Chapter 39 Mira
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Mira
The morning started with my face in a toilet bowl.
When the heaving stopped, I rinsed my mouth, splashed water on my face, and caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Pale. Dark circles. The kind of face that made people ask if you were okay and then not believe the answer.
I made it outside before the compound fully woke. Dawn patrol had just rotated, and the eastern tree line had a fifteen-minute window before the next sweep. I knew because I’d been counting.
Percival was exactly where I expected him to be.
“You look terrible,” I said to the shadow behind the cedar.
“You should see the other guy.” He stepped out. Thinner than last time, clothes torn, dirt under his nails. But grinning. Always grinning.
The grin lasted exactly two seconds. Then his nostrils flared, and his eyes changed. The warmth didn’t leave but it darkened, focused, tracking across my skin and clothes.
“Who’s the man?” Casual tone. Not casual eyes.
“What?”
“A man’s scent.” His jaw tightened. “Someone’s been close to you. Recently.”
“Just my training partner.”
“Training partner.” He gritted his teeth.
“Percival. Stop that and focus on my words. They doubled the patrols. Motion sensors on the eastern ridge. If they catch you again, they won’t put you in a cage this time.”
The jealousy wrestled with the worry across his face.
“I’m the fastest wolf in Veyndral, Mira. One of the best warriors of our kingdom. I know I don’t act the part, but I can when I need to. They’re not catching me.”
“You say that while looking half-starved with a torn jacket.”
“Fashion choice.”
“Percival.”
“I’m fine.” His voice softened. Dropped the act the way he only did when it was just us. “And for what it’s worth, Lucian and Solomon... they’re not sitting on their hands. I know them. They’ll be working the problem from their side even if they won’t admit it.”
The names hit wrong. They always did now.
“Working the problem.” I crossed my arms. “That’s what we’re calling it?
After the three of you rejected me. Muted the bond and left me.
And now I’m supposed to trust that somewhere on the other side of a magic portal, they’re strategizing on my behalf while I’m here, in this place, trying to figure out if I’m more hunter or more mate or more broken? ”
Percy didn’t interrupt. He absorbed it. The way he always absorbed things, behind those warm eyes that tracked every shift in my mood.
“They come and go,” I said, quieter now but no less angry.
“All three of you. You show up, you turn my world inside out, and then you leave. And I’m expected to just..
. understand. Every time.” My jaw ached from clenching.
“I need to sort this out on my own. My bloodline, the bond, what I even want from any of this. I can’t think clearly with you circling my perimeter. ”
“You don’t look good, Mira.” No humor this time. Just the raw truth of a man watching the woman he loved deteriorate. “This is the rejection. It’s physical. Me being here won’t fix everything, but it helps. You know it does.”
He was right. The nausea eased when he was close. The tremors in my hands calmed. The bond, muted as it was, still reached for his presence the way a drowning person reached for a surface.
Which was exactly why he needed to leave.
“You make it harder for me to think.” I held his gaze. Made myself hold it. “And right now I need a clear head more than I need relief. I want you gone, Percival. Out of my sight.”
The nausea surged and the next words came out before I could filter them.
“Every time you show up here, you put both of us at risk for nothing. You’re not helping me.
You’re making yourself feel better about leaving in the first place.
” My voice cracked on the edges but the venom held.
“So stop lurking in my tree line and playing guard dog for a woman who didn’t ask for one.
I’m not your mission. I’m not your redemption project. Go.”
Percival went still.
His expression didn’t crumble. Percival wasn’t the crumbling type. But the light behind his eyes dimmed, and the grin didn’t come back. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
The silence stretched, and with every second of it, the sickness in my stomach twisted because I could hear what I’d just said echoing back at me and it sounded cruel.
But I didn’t take it back.
Percival’s jaw worked. When he finally spoke, his voice was stripped down to something I barely recognized.
“I don’t believe a word of that.” Quiet with steadiness and hurt. “But if space is what you really want, I’ll go.”
He turned, walking into the trees without looking back and finally disappeared without a sound.
I stood at the tree line and watched the space where he’d been.
My chest ached, my hands shook. Everything in me screamed to call him back, but calling him back meant keeping him close, and keeping him close meant Thiago would find him.
Because Thiago had been lenient lately.
Too lenient. Loosened curfews, unlocked doors, granted training privileges. And the only explanation for that kind of generosity from a man who was hiding dark things was that it served a plan I couldn’t see yet.
Percival near this compound was a variable that plan could use.
I walked back inside and swallowed the ache whole.
By noon, my body had decided to betray me.
Wyatt threw a punch. I blocked it. The impact traveled up my forearm and into my shoulder and my balance went sideways in a way it never had before. My feet tangled and I hit the mat with my hip instead of rolling through the fall.
“You okay?” Wyatt pulled back, hands up. Late twenties, clean-cut, with the kind of earnest concern that would’ve been endearing if it wasn’t coming from a member of an organization that kept wolves in basements.
“Fine.” I stood shaking it off. “Again.”
He came at me slower this time. I ducked, pivoted, and the room tilted. My knee buckled on the recovery and I had to catch myself on the training post.
Wyatt stopped completely. “That’s the third time this morning.”
“I’m just tired.”
“You look pale.”
“I’m always pale. Redhead genetics.” I waved him off. “Can we keep going?”
We kept going. But the wrongness stayed.
My arms were slower, my lungs burned faster, and twice during grappling drills my stomach lurched with nausea. Mornings had been bad for the past few days. I’d been waking up with a sourness in my gut that faded by mid-morning, but today it wasn’t fading.
Today it was getting worse.
“Break,” Wyatt said, tossing me a water bottle. “Ten minutes.”
I sat against the wall and pressed the cold bottle to my forehead. Wyatt dropped down beside me, leaving a respectful distance.
“You’ve improved a lot,” he said. “Footwork especially. Your instincts are solid.”
“My instincts are telling me to throw up on your shoes.”
He laughed. “Please don’t.”
The door opened. Thiago walked in, and the easy warmth between Wyatt and me evaporated on contact.
“How’s she progressing?” Thiago asked Wyatt.
“Strong fundamentals. Quick learner.” Wyatt stood. Professional. “She’s having an off day physically but her technique is coming along.”
Thiago nodded, then turned to me with the smile I’d been cataloging for weeks. The warm one. The fatherly one. The one that said I care about you while his eyes calculated a different angle entirely.
“Your mother had the same natural ability,” he said. “Sienna could outshoot half my team within a month of training. It’s in your blood, Mira.”
I stood, wiping my face with a towel. “You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true. She was brilliant. Her research into lycan physiology advanced our understanding by decades.
” He stepped closer. Lowered his voice, the way he did when he wanted intimacy instead of instruction.
“She believed that knowledge was the best weapon. She would have wanted you to carry that forward.”
Every time he invoked my mother, he wrapped the Order’s work in her memory so rejecting one meant rejecting the other. I’d watched him do it for weeks now, peeling back the layers of my defenses with a dead woman’s name.
The worst part was that it worked.
Not the Order recruitment. That was transparent. But the hunger for information about Sienna, the woman who’d given birth to me and died before I could form a single memory of her face. That hunger was real and Thiago knew exactly how to feed it.
“I’d like to see her research,” I said. “The actual files. Not summaries.”
“Soon.” He touched my shoulder. “When you’re ready.”
When I’ve been conditioned enough to read them through the right lens, I translated silently. But I smiled and nodded because that was the playbook.
Thiago left. Wyatt watched him go and I couldn’t quite read his expression.
“You good to continue?” Wyatt asked.
“Yeah. Just give me a minute.”
The minute turned into fifteen. My stomach wouldn’t settle and the nausea had migrated upward into my throat. Not a bad day. A pattern.
***
The medical bay was quiet during lunch hour.
I’d timed it. Three weeks of eating meals in the cafeteria had taught me exactly when each section of the compound emptied. The staff took their break between twelve and one. Dr. Elaine usually stayed late, finishing paperwork.
She looked up when I knocked. Mid-fifties, graying hair pulled back, the kind of face that had seen too much to be surprised by anything.
“Mira. Training injury?”
“Nausea.” I stayed in the doorway. “It’s been a few days. I just need meds to settle my stomach.”
“Sit down, let me take a look.”
“I don’t need a look. I need meds.”
Elaine studied me over her glasses. “You’re pale. Have you been eating?”
“When I can keep it down.”
“Any dizziness? Fatigue?”
“Both. Which is why I’d love the meds before my next session.” I kept my voice light. The same voice I’d used on people when I needed them to stop asking questions. “Wyatt said a virus has been going around the lower barracks. Probably caught it during training.”
Elaine didn’t move. The assessing look stayed for a beat too long, and I could see the gears turning behind her eyes. Doctor’s instinct, maybe. Or just the observation skills of someone who’d spent fifteen years in a compound full of trained liars.
“I’ll give you an antiemetic,” she said finally. “If it persists past the week, come back. I’ll want bloodwork.”
“Deal.”
She opened a cabinet, pulled a blister pack, and handed it over with a note on dosage. I took it and left before she could reconsider the bloodwork.
Wyatt intercepted me in the hallway. “There you are. Feeling better?”
“Stomach bug.” The lie came easy. “Dr. Elaine gave me meds for it.”
“Take the afternoon off. I’ll tell your father you’re resting.”
“Thanks, Wyatt.”
He smiled. Kind, warm, clueless. A good man in a bad place who didn’t know yet what the bad place really was.
I made it back to my room. Took two of the antiemetics and slept until seven.
The nausea came back at seven-thirty.
Harder this time. I barely made it to the bathroom before my stomach emptied everything I’d managed to eat that day. Knees on tile, forehead against porcelain, the antiemetics doing absolutely nothing.
When it passed, I stood. Rinsed my mouth. Braced my hands on the sink and looked at my reflection.
Just as expected, I was pale and hollow.
But there’s more.
I raised my arms and turned, examining the skin under the bathroom light. The veins beneath my inner arms had changed. Faintly visible before, they were now translucent, tracing blue-green paths that I could follow from wrist to elbow. The skin there was thinner. Not damaged. Just... changed.
The nausea wasn’t behaving the way a virus should. No fever or aches. Just the mornings, always the mornings, and then the bone-deep fatigue that crashed over me by afternoon.
I lowered my arms. Stared at my face in the mirror.
Counted backward.
Back to the cabin and my heat.
Three alphas and a bond at full intensity, all four of us tangled together for hours in a fever that had burned through every rational thought I’d ever had. That was... weeks ago.
How many weeks?
I counted again. My fingers pressed white against the sink edge.
The nausea. The exhaustion. The balance failing during training, my body redirecting its resources to a task I hadn’t asked for and hadn’t noticed. The tenderness. The veins.
This is not a virus or the rejection either.
Shit.
The floor tilted. My hand shot out to catch the doorframe, but the angle was wrong and my knees buckled first. The tile came up fast, cold against my cheek, and the bathroom light swam above me as the edges of my vision went dark.
My last coherent thought was dread at the realization.
This can’t be happening right now.