Chapter 48

Cora

I hadn’t realized how I’d been holding my breath until the surgeon stepped into the room. His expression was calm and composed. Blessedly not grim. My legs nearly gave out from under me.

“The surgery was successful,” he said. “Riley’s stable. He’s resting now. You’ll be able to see him shortly.”

I collapsed into the chair behind me, hands trembling as I buried my face in them. I didn’t even realize I was crying until I felt the tears slide down my cheeks and onto my palms.

Relief, pure and blinding, washed over me in waves.

I had spent every second in that waiting room torn between hope and sheer panic, praying to whatever higher power would listen that my son, my heart, would come back to me whole.

And he had.

For hours afterward, I watched his chest rise and fall in soft, even breaths. A nurse had gently placed his stuffed dragon next to him—the one Kingston had won for him—and his little fingers clutched at its arm like a lifeline. I brushed his hair back from his forehead, kissed the space between his brows, and whispered, “You’re going to be okay. I promise.”

I stayed until visiting hours ended, and even then, I lingered in the hallway until the nurses gently reminded me I needed rest, too. But as I walked out of the hospital, I wasn’t just grateful.

I was angry.

Riley’s condition, the rare genetic abnormality tied to his werewolf lineage, had nearly cost him his life. And no one had answers as to why he was suffering from this strange illness.

The next morning, I returned to work, still running on adrenaline and the kind of fierce protectiveness that only a mother can understand. I walked into the office with my head held high, ready to bury myself in reports and numbers and forget, for just a moment, how fragile everything had felt.

But I barely made it to my desk before I was blindsided.

A formal envelope rested on my keyboard. The company logo was stamped at the top. I opened it, and my stomach dropped.

An internal investigation has been launched into your conduct regarding the alleged use of an unauthorized, experimental, and potentially dangerous medication administered to your son, Riley, during his recent hospitalization.

My ears rang. My vision blurred. I had to read the words three times before I could process them.

Someone was accusing me of endangering my own son.

I stormed into the HR office, heart pounding.

“What the hell is this?” I demanded, slapping the letter onto the desk in front of Sheila, the company’s HR coordinator.

She didn’t look surprised. “It was submitted anonymously, Cora. We’re required to investigate it since we don’t allow the promotion of unauthorized medication to our employees or their families.”

“Anonymously?” I hissed. “You think I— What, smuggled medicine into an operating room and gave it to him while he was under anesthesia?”

“I’m not making any assumptions,” she said calmly, though her gaze didn’t meet mine. “But the claim includes documentation, such as hospital logs that show a temporary irregularity in Riley’s vitals that coincides with a flagged compound in his bloodstream.”

I staggered back, stunned. “What compound?”

“We don’t know yet. But it wasn’t authorized by the medical team on duty, and we can’t permit these practices to be associated with the company. Hence the investigation.”

I left the office in a daze, fury and confusion twisting through me like a storm. I didn’t care about my reputation—I'd been through worse—but this was my son. Whoever was behind this accusation was using Riley as ammunition, and I wasn’t going to let them.

So I started digging.

Later that evening, I requested every medical file I could get access to, including Riley’s birth records, past vaccinations, and bloodwork. Anything that might explain what was happening to his body.

For days afterward, I worked late into the night, poring over data with a highlighter and sticky notes. I even called Ethan once, begging him to run some of the bloodwork information against the databases he could get access to.

He didn’t ask questions. He just said he’d do it. Always the gentleman.

And then, one afternoon, something strange surfaced.

There was a blood panel from when Riley was three, a standard check-up. But the note attached from the lab technician said: “Unusual recessive markers—possible hybrid anomaly. Refer to parental history.”

Except that Riley’s father was still unconfirmed, and I had no known parental history to refer to. I’d been adopted as a baby, raised by human parents alongside their trueborn daughter, Daisy. There was no record of my birth family anywhere that I could reference.

Until now.

Buried in the encrypted metadata of the digital file—Ethan’s doing—was a long string of code that decoded into something unexpected: a name. One I’d never seen before. One that me Riley and I supposedly had a DNA match to.

Erik Thorn.

I stared at the name for a long time, heart pounding.

I’d heard that name once before. He was a werewolf—a legendary one, actually. A rogue Alpha who had vanished decades ago, but stories about him were still whispered in hushed tones among the packs.

Erik had been known for defying the old laws, challenging the councils, and disappearing with a human woman right after the most anti-human modern laws were signed.

It couldn’t be a coincidence. Could it?

I did more digging. Every file that even hinted at Erik’s legacy was locked behind layers of digital red tape. But what I found painted a blurry, half-formed picture.

He had had a child.

One document I found had confirmed it. After demanding a paternity test from the mother, it was confirmed that he had sired a child.

A daughter, in fact.

Born sometime around the same time I was abandoned at the orphanage.

The dates lined up. Too perfectly.

Was it possible?

The thought left me breathless. Now that I had discovered my slumbering wolf, it made sense. It would be completely sensible to assume that I had a werewolf parent.

And then I researched it a bit more and found all but confirmation of this.

Erik had a bleeding disorder that had led to almost a dozen hospital stays after the fights he would get into during his days as a no-nonsense Alpha.

It was the same disorder Riley had.

I gasped. It would explain Riley’s condition. His recessive traits. The complications that led to excessive bleeding.

But if the Silverfang pack found out… if anyone discovered that I was Erik Thorn’s daughter, the daughter of a known rogue…

I closed my laptop and pushed the files away, heart pounding.

No. I couldn’t let this become about me. Not when Riley’s future was already at risk. Not when I was already being investigated for something I didn’t do.

I would clear my name. And I would protect my son.

Even if it meant hiding the truth—especially from Kingston.

So I folded the name “Erik Thorn” into a corner of my mind and stowed it away.

If it ever came out, though, I was at least prepared now. I would face it the same way I’d faced everything else in my life:

Head high. Heart guarded.

And teeth bared, if it came to that.