Sasha wiped her face with the back of her hand as Kira stepped into the room, sniffling, her eyes fixed on the wall. "Have you come to gloat?" she asked, her voice hoarse and raw from crying.

Even now, even here, Sasha reached for prickles first

Kira let out a short, humourless sound. "I’m not that despicable." She looked at the boy lying still in the bed. "How is he now?"

Sasha eyed her warily. She had spent enough years in this pack to know that kindness from people in power usually came with a price tag attached somewhere. She was not ready to owe anyone anything else.

"Why are you being kind to me?" she asked quietly.

"Kindness is free," Kira said simply. "It’s up to you whether you give it or not." She settled into the chair beside the bed without being invited and looked at the sleeping child.

The room was quiet for a moment. Just the two of them and the steady beeping of the machines between them.

Then Sasha turned and looked at Kira properly, taking in the cast on her leg, the split in her lower lip, the bruise at her temple that had faded from deep purple to a sickly yellow at the edges.

"Dr Adah says I’m healing quickly for someone with a dormant wolf," Kira said, catching her looking. She smiled slightly and shrugged. "Could mean my wolf is finally waking up."

Guilt twisted in Sasha’s throat. She squeezed her eyes shut. She could not understand how this woman could sit across from her in a hospital room and make small talk as though they were not on opposite sides of something catastrophic.

"What do you actually want, Your Highness?" Fresh tears filled her eyes. "I have nothing left to give."

"I don’t want anything from you," Kira said. "I just want to know why you did it."

"What does it matter?" Sasha’s voice was flat. "Nothing I say changes anything. I was caught with something that would have ended a life."

Kira noticed the slight tremble in Sasha’s hands. "I don’t believe you’re a murderer."

Sasha stared at her. Then she laughed, short and bitter, and shook her head. "You don’t know me."

"I won’t pretend I do," Kira replied. Her eyes went back to the boy. "Is he going to be alright?"

Sasha looked at her son and shook her head, tears rolling down her cheeks. "I don’t want to lose him," she whispered, wiping at her face with shaking fingers. "But he’s suffering so much. I keep asking the goddess why it has to be him. He doesn’t deserve any of this."

Kira did not offer empty reassurances. She reached into the pocket of her hospital gown and held out a folded napkin.

Sasha took it and pressed it to her face.

"It’s a rare blood condition," she said quietly, staring at her son’s small face against the pillow.

"The doctors can’t find a matching blood type anywhere. They’ve just been managing it, keeping him stable as long as they can. But every time he deteriorates, it gets worse than the last time." She exhaled. "They’ve searched the whole of the West."

"How is it possible that they can’t find a blood to match his in the whole of the West?"

Sasha was quiet for a moment. Then she said, almost too softly to hear, "He’s special."

Kira waited.

"He is a hybrid."

***

Sometime that night, as Kira lay half-asleep, the door to her hospital room opened softly.

Derek’s scent reached her at once. She kept her eyes closed and stayed perfectly still, pretending to be asleep.

His footsteps approached the bed. Then, slowly and carefully, he pulled the blanket higher over her shoulders, drew the chair closer, and sat down. He took her hand and laced their fingers together.

Kira kept her eyes closed. Her heart was loud and uneven and she knew perfectly well that he could hear it, but neither of them acknowledged it.

Even though she was now aware of what had happened between him and Ruby, she was not ready to open her eyes and face him yet.

She still had too many things she had not sorted through, too many feelings sitting in a pile she had not yet found the shape of.

Derek simply held her hand in the quiet darkness until her breathing evened out and she slipped into a real, easy sleep.

***

Down in Jerry’s ward that same night, the corridor was still.

The gammas posted outside the room had both nodded off in their chairs, their chins dropped, their breathing slow. Inside, the room was dim and quiet, the machines providing the only sound.

The door opened.

A figure in medical scrubs moved inside without making a sound, crossed to the bed where two shapes lay, one small and one large, and produced a syringe.

They pressed it into the arm of the larger figure with practised efficiency. The figure on the bed did not stir.

The figure walked out as silently as it had come.

Outside the hospital building, in the dark, the figure pulled back their clinical mask and opened their mind-link.

Job’s done, they said. She’s out. What next?

***

In the morning, Kira woke up to an empty room. Derek was gone as silently as he had come. A quiet kind of sadness tugged at her chest that he had not been there when she opened her eyes.

She threw back the blanket and stopped. There was writing on her cast.

I hope you slept well. You look just as stubborn when you’re asleep. See you at the tribunal today.

The smile came before she could stop it. She sat there reading it twice, then pressed her lips together and made her face behave.

Her body felt considerably better than it had yesterday. Dr Adah had already cleared her to return to the palace, and someone had left a dress hanging on the back of the bathroom door.

Deep blue, beautifully cut, nothing she owned.

She stood in front of it for a moment, smiling widely, and felt the butterflies do their ridiculous thing in her stomach.

She arranged her face back into something normal, had her shower, got dressed with some logistical creativity around the cast, and picked up her phone.

Just so you know, His Royal Grumpiness, this won’t buy my forgiveness.

She added three goofy emojis and sent it before she could think better of it.

Derek’s phone dinged in his study. He picked it up, read the message, and a small smile tugged at his lips. He texted back quickly.

Better than going ghost mode.

Kai and Jessica arrived together to collect her,

Kai had taken Jessica to his designated room in the palace the night before and had slept in a guest room himself.

Kira noticed that even though Jessica still seemed a bit sharp with him, the two of them clicked in a way that made her silently pray to the goddess to bring them together.

She saw the way Jessica looked at Kai. She had never seen Jessica look at anyone quite like that, even though her friend had always drooled over handsome men.

On the way out, Kira asked to stop briefly at Jerry’s ward.

As they approached, some nurses were wheeling away a covered body. Kira met Dr Lorenzo coming out of the room.

"What happened, Doctor? Where is Sasha?"

Dr Lorenzo looked solemn and slowly shook his head. "We lost her last night."

The words hit Kira like a punch to the gut. She stared at the doctor, speechless.