It’s not the looks that gave it away. The baby isyoung, maybe a week old at most. And at that age, they all look gently alien.

It’s the scent. They smell like family, likeme. A wolf always knows its own, and my wolf is far too powerful to not be close to the surface at all times.

“I’m not fit to be a mother, Thorn. And I know you’ll do better than I ever could at taking care of it. You don’t even have to pay me to go away. And if you don’t want to deal with it either, just drop it off somewhere else and spare us both the misery.”

A panic surges in my chest—if she is so detached from the baby that she’d pawn him off heedlessly, who knows where he’d end up?

Her expression is sharp yet exhausted as she glowers at me expectantly.

“From that look on your face, you don’t like that idea. So you’re going to take it?”

“You’re just… You want nothing to do with—him? Her?”

“That’s right,” she states with a hollow finality, before her voice twinges in bitter humor that sounds more like spite than anything else. “And it’s a boy. Congratulations.”

I look her in the eyes, and am greeted with an ashen stare. It feels impossible to be angry at her, somehow. I have seen so many people brought to this state before, laid low by their circumstances and yet forced to keep going on, bitter to the core.

And like many of them before, I was the one who did this to her. But usually that was because I took a life and not because I made one.

“That’s all, then.”

It’s been years since I’ve gone into shock, but it’s not a sensation you ever forget. Especially if you’ve known it as often as I have. Behind the ringing of my skull and the gauze of my overwhelmed thoughts, I watch numbly as she takes one last look at me.

I couldn’t speak now, even if I wanted to.

But what can I say?

What is there to be said?

Something that might be an apology starts to well up in my throat, but before I can string the words together, I hear the hum of a car engine stirring back to life.

My vision whirls, locking in on the little sedan starting to pull away.

There’s an urge to run after her, to demand… Answers? Something. Anything. Some vigilant quadrant of my brain starts rattling off her license plate number.

But then the baby starts to noisily complain, and my whole world jumpstarts just to narrow in on him, and him alone.

“Shhh,” I comfort him by reflex, keeping my voice as soft as I can manage. “You’re alright. I’ve got you.”

My thoughts become more concrete, but they’re mostly… Fear.

I hurry inside and before I know it, my phone is in my hand.

There’s Paige’s face on the screen, smiling brilliantly as always. The back of her own baby’s head pokes up in the corner of the photo, sporting a soft dusting of the black hair that very much seems to run in the family.

The call rings.

My heart hammers.

Another ring.

The baby whines.

“Shhhshhshh.”

Another ring.

“Please, Paige,” I whisper.