Chapter 37: The Suspicion Takes Root
Ghost’s footsteps faded down the hall. The silence he left behind was a palpable thing, thick with the scent of fur and fever and old wood. Coyle kept his hand on Bunny’s head, the rhythm of her breathing a steady anchor in the tide of his own pain.
The pain was a living thing, gnawing at his thigh, throbbing in time with his heartbeat. He welcomed the sharp, bright focus of it. It was real. It was his. Unlike the phantom pains Facility 9 had wired into him, this one had a cause he understood, a battle he’d chosen. He flexed his leg slightly, just to feel the fire lance up his nerves, and a low groan escaped him.
Bunny whined, a soft sound of concern. She shifted, turning her head to lick a stripe up the side of his stubbled jaw. The gesture was so profoundly, instinctively tender it stole his breath.
His mind, always churning, always analyzing threats, latched onto that tenderness and then spun backwards. It wasn’t a flashback to white tiles and cold steel. It was a cascade of recent, mundane moments that suddenly glowed with terrible new significance.
Bunny, pale and swallowing hard at the strong smell of bacon Ghost had cooked last week. Bunny, suddenly needing to nap in the afternoons, curled in a patch of sun like a cat. Bunny, her nose wrinkling at the metallic scent of his motorcycle oil, a scent that had never bothered her before. The way she’d been leaning into him more, seeking his touch almost desperately. The sheer physical need in her kiss before the fight.
It wasn't just the suppressants leaving her system. It was something else.
The pieces clicked together with a finality that felt like a punch to the diaphragm. His hand, still buried in her fur, went still.
"Ghost." His voice was a raw scrape, not loud, but it carried the absolute authority of a command.
Footsteps, hurried, approached immediately. Ghost appeared in the doorway, coffee mug still in hand, eyebrows raised. "You need more meds already? I told you, the dosage is—"
"Shut up," Coyle cut him off, his eyes fixed on the copper fur under his palm. "You've been checking her vitals. Watching her."
"Yeah, for concussion, for shock. She's recovering from a forced first shift and a trauma. It's a mess."
"Have you noticed anything else?" Coyle's gaze lifted, sharp and demanding. "Specifically."
Ghost leaned against the doorframe, his medic's brain shifting into review mode. "She's hydrated but picky about food. Nibbles, doesn't feast. Sleeps deeply but wakes alert. Her senses are dialed to eleven. She nearly took my head off when I opened a new bottle of iodine yesterday. Why?"
Coyle's throat worked. He forced the words out, each one tasting of a future he hadn't dared to imagine. "Check her."
"Check her for what? I’m not sticking a thermometer up a wolf’s—"
"Not like that," Coyle interrupted, his voice dropping to a hoarse, private register. He finally looked at Ghost, and the naked fear in his Alpha's amber eyes made Ghost straighten up, all casualness gone. "I think she might be pregnant."
The air in the room vanished. Ghost’s face went slack, then paled. The coffee mug dipped forgotten in his hand. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
"The timeline," Coyle pressed, the words coming faster now. "The suppressants. They blocked her wolf, her cycles, everything. They’re out of her system. Her body is waking up. All at once."
"Jesus, Coyle." Ghost set the mug down on the floor with a sharp clack. He ran a hand through his hair. "The fighting, the stress, the shift... if she is, it's a miracle anything's..." He didn't finish the sentence. He was already turning, his mind racing through his supply inventory. "I have a test. Human pharmacy kind. Won't work on wolf physiology."
"Then get her to shift back."
"Are you listening to yourself?" Ghost hissed, keeping his voice low as if Bunny couldn't understand every word. "She just went full guardian wolf on Cain for trying to touch you. She's in a protective spiral. Forcing a shift on a newly turned wolf is like... it's psychological torture. It could shatter her."
Coyle's fingers tightened in Bunny's fur. He turned his head, pressing his forehead against the warmth of her neck. He spoke into her coat, his voice a low rumble meant for her alone. "Bunny. Sweetheart. I need you to listen to me."
Her ear twitched against his lips.
"I need to see you. Just for a minute. Can you come back to me?"
She lifted her head, her amber eyes searching his. There was confusion there, and a flicker of anxiety. The wolf was comfortable. The wolf was strong. The wolf was safe.
He swallowed. "Please. For me."
He let every ounce of his own need, his fear, his burgeoning hope, show in his eyes. He was helpless, bleeding in his bed, and he was asking her for this.
She stared at him for a long, suspended moment. Then, with a sound like a sigh, she pushed herself up. She stepped off the bed, her paws silent on the cold floor. She shook herself, once, from nose to tail.
The shift wasn't the violent, snapping horror of her first one. It was quieter. A ripple went through her, a shudder of reality re-knitting itself. The copper fur seemed to melt inwards, the powerful limbs folding, compressing. The sound was of cracking parchment and settling sand.
And then she was kneeling on the floor, naked, shivering, her auburn hair a messy cascade over her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around herself, looking up at him, her green eyes wide and human and scared.
"Hey," he breathed, his heart cracking open at the sight of her.
Ghost was already moving, shrugging out of his flannel shirt. He draped it around her shoulders. "Here. Come on, up you get." He helped her stand, guiding her to the edge of the bed beside Coyle. She immediately reached for Coyle’s hand, lacing her fingers with his, her grip strong.
"Bunny," Ghost said, his tone shifting to pure, clinical gentleness. "I need you to take a test for me. It'll tell us if... if there's something we need to know about your body right now. Okay? It's just pee on a stick."
She looked from Ghost’s stressed face to Coyle’s intensely focused one. She nodded, once, a short, sharp movement. "Okay."
Ghost fetched the small box from his kit. He explained it, his words simple and direct, then handed it to her and pointed to the bathroom across the hall. "I'll be right here."
She took the box, clutching the flannel closed at her throat. She didn't look at Coyle again before she slipped out the door.
The moment she was gone, the room plunged into a vacuum. Coyle stared at the empty space where she'd been. The only sound was the ragged pull of his own breath.
Ghost stared at the floor. "If she is... the things her body has been through in the last month..."
"Don't," Coyle growled, the sound feral.
"I'm the medic, Coyle. I have to 'don't'. The suppressants, the withdrawal, the violent first shift, a major fight, an adrenaline crash... it's not a recipe for a healthy anything."
"Then you'll fix it," Coyle said, his voice absolute. "You'll fix all of it."
They waited. A minute stretched into two. The silence was a weight, pressing down on Coyle's chest, making the pain in his leg feel distant and unimportant.
The door clicked open.
Bunny stepped back in. She was still pale. She held the plastic stick in a trembling hand, her knuckles white. She walked to the side of the bed and placed it carefully on the nightstand beside the cracked mirror and the photo of herself. Then she stood back, wrapping her arms tightly around her torso.
Ghost moved first. He picked up the stick, held it to the dull light.
He didn't speak. His shoulders slumped, then tensed. He closed his eyes for a second.
"Coyle," he said, his voice utterly flat.
Coyle’s world narrowed to the medic's face. "Tell me."
Ghost turned the stick around. In the small window, clear and undeniable, were two bold, pink lines.
Coyle’s breath left him in a rush. The pounding in his ears was louder than any fight. He looked from the test to Bunny’s terrified, hopeful, overwhelmed face. A torrent of emotions hit him—primal triumph, blind terror, a protective ferocity that made his teeth ache. And beneath it all, a strange, piercing thread of joy, sharp enough to cut.
Bunny’s lower lip trembled. "What does it mean?" she whispered, though she knew. She’d seen the lines.
Coyle reached for her, ignoring the shriek of protest from his body. He pulled her down onto the edge of the bed, into the space between his arm and his wounded side. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling the scent that was now infinitely more complex.
"It means everything just changed," he murmured against her skin, his voice rough with a feeling too vast to name.
Bunny trembled against him, her fingers clutching at his bare chest, her breath hitching in a way that had nothing to do with cold. The two pink lines seemed to pulse in the periphery of the room, a silent, seismic detonation.
Ghost stared at the stick in his hand like it was a live grenade. He finally moved, tossing it onto the nightstand where it clattered against the whiskey bottle. “Okay,” he said, but the word was too high, too tight. “Okay, this is… this is a thing.”
He ran both hands through his hair, pulling at the roots. His eyes darted from Bunny’s pale face to Coyle’s leg, the bandages stark white against his skin. “Do you understand the timeline here? The suppressants masked everything. We have no idea how far along she is. A week? Two? It’s a blink. It’s nothing. And her system is a warzone.”
Coyle felt Bunny flinch. He tightened his arm around her. “She’s strong.”
“That’s not the point!” Ghost’s voice snapped, frayed at the edges. He gestured wildly, a rare loss of composure. “Strength doesn’t magic away biology. She forced a shift while potentially implanted. She fought. She’s been running on pure stress and instinct for days, glued to your side while you’re lying here full of holes and fever. That’s not a condition. That’s a crisis.”
Bunny spoke into Coyle’s shoulder, her voice muffled. “I feel fine.”
“You feel fine,” Ghost repeated, a brittle laugh escaping him. He paced two steps, the floorboards creaking. “You’re in a delicate stage where everything is attaching, or trying to, and your body’s primary focus is keeping him alive. It’s diverting resources. It’s pumping cortisol. It’s a conflict of interest on a cellular level, and you’re losing.”
Coyle’s gut twisted. He looked down at Bunny, at the dark circles under her eyes he’d blamed on the shift. Now they looked like bruises of exhaustion. “What do you need?”
“I need you stable!” Ghost said, pointing a finger at him. “I need your vitals normal and your fever broken and your alpha distress signals to stop screaming through the pack bonds at a million decibels. Because she’s plugged into that. She’s feeling every spasm of pain you’re too proud to mention, every bit of your frustration at being stuck in this bed. It’s stressing her out on a level she can’t even articulate.”
Bunny lifted her head, her green eyes wide. “I just… want him better.”
“See?” Ghost’s hands fell to his sides in a gesture of helpless frustration. “That’s all she is right now. A feedback loop of want and worry. It’s not sustainable. We need to break the cycle.”
He knelt suddenly by the bed, his medic kit open, his movements jerky. He pulled out a blood pressure cuff. “I’m checking you both. Now.” He wrapped the cuff around Bunny’s arm, his touch clinical but his fingers were unsteady. The pump hissed in the quiet room.
Coyle watched the column of mercury fall, his own heart hammering against his ribs. He could feel the truth of Ghost’s words in the rigid line of Bunny’s back, in the way her free hand kept smoothing over his stomach as if checking he was still whole.
“Elevated,” Ghost muttered, stripping the cuff off. “Of course it is.” He turned to Coyle, his expression grim. “Your turn. And then you’re taking the full dose of painkillers. Not your usual half-measure crap because you like the burn. You’re going under, and you’re going to rest, so she can rest.”
Coyle’s instinct was to refuse. The pain was a familiar anchor, a sharp reminder of control. But he looked at Bunny’s face, the new fear layered over the old. He gave a single, curt nod.
“Good,” Ghost said, but he didn’t sound relieved. He sounded scared. He prepared a syringe, his jaw clenched. “Because if we don’t get this under control, we’re not just looking at a lost fight. We’re looking at a loss, period. And I don’t have the equipment or the gods-damn knowledge to fix that.”
The needle slid into Coyle’s arm. A cold wash spread through his vein, the chemical pull toward oblivion. As the edges of the room softened, Coyle’s last clear sight was Ghost leaning close to Bunny, his voice dropping to a strained whisper. “You need to sleep. Real sleep. Away from him. Just for a few hours.”
Bunny shook her head, her auburn hair catching the weak light. “I can’t.”
“You have to,” Ghost pleaded, the panic raw in his eyes now. “His condition is stressing you out, and you are in the most delicate stage imaginable. You’re going to crash, and I won’t be able to put you back together.”