Chapter 246

Grace

I woke up hours later and groaned. I still had so many other people to call. There was a meal beside me and Charles' jacket over me with a note.

I expected you home tonight. You need rest. Steak and potatoes. Love you.

I smiled and grabbed the meal and my phone to head down to the lab. Margaret shook her head.

"Sit and eat."

I plopped down. Discouragement hung heavy in the air of the lab. I could tell they'd hit another dead end while I was asleep. Seraphina's curls were all over the place and Margaret looked like she wanted to spit nails. The vials had different colors of goo inside. Seraphina waved her hand and turned them into pills that looked just like the others we'd made.

"No chance we could just hire you to do that?"

Seraphina scoffed. "My price is sky-high."

I ate with a chuckle. Margaret and Seraphina leaned over their new notes. The frustration gnawed at me. I could see that they'd run a few more experiments, and they'd all failed. We were running out of time, and every negative result felt like another nail in my coffin. Never mind Richard and Cecil. Had they tried to suppress them already? Was Richard too old for the ritual that gave Eason his chance?

Taking a deep breath, I pulled out the page of contacts from Gabriel and called the next like. It was a pharmaceutical supplier. I dialed the number.

A clipped voice, devoid of the usual cheery greetings typical of sales reps, answered. "Omega Labs. How may I direct your call?"

"Hello," I began, my voice betraying a hint of nervousness. "This is Dr. Grace Wolfe, head researcher at Wolfe Medical. I was referred to your company by Alpha Black. I'm hoping to place a sample order of some less than common materials."

There was a pause, and I could almost hear the cogs turning in the person's mind on the other end. Finally, a dry chuckle broke the silence.

"Sales. Got it."

A click followed then another person picked up with the same flat tone.

"Sales department. What are you looking for?"

I gave them a different list than the one I'd given to the other company, and gave the same details about timing. The prices were decent, a little high, but the rush was probably the majority of that. I just hoped that they had the quality I needed.

When I hung up, I got the sense that Gabriel had given me a list of companies outside of the States.

I called three other companies while finishing my food and joined Margaret and Seraphia, hoping for a miracle.

Weeks bled into one another, a monotonous blur of activity fueled by caffeine and sheer willpower. I threw myself into the research like an obsession. Every time I saw Cecil or heard Richard cooing, it felt like I was racing time. Every waking moment was consumed by thoughts about the formula. I couldn't slow down even when my body wanted to just lay down and rest.

Today, I counted at least another twenty strands of gray. I was definitely heading towards salt and pepper. The loss of my lycan half was taking a toll. Eason hadn't come back, but I knew that he hadn't left Mooncrest yet. I was in the lab, hunched over lab benches and hoping for something to happen. The sterile white walls were almost soothing at this point.

Each new formulation, each painstaking experiment, yielded the same frustrating result – failure. The longevity drug felt like it was mocking me. Like it was too good to be made cheaply. The complexities of the formulation and the issue of werewolf biology was going to be the death of me.

I shuddered at that thought.

Frustration gnawed at me relentlessly. With every negative result, more of that hope and optimism that had fueled me in the first few days began to waver, replaced by a gnawing fear that time was slipping through my fingers like sand.

"What are we missing?" Margaret hissed to no one in particular.

Surrender wasn't an option. The thought of leaving my kids to face the world without me was unbearable. Tears stung my eyes. I was lost and trying so hard.

"Go home." I looked up at Seraphina, staring down at me. "Charles is outside waiting for you. You need actual rest."

She gave me one of the original pills.

"But--"

"Take it and go home," Seraphina said. "Before you black out and end up in the hospital."

My shoulders slumped, but I left. Charles got me into the car, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the middle of the day,who knew how many days later, knowing that even if I went back, I would just be failing again.

That evening, as I slumped over latest failed experiment, a wave of despair threatened to engulf her. Tears welled up in my eyes, blurring the already incomprehensible notes on my clipboard.

"This is impossible," I choked out, her voice thick with emotion. "It's never going to work..."

A gentle hand settled on my shoulder, startling me from my self-pity. I looked up to see Margaret with a look of quiet concern etched on her face. It was the softest expression I think I'd ever seen on her face. Her eyes scanned me. She looked tired. She'd been up just as long as I had been.

"It's alright to feel overwhelmed, Grace," Margaret said softly. "But you're not alone in this. We're all here for you."

I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. I nodded.

"I know," I whispered, wiping away a stray tear. "I just… I can't help but feel like I'm failing everyone... all over again."

She squeezed my shoulder gently. "You're not failing, Grace. You're fighting. And sometimes, the battles that are the most worth it are the hardest. We knew it wasn't going to be easy, don't let this extra pressure make you lose sight of everything we've already accomplished. If the drug ends up being that expensive, then.... well, we'll apply for grants from the States to supply it or something."

I smiled. "I can't see that happening, but you're right." I bit my lip. "Let's... try one more thing?"

She grinned. "What did you have in mind?"

"Something completely unscientific."

I went over to the freshly restocked shelves to the extra ingredients that had been sent as part of my sample orders. Together, we reworked the measurements, exchanged a few extractions, and started from the beginning all over again. Seraphina pulled out a cauldron of all things, and I laughed.

"Maybe I have more witch in me than I think."

Margaret snorted. We added pure water and ingredients slowly and surely, stirring. I dropped in the last few drops of the last extraction and watched he surface of it change colors. It turned the same color as the pills and stilled. It seemed to freeze inside the cauldron. We held our breaths.

It cracked and shattered into a small pool of pills.

Each of us grabbed test tubes and started to count them out, running them all through the composition reader.

There were a hundred and seven pills total.

"Cost?" Margaret asked.

A wave of exhilaration coursed through me as I checked the notes. "Twenty dollars a pill!"

"What's that? Two hundred and forty a year?"

Seraphina let out a shout of joy. "I'll fucking take it!"

We screamed, hugging each other and checking the documentation again. Seraphina figured it was the reaction of the ingredients surrounded in stone rather than glass. We tried it again to make sure and it was the exact same.

Twenty dollars a pill wasn't the best, but it was better than the thousands it had been. We were so excited, we didn't go home, too busy writing up the results and I made plans to replace the reservoirs for synthesizing with stone cauldrons. The witch supplier Gabriel gave me obliged.

We had cauldrons to test within a few hours.

Success.

Success.

Success.

"On to clinical trials!"

"Not so fast." I frowned, looking at Margaret. "You're going to need a drug name, Grace."

"Cauldron water."

She snorted and nudged me. "Be serious."

I looked at the pills. "Mermaid scales?"

"Absolutely not."

I sighed, staring at it. "... how about Moonlight Phoenix."

Margaret snorted. "Sure. Though I'm pretty sure the Phoenixes are going to be offended."

My jaw dropped. "There are phoenixes?"

They laughed.

The next morning, I placed additional orders for the ingredients. Then, I got a call from the patent office.

"Alpha Wolfe," the man said. "Your patent's been approved. Your longevity drug can move in to clinical testing."

Tears welled up in my eyes, a mixture of relief and joy washing over her. The weight that had been crushing me for weeks seemed to lift, replaced by a sense of possibility. News of the patent approval spread like wildfire through Wolfe Medical. When I got home, I threw myself at Charles, hugging him tightly as he stroked my hair.

"You don't seem happy," I said.

"I am... But I was never worried about you finding the answer." He smiled at me as he set me on my feet. "You're brilliant."

I smiled, leaning up to steal a kiss. "I know... we haven't talked, but--"

He pulled me close and kissed me as if he had missed me just as much as I had been missing him.