Chapter 3

I'd always known this day would come, but I still felt a qualm when it became clear that I'd been deposed from my title of Cool New Relative in my nephew's estimation. Because rather than calling shotgun as he usually did, Keith slid into the backseat with his uncle as we left the school, and the boy proceeded to chatter for the entire first hour of our journey home.

"The Barn's the cool place to live," Keith was saying, seemingly undeterred by the fact that his uncle's responses were monosyllabic. "I finally talked Dad into letting me move in, and there's a spare room right next door to mine. I'll bet you could bunk there if you wanted to."

I was a bit worried that Ethan would make fun of his nephew since the latter was nearly the same age but acted so much younger. But he kept his rudeness down to a bare minimum, merely staring out the window while largely ignoring his seat mate's conversation. Now, though, a glance in the rear-view mirror caught my brother's head turning toward our shared nephew.

"And does Ember live in the Barn too?" my sibling asked.

The wolf pup in question had worn herself out clambering all over the two laps in the backseat before falling asleep with her jaws clamped firmly over Ethan's thumb. To my surprise, the tattooed teenager had made no move to yank his hand free during the last half hour, although I was sure his muscles were getting tired of maintaining the same pose. And although my surly brother's actions could have been construed as mere self-defense since a sleeping Ember was a happy Ember, I liked to believe that the wolfling had wiggled her way into Ethan's heart just as quickly as she had into mine.

"Naw," Keith replied, oblivious to the wolf-pup subtext. "Or, well, sometimes. Ember mostly goes wherever Ember wants to go. She's spent the night in my room a few times, I guess."

I could see Ethan's nostrils flaring in anger, and my brow wrinkled as I tried to parse what might have upset my brother this time around. His current expression reminded me of the Ethan I used to know—easy to anger and equally willing to show his displeasure. The big difference was the impetus. In the past, my younger brother used to have fits about not having his demands catered to quickly enough rather than about someone else's well-being.

"So, basically, the pack treats her like a puppy," Ethan said, his voice harsh as he clarified what had set him off this time. "As a dog. But she's not, right? She's the alpha's niece."

"Well, sure." Keith sounded much less certain than his wording suggested, his inner wolf cowering down before his uncle's rage. "I mean, yes, Ember is Wolfie's brother's daughter. But she's a bloodling. She won't be human for a really long time. So for now, she's basically a wolf."

The pup in question wriggled her hindquarters, one eye sleepily cracking open, and both teenagers lowered their voices in response. Ethan's tone didn't improve, though.

"It just doesn't seem right," he said, and my brother's gaze shot forward to meet mine in the mirror. I quickly turned my attention back to the road, not wanting Ethan to realize how attuned I was to the backseat conversation. "It's not easy being different in a shifter pack," he elaborated. "And you're not doing Ember any favors by treating her like a pet when she's little. Not if you want her to fit in later."

I shivered at his words, realizing that Ethan was projecting his own past onto Ember's cuddly little form. Back when my brother and I had both lived in the attic of Cricket's house, Ethan had been the pack's golden boy, given everything he ever wanted.

And where did that lead him in the end? Nowhere good.

As soon as it became apparent that my sibling was unable to shift into lupine form, the Chief's son was toppled from his pedestal in short order. And now I realized why Ethan had barely been able to hold a conversation with perhaps the easiest pack member of all to get along with. He was too nervous about returning home to focus on anything else.

So who's to say my brother won't be right in the end? Maybe we're not doing Ember any favors by bringing her up as a wolf.

But, really, what other option did we have?

***

Dale answered my unspoken question the next day when he requested Wolfie's and my presence in Haven's new clinic. Although my brother-in-law was a human by blood and had been unaware of his son's werewolf heritage until the previous autumn, he'd jumped into the project of doctoring a very different type of creature with enthusiasm.

In fact, Keith's father had gone much further with the endeavor than I'd imagined, apparently having moved on from stitching up scratches to attempting to solve the most daunting problem facing werewolf women today. Dale had seen firsthand the dangers to mothers-to-be when their babies transformed into wolf pups in the womb. And he'd been solely responsible for saving mother and child when Sarah showed up at his clinic, pain wracking her body as Ember tried to claw her way out. So it shouldn't have surprised me to learn that Dale wasn't willing to sit back and wait for another similar disaster to arrive on his doorstep. Instead, the doctor had decided to nip the problem in the bud.

"The idea is that a werewolf's change is spurred by a simple chemical reaction," Dale was explaining to his small but riveted audience. I glanced at Wolfie, who seemed much less daunted by the huge syringe in my brother-in-law's hand than I was, then back at the doctor. I had a feeling that what Dale was saying would be a game changer, so I'd better get over my needle phobia and pay attention.

"The yahoos let me take blood samples before and after shifts, as well as during periods when they hadn't transformed in quite some time," Dale continued. "And, based on that data, I've been able to replicate the cocktail of hormones found in werewolf blood during transformations. I'm relatively confident that injecting those same chemicals would force a shift in a werewolf who was unable or unwilling to change shape on his own."

My brother-in-law paused, waiting for our reactions, and I immediately obliged. "You could prompt an unborn bloodling to shift back into human form and save the mother," I mused aloud. "Or you could expedite a teenager's first transformation if he was having trouble." The possibilities were endless.

And also potentially hazardous. In Dale's hands, this miracle drug would undoubtedly save lives. But in the grasp of a less scrupulous shifter, the hormones could instead become both trap and punishment. I was quite positive that Justin, for example, would have been able to turn Dale's miracle cure into a scourge used to vanquish any shifters who dared to stand against his pack.

I shared another glance with Wolfie, knowing that my mate's quick brain would have picked up on the same potential negative side effects of the drug that mine had. But the other alpha simply shrugged off the danger, assuming that he'd be able to keep a lid on the cocktail and ensure it never left our own pack.

Given my mate's powerful alpha dominance—and the fact that there were no other trained medical doctors allied with werewolves—chances were good that Wolfie was right.

"The drug is untested?" my mate said instead of running through any of the potential downsides of Dale's brainchild.

"That's the rub," my brother-in-law agreed. "The yahoos were willing to let me shoot them up, but I felt like that was more your decision to make than mine."

The doctor's eyes sought out my own, opening up the responsibility to include me as well as my mate, and I appreciated his thoughtfulness. Still, my own gaze immediately returned to Wolfie, hoping he'd make the choice that I didn't feel qualified to place upon my more slender shoulders.

"I'm glad you asked," Wolfie said simply. Unlike me, the other alpha felt no compunction against deciding thorny issues on the fly. In fact, he immediately held out his right arm and continued: "Because, if anyone's going to be your guinea pig, it should be me."

My heart swelled with pride for the alpha who was always willing to stand between his pack and danger. But before Dale could uncap his rubbing alcohol, I had another thought.

"So, you could transform Ember into a little girl right now?" I said, my words rising at the end into a question. "She wouldn't have to grow up different from everyone else. She could just be another kid running around Haven, getting into mischief the same way my cousins do."

Now Dale finally looked a bit uncomfortable. "Well, I wouldn't want to do that in the near future. The drug should be tested on adults first, then I'd need to calculate dosages...."

"But, eventually, you could," I persisted, thinking of how adamant Ethan had been about the impropriety of raising a future human like an animal. "Assuming everything goes well with the testing?"

The truth was that the more I'd mulled over my brother's words, the more I thought he was right. But I'd quickly realized that it would be next to impossible to talk the pack out of treating Ember like a pet, not when she was soft and fuzzy and looked like an adorable puppy dog.

On the other hand, if our charge lost her snout and walked on two legs, then everyone would know that Ember was as human as anyone else. She'd be able to slip into a more normal role in our pack and wouldn't be faced with traumatic life changes during her tumultuous teenage years. My favorite niece would be safer as a girl, and happier too.

"Yes, eventually," Dale agreed, reaching once again for the supplies to clean Wolfie's skin prior to needle insertion.

But now it was my mate's turn to halt the doctor, slamming one hard hand abruptly onto the other's arm. "No," he said simply, and I shivered at the alpha dominance that imbued my usually gentle mate's words. Even though Dale didn't have an inner wolf to be affected by the pack leader's command, the doctor's shoulders bowed down in response and the piece of gauze in his hand fluttered to the floor.

Before I could ask what was wrong, Wolfie turned to meet my eyes, his wolf even more present than usual beneath his human skin. "Why would you want to deny Ember the opportunity to enjoy her puppyhood?" he asked, his words much colder than I'd ever heard them when aimed in my direction before. In fact, the alpha now sounded very much like he was facing down an opposing pack leader, not talking to the woman who humans would have called his common-law wife.

A huge pit opened up in my stomach and I found myself barely able to speak. Only after averting my eyes and feeling my inner wolf roll over to show her belly was I able to get an answer out. "For her own good," I managed at last. "So she can have a normal childhood."

"You still think being a bloodling is abnormal," my mate said coldly, and I understood at last where this uncharacteristic rage was coming from. Wolfie thought I was judging his own upbringing when I spoke. So how could he not feel hurt?

And the truth was that, after spending his first fourteen years as a wolf pup much like Ember, Wolfie never would be a run-of-the-mill shifter. Chase once told me that my mate used to have difficulty paying attention to human speech, that he'd spent years preferring fur to his human form.

But, in the end, those same differences had made Wolfie stronger and more powerful. In fact, my mate's bloodling knowledge now improved the lives of our entire pack. Using his own experiences as a template, Wolfie had taught the yahoos to shift much more quickly than the average werewolf, and my mate had shown me how to partner with my lupine half in a way I'd never before believed possible.

So, yes, I understood that being a bloodling wasn't entirely a curse. But it wasn't an easy path, either. And I loved Ember enough that I wanted to make her path through life easy.

I had a feeling Wolfie was too angry to hear my explanation right now, though. So I simply drooped beneath his domineering gaze, resolving to hash out what seemed to be our first real disagreement at a later date when we didn't have a worried audience standing by.

And when Wolfie seemed more like my mate and less like a terrifying alpha that I wanted nothing to do with.

At last, I felt rather than saw Wolfie's attention return to the doctor. "Go for it," he said simply, some of the cold alpha tonality still present in his voice even though I could tell my mate was doing his best to tamp down his temper for the sake of the human in the room.

"You'll want to relax," Dale said after a pause, his voice significantly more feeble than before. But he stood up under Wolfie's shifter nature just as well as he'd faced down angry werewolves in the past. "And if it works and you shift to wolf form, I have another cocktail prepared to transform you back."

"That won't be necessary," my mate said simply. "I think, at the moment, I'd prefer to stay wolf."

I finally raised my eyes from the floor just in time to catch Wolfie's grim face eying the long needle that stabbed into the inside of his elbow. I'd hoped my mate would look over and meet my gaze next. But, instead, he simply stood, tall and stoic, and waited to see if the doctor's drug would be a blessing or a curse.

Dale took a deep breath and depressed the plunger...then the needle clattered to the floor at the feet of a tremendous wolf.

The experiment had been a success.