Today she wore a pale pink tailored shirt. It suited her. With her blond hair tied back in a ponytail and minimal makeup, she could have passed as one of her students. He eyed the opening of her shirt. And again, he was reminded that she was old enough where it counted. Her top two shirt buttons were undone and the shirt was parted enough to show a hint of shadow between her breasts. He remembered how those breasts felt in his hands, all warm and soft, with just the right amount of shape and weight.
And then he noticed she was wearing gloves. Again. He frowned. It was chilly, admittedly, but not that chilly. Winter wasn’t due for a few weeks yet.
“I’m not the one who has a problem with keeping promises,” she pointed out tartly. She nodded at the pile of books by his chair. “You can start with those.”
He shot her a dark look as he took his seat. He wondered if she’d ever get past that. He hoped she would. He wrinkled his nose at the scent of tobacco in the room. “Do you smoke? Like, cigars or something?”
“Nope.” She didn’t look up but kept reading.
“You can’t smell that?”
“Nope.”
He shrugged and pulled forward the first book on the pile. There was a faint scent of something in the air, but it didn’t make sense. Natalie didn’t strike him as the type to hide and smoke behind closed doors...
He opened the book and frowned. “Fairy tales?”
She shrugged. “Why not?”
Why not, indeed. He wasn’t sure if the answer to his problem could be found in this book, or any other, but he’d keep searching, just in case. Natalie seemed to think the books held some answers.
They’d been reading for about an hour, and every now and then Natalie would look up something up on her computer, the sound of her fingers tapping on the keys so loud in the quiet of her office. She leaned back in her chair. “I need to go to the library.” She rose, holding a book.
“Is it open?” It was Sunday night and he hadn’t seen or heard anyone other than them at the institute all evening.
“It is for me,” she murmured, swooping up her keys and walking toward her door, hugging the book to her chest. Pushing her breasts up... She passed him, and he eyed her denim-clad butt. She’d certainly filled out—
The book that rested on his lap snapped shut, trapping his fingers painfully between the pages.
“Ow!” he yelled and flung the book to the floor.
Natalie turned in surprise. “What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he muttered, glaring at the book. He stood. “I’ll come with you.” The books in here were being mean to him, damn it.
He followed her through the empty halls toward the library. It was on the other side of the administration block and Natalie’s sneakers squeaked softly on the linoleum floors. Just him, and her, and squeak, squeak, squeak. Moonlight spilled through the glass that formed the wall to an atrium within the building, bathing everything in a silver glow.
“Do you really like working here?” he asked suddenly. He was innately curious about her. She’d been a bookish kid, with a keen interest in romantic literature and spectacles that had seemed too big for her face. Now he’d seen that her collection included journals from explorers—some he’d heard of and some he hadn’t. He’d seen historical texts, government records and works of fiction in several different languages... He’d seen medical studies, religious references... There were all sorts of jars and vials of stuff that looked kind of gross, and old bowls and artefacts that looked like they belonged in a museum. Or a dump. Or a museum of a dump. He should have known little Nina would soak up knowledge like a starving sponge. No, not Nina. Natalie. She wasn’t that little girl he’d first encountered in the renal ward at Irondell Memorial Hospital.
She glanced at him, surprised by his inquiry. “Yes, I do like working here. Very much, actually. I get to read the old stories, explore and test the beliefs, look into the science, and generally let my imagination go wild. And then I get to talk about it every other day with my students. What’s not to like?”
His lips quirked. She’d found her ideal job. For a moment he envied her. He’d spent so many years working for his father, of trying to regain his trust, his forgiveness, he’d assumed similar aspirations to the extent that here, seeing Natalie doing what she loved, he had to wonder if his life was what he wanted it to be...or what he deserved.
Natalie unlocked the door and in moments had switched on lights and a computer at one of the student consoles. He raised an eyebrow as she went to a set of drawers and started riffling through the catalog. It wasn’t long before she strode down one of the aisles. He followed her. She wasn’t looking at books, though, but a selection of long, round canisters.
“What are these?”
“Maps, mainly. I want to check them against some satellite imagery we have stored on file for a certain area.”
He frowned. How did that have anything to do with a werewolf cure? “Why?”
She pulled out a container and walked to a long table at the end of the aisle, twisting open the lid as she went. “I just found an alpha prime’s letter to one of his guardians from before The Troubles. From what I can tell, this is a pack that didn’t survive the wars.”
Lucien took a deep breath for patience. Getting information out of Natalie was proving a challenging process. “And?”
“He wanted his guardian to go look for his missing scion.”
“And that’s peculiar because...?” It didn’t surprise him that a father was searching for his son or daughter. Of course, he couldn’t really see his father searching for him if he went missing. But his family wasn’t the normal bonded unit. Not since his mother’s death.
“Because he mentions his son went missing in an area where there are no recorded shadow breeds.”
“Null territory?” Some people called nulls the neutralizing agent of Mother Nature against everything non-natural. He preferred to call them freaks. A human breed that nullified anything supernatural or magical within their bounds, just by being. No effort required. Freaks.
“No, not to my knowledge. I’ve checked the old territorial outlines. There was no null activity anywhere near this place.”
“There could be any number of reasons why a scion would leave a pack. Maybe he was taking a break? Maybe he was running away... Maybe he didn’t like his father and was setting out on his own?” Lucien shrugged. He could relate to all options so far.
“In this letter, the father states that he wants his son found, to prevent WTH.”
Lucien frowned. “What the hell?”
Natalie shook her head. “WTH is an old acronym that is no longer in use. Werewolf-to-human. In other words, the kid was trying to transition from shadow breed to human.”
“What? Is that possible? Is that a thing? How did I know not about this?”
“It’s not a thing. There are some people out there
