What was Lydia saying?
Bringing herself into some semblance of focus, she murmured, “I’m sorry, I really don’t understand what you’re telling me. Forgive me.”
“He’s gone.”
Something in the woman’s voice got through the screaming in C.P.’s own head, and as she looked at Lydia properly, a cold rush went down her spine. The amount of distress in that face was the kind of thing you saw around car accidents on the freeway.
“Sit down.” She reached across and put her hand on the other woman’s forearm. “Please, sit down and tell me what happened?”
Had he died—
“He’s just wrong,” Lydia babbled. “He’s just—he won’t listen to me. So he packed up and left.”
“The program? The clinic?”
“Well, me, primarily. The rest of everything is just a… a side effect.”
The woman was positively caved in on herself, her shoulders slumped, even her hair hanging limply: She looked as if she had been left in the wilderness to fend for herself in the middle of a blizzard.
And then something else occurred to her. “Lydia, he’s not well enough to be out in the world.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
C.P. checked her watch. “It’s ten p.m. When did he go?”
“This morning. He didn’t want to see me again, so I didn’t return until late afternoon. He cleared out all of his things from our room, just as he said he would, but I’ve hoped he’d change his mind and come back. I’ve been waiting out in front of the house ever since.”
“Did he take one of my vehicles? Because they have trackers on them.”
“No, he’s on his bike.”
“The Harley?” C.P. leaned forward. “Is he insane—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but has he had some kind of psychotic break?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Well, then we’ll track his phone. Come on, we’ll find him.”
C.P. got to her feet and dragged the woman after her, going down to her study. Once inside, she went over behind her desk, called her computer up, accessed her contacts—and did a cut and paste into a phone tracker—
“Nothing.” She sat back and looked across. “I’m not getting a signal. So either he’s found and turned off the tracking on his phone or he’s destroyed the cell.”
As Lydia stopped pacing and they both went quiet, C.P. closed her eyes and rubbed the nape of her neck. What a day.
“How far are you along?”
C.P. popped her lids at the quiet question. “Excuse me?”
“You’re pregnant.” The woman touched the side of her nose. “It’s evident—but it must be pretty early as I only just noticed yesterday.”
“I, ah… I’m not sure what to say to that.”
“I’m sorry. I should have kept quiet.”
C.P. stared up at the woman, who was not really a woman in the conventional sense. Lydia wasn’t meeting her eyes, which told her there were probably other things the wolven had sniffed out.
“Unfortunately, pregnancy is not compatible with my disease.” C.P. smiled in a reserved fashion. “You must know that I’m sick, too, right? If you can sniff out a baby on board, surely you must be able to detect my cancer.”
Lydia’s face dissolved into sadness. “Yes, I’m so sorry. I didn’t say anything because it is not my business, and you’ve never mentioned it to anybody.”
C.P. lifted her chin. “I was going to be patient one. After Daniel declined the dubious honor.” As the female became shocked, she nodded. “Yes, and that seemed rather fair to me given that Vita-12b was created at my behest. Now, though…”
“You can’t.”
“I’ve decided that I’m not going to terminate the pregnancy. I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I will be doing whatever I can to stay alive until the birth.”
“C.P….”
“Do me a favor.” She looked away. Looked back. “Call me Cathy. I’m really feeling a need to drop the bullshit these days.”
* * *
Standing across the desk from the great C.P. Phalen, who was at the moment dressed in sweatpants and that fleece that smelled like Gus, Lydia fell silent. She had no idea what to say—about anything.
“Is it okay if I stay a few days?” she asked after a long pause. “In case Daniel comes back, you know.”
“You can stay for however long you want.”
“Thank you.”
C.P.—Cathy, that was—nodded and seemed to get lost in her own head. Which was fine. Lydia had plenty to think about also.
After Daniel had left the den up on the mountain, the male on the pallet, Blade, had just stared at her without saying a thing—although she had felt as though he was reading her in some way she didn’t understand, yet clearly sensed. When she’d demanded that he explain himself, he’d just told her that he wasn’t feeling well and closed his eyes. That was it.
Frustrated, she had departed the den and then walked down the trail. Halfway through the descent, she realized she was still wearing the red robing. She’d ditched it and shifted, and spent much of the day roaming around, her mind full of recriminations that were only partially dimmed due to her being in her wolven form.
When she had finally arrived back at C.P.’s house, she had dressed in the clothes that she, as always, had left folded on the salt bag.
Just like she had been doing every day.
She should have told Daniel that she’d stopped working. But she had sensed all along he wouldn’t be trying C.P. and Gus’s drug—and she just hadn’t wanted to talk about the future. She was living it with him; discussing the tragedy and all its implications had made her feel positively ill. And then there was the reality that her time away from the house and the lab was her sanity. Every weekday, from nine to five, she had coursed the acreage of the valley and the mountains in her wolven form. It had been the only way to stay even partially together under the pressure, and she had taken such solace with her kind, whether they were genetically just wolves or wolven like her. With her clan, in the lair of the wolven, she had reconnected with the side of herself that had been dormant by design, the practice of denial that her human grandfather had mandated for her survival no longer necessary.
Even before Xhex had told her that her future was on the mountain? She had known that to be true.
If she was going to survive at all after Daniel was gone, she was going to have to go there. And she’d been determined to start getting used to being in the lair.
“Thank you.” Wait, what was she talking about? Oh, right, C.P.’s—Cathy’s—hospitality. “I mean, well… I think I’m going to go check my phone. See if…”
But he wasn’t going to call her.
“Daniel will show up,” Cathy said. “Either because he comes to his senses—or because he’s not going to have a choice.”
A striking fear blew open Lydia’s adrenaline system, and she struggled to control her panic. “I’m just… going to go check my phone.”