with anything outside the safehouse. Dara obtained public property records and copies of the Dock 17 evidence; she did not enter the hospital system.
I am not permitted to reconnect directly while hospital compliance investigates the breach.
Ronan called the offline safeguards protection. I called them interference. We eventually settled on temporary interference subject to review.
The fluorescent light overhead buzzes at a frequency that should be irritating but has become white noise, the kind of constant hum that lets me think.
I am examining the audit trail from Marcus’s most recent hospital visit when someone knocks on the open doorframe.
The young man standing there holds a mug of black coffee like an offering. He is perhaps twenty-one, lean and restless, with dark hair cropped close to his skull. He carries the kind of energy that suggests he has never remained still for longer than ten minutes in his life.
Something bright and curious in his expression separates him from the controlled danger I have observed in the other pack members.
“Callum,” he says.
“I know.”
His eyebrows rise.
“We met yesterday.”
“Most people here look at me as though they are deciding whether I am dangerous.”
He considers that. “You might be.”
“At least you are honest.”
He holds out the mug. “Thought you might need caffeine.”
I take it because refusing would be rude—and because I desperately need caffeine.
The coffee is strong enough to strip paint. Exactly how I like it.
“Thank you.”
He does not leave. Instead, he shifts his weight, glances at my laptop screen, and looks at me with an expression I recognize from every undergraduate who has ever lingered after office hours.
“I have a question,” he says.
“About the hospital records?”
“Biology.”
That gets my attention. “What about it?”
He enters cautiously, as though crossing the threshold requires permission. It probably does. Ronan told everyone that no one enters this room without mine.
I gesture toward the floor beside the folding table because there is no second chair. Callum folds himself down without hesitation, settling cross-legged with his back against the wall.
I have acquired company.
“Ask.”
“Lunar cycles and tissue regeneration.”
I set down the coffee.
“We heal faster during certain moon phases,” he continues, leaning forward. “No one has ever explained why. Most wolves say it is just the moon, the wolf, or the Goddess.”
“The Goddess?”
His expression changes. “Another question.”
“For later?”
“Probably.”
I pick up my pen. “Continue.”
“We heal faster closer to a full moon. Not enough that most humans would notice, because they are not supposed to see us injured in the first place. But we notice.”
“And the rate decreases near the new moon?”
“Yes.”
“Does it affect everyone equally?”
“No. Young wolves heal faster. Stronger wolves usually do too. Alphas heal faster than most of us.”
“Usually?”
“Silver changes everything.”
I think of Marcus on the steel table and the blackened edges of his wound. Of Ronan’s blood striking the pavement.
“Silver interrupts the healing response.”
“Yes.”
“But not by itself. Petra said the blade was coated with wolfsbane resin and possibly ashthorn.”
Callum nods. “That makes it worse.”
“How?”
“I do not know.”
There is no embarrassment in the admission. Only frustration.
“I thought it might be instinct or magic, but there has to be a mechanism, right? Something in the cells?”
I turn toward him fully. “This is the first interesting question anyone in this building has asked me.”
His mouth opens, then closes. “I am not sure whether that was an insult.”
“It was.”
Callum grins.
“There is always a mechanism,” I say. “Biology does not stop following rules simply because we have not identified them.”
“But we shift.”
“That is unexplained. It is not necessarily magic.”
“It feels fairly magical when your bones rearrange.”
“I am sure it does.”
“You watched Ronan shift.”
The statement is careful. Not quite a question.
“Yes.”
“What did you think?”
That the world had broken open. That something impossible had become real in front of me. That the wolf was terrifying and beautiful. That even after Ronan’s face disappeared beneath black fur, I still knew it was him.
“I thought I lacked enough information to form a defensible conclusion.”
Callum stares. “You really are a scientist.”
“I did warn you.”
I open a blank window and begin constructing a rough diagram: circadian injury patterns, genes activated by light exposure, hormonal cycles, and the possibility that lunar light, gravitational shifts, or an unknown environmental factor influences wolf-shifter cellular repair.
Standard human biology does not account for rapid skeletal restructuring, organ displacement, or the production and reabsorption of that much tissue.
Callum listens with his entire body. He leans forward and asks good questions.
Why does healing accelerate near the full moon? Is it the light itself? Does shifting trigger a repair response? Do wolves who shift more frequently heal faster in human form? Does the inner wolf control the process, or is the wolf simply their name for a biological system no one has studied?
Forty minutes pass. My coffee goes cold, and I do not notice until I reach for the mug and find it empty.
“You should have been a biologist,” I tell him.
He looks startled, then grins as though I have handed him something valuable.
“Dara says I ask too many questions.”
“Dara is wrong. Asking questions is the only way to learn anything useful.”
“She says questions are useful after you finish the task she gave you.”
“That qualification may be reasonable.”
His grin widens.
He unfolds himself from the floor with the loose-limbed grace all of them seem to possess. Predator efficiency wearing human clothes.
“I will bring more coffee tomorrow,” he says. “Maybe you will have more answers.”
“I will have better questions.”
“That too.”
He reaches the door.
“Callum.”
He turns.
“What happened to the dead attacker?”
Some of the brightness leaves his face. “Dara secured him.”
“Secured a dead body?”
“She had him moved before the human police reached the dock.”
“Where?”
His gaze shifts toward the hall. “You need to ask her.”
“I am asking you.”
“I know.”
He is young, not careless. There is a difference.
“Was anything found on him?”
“No wallet, phone, or pack colors. His fingerprints had been damaged.”
“Deliberately?”
“Yes.”
“What about his scent?”
“Masked with something chemical. We do not know what yet.”
“And the man who escaped?”
“Elias found blood where Ronan bit him, but the vehicle was abandoned four blocks away and wiped clean.”
“Professional.”
“Dara said the same thing.”
“Or designed to appear professional.”
Callum’s gaze sharpens. “She said that too.”
I turn back to my screen. “I am beginning to like Dara.”
“That makes one of you.”
I glance at him. He smiles again.
“Tomorrow,” he says, and leaves.
I pull Marcus’s records onto the center of the screen: the aliases, the impossible recoveries, and the latest admission that did not follow the earlier pattern.
I add the hospital encounter to my timeline. The injured woman believed I could help Marcus and gave me his patrol location. The two men at Dock 17 knew he was still healing slowly.
They did not lure me to the alley. They did not know I would be there until Marcus saw my camera.
I arrived because I kept asking questions.
That distinction matters.
Marcus was the target. I was an accident. Now I am a witness.
I enlarge the audit trail from his latest hospital visit.
The medical chart was updated at 7:13 p.m.: delayed tissue repair, reduced mobility, and persistent inflammation around the wound.
At 7:19 p.m., someone accessed the record using a staff credential.
Six minutes.
The credential belonged to a respiratory therapist who was assisting with an emergency intubation on another floor. The login was stolen or copied.
I trace the connection through a public hospital terminal, then a second terminal, before it disappears into a private relay I cannot identify from the exported logs.
Not enough.
I open Marcus’s earlier records under Daniel Cross, Michael Reeve, and the other names tied to previous injuries.
Different staff credentials accessed each file shortly after updates were entered: a nurse, a billing coordinator, a laboratory technician.
None of them were working at the terminals used under their names.
The intruder does not rely on one stolen account. Someone has access to the hospital’s credential system, not merely its medical records.
I compare the access times against Marcus’s patrol schedule. Dara did not want to give it to me. Ronan eventually did.
The attack occurred during the first brief interval when Marcus was expected to be alone after the latest update documented his delayed recovery.
That is not observation. It is target selection.
I create a new heading.
UNKNOWN ACTOR.
Beneath it, I list what the evidence supports:
Access to hospital credentials.
Knowledge of hidden shifter identities and Black Harbor patrol schedules.
Knowledge of Marcus’s pack position.