After his meeting with Doctor Gilbert was over, Sebastian couldn’t stop thinking about what the man had told him. While he worked, it kept going round and round inside his head like a broken record, refusing to quiet down.

That day when they had been attacked in Nightshade and Viola had fallen into a bad state, Gilbert had used the opportunity to run some tests on her and take samples, quietly, without permission, simply to understand why her wolf hadn’t awakened at the age it was supposed to.

He hadn’t told Sebastian he had done this, which would have earned him a punch under any other circumstances, because Sebastian didn’t like the thought of Gilbert touching his wife to collect those samples. But hearing the results of what those tests had revealed, Sebastian found himself more confused than angry.

"Her DNA is different from ours, and there is a very strong wolf suppressant in her blood that may be the cause of her not having a wolf, which brings me to the question of how she could even carry a wolf at all when she doesn’t share the DNA of werewolves."

Sebastian had been too focused on the results to be as furious as he should have been about the unauthorized testing, and had asked, "So you are telling me she isn’t a werewolf?"

"I would say that, but if she isn’t, her blood shouldn’t carry that level of wolf suppressant. The dosage is the kind that, when administered to a werewolf, would seal their wolf away for a very long time, potentially permanently, until the suppressant wears off. Do you know if she took a wolf suppressant herself? The dosage suggests something administered from childhood, consistently over many years, it’s slightly overdosed, which is actually why I was able to detect it so easily in the test."

Sebastian could have sworn Viola hadn’t taken the suppressant willingly, not from how desperately she had once seemed to want a wolf like everyone around her.

But thinking about it more carefully now, he realized that as much as she was his wife, when he looked at it honestly, he didn’t actually know that much about her childhood or her real background.

All he knew was the orphanage, and then the Lindens, and he was fairly certain the Lindens wouldn’t have administered a wolf suppressant to her, not when they had once wanted a daughter they could be proud of and show off to the world.

The other thing he couldn’t set aside was her DNA being different from theirs. He would far rather accept that she was simply wolfless than entertain the thought that she was something else entirely, because that would change things. It would change everything. And Sebastian didn’t want anything to change. Not what he knew about her, and not the future he planned for them.

Because if she turned out to be something that wasn’t their kind, it would bring a change so massive he didn’t want to look it in the face, for he had used his own hands to banish every non-werewolf creature from his world, and had written into law that any person caught keeping or hiding one of those outcasts would be sentenced right alongside them.

It was a law built to keep the werewolf world pure and safe from other creatures who would seek to harm his people and take what was theirs.

"What DNA does she carry?" He asked, feeling his heart tighten inside his chest.

"Nothing I have studied before, which makes it significantly more complicated. I am still studying it and working to determine what it is." Gilbert replied.

"Is there anything she could take to counteract the wolf suppressant?" He asked, and Gilbert looked thoughtful for a long moment before answering.

"We haven’t developed anything like that yet, since no werewolf in their right mind takes a wolf suppressant unless they intend to forsake their wolf and live permanently as a human, and that has never happened in our world. It has only ever occurred in the human world. But I will work on creating a counteragent and see what I can produce." Gilbert promised, making notes on his cracked tablet.

After Gilbert left him, Sebastian sat alone with thoughts that felt heavier than anything he had carried in a long time. His suspicions about his wife’s true background were beginning to take shape inside his mind, and if he allowed himself to accept what they were forming into, he would also have to accept the possibility of letting her go.

Not because he wouldn’t want to keep her, but because the entire werewolf world would turn against her, come for her like a pack of starving wolves, and he would be left with no choice but to send her to live somewhere like America, far away, safe, but away from him and his people.

What gave him any measure of reassurance at all was what he had seen with his own eyes during their intimacy, wolf fur rising against her skin.

She had a wolf, and it was slowly awakening. Even so, Gilbert’s test had left a gaping hole of doubt in his chest that he couldn’t seem to close, and it made him want to go to her right now and spend every moment he had with her, just in case the worst ever became certain and he was forced to let go.

He was so close to breaking his curse and marking her. So close to finding a way to cure Alex and finally be even with his twin. He didn’t want Gilbert’s tests to take any of that away from him. He never should have allowed the nosy doctor to run tests on her in the first place, except he hadn’t permitted it. Gilbert had done it without asking.

The thought alone carved a hollow, aching pain in his chest, and he found himself reaching for his phone rather than his work, wanting to video call her the way he had promised he would.

Sebastian tapped on her contact and called. His heart seemed to leap with every ring, but it rang on and on until it beeped and went unanswered. His brows drew together and he tried again, with the same result.

Maybe she wasn’t near her phone, he told himself, and he began to rise from his desk with the intention of rounding up his work quickly and going to her himself, but before he could fully stand, a mind link from Matt came through, reporting that Miss Lara and the children from the Nightshade orphanage had been brought back to Silver pack, just as Sebastian had once instructed.

"Where are they?" He asked.

"I put them in the omega building. Do you want to see the woman now? She isn’t talking to me, she says she will only speak to you directly. She has agreed to share the information in exchange for being given a home here."

"I will be there in a few minutes." Sebastian said, grabbing his coat and heading out of the office.