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One step at a time, I remind myself. She listened to me this morning. She ate the food I made for her.

It’s a start.

The laboratory doorstands closed before me, the glass window reflecting the artificial lights. I hesitate, closing my eyes and catching the scents from within—antiseptic, chemicals, and Jerry, but not Maya. Not Mathew.

I push the door open to find Jerry hunched over a microscope, his brow furrowed in concentration. He looks up as I enter, surprise evident in his features.

“Your Majesty,” he says, straightening. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Where’s Maya?” I ask, scanning the lab as if she might be hiding in some corner.

Jerry gestures toward a row of vials on the central workstation. “She completed a preliminary version of the antidote this morning. She’s quite confident it will work.”

My heart leaps at the news. “That’s remarkable. Where is she?”

“She left with Mathew about an hour ago,” Jerry says, removing his glasses to polish them on his lab coat. “Said they were meeting someone.”

“Meeting whom?” A prickle of unease crawls up my spine.

Jerry shrugs, his movement casual, unconcerned. “Mathew’s idea, I believe. Maya didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”

The unease sharpens into something more insistent. Maya has left the palace grounds, with a man I know almost nothing about, without telling anyone where she was going.

“Did she give any indication when they’d return?” I try to keep my voice steady, reasonable.

“Before dinner, I think.” Jerry replaces his glasses, peering at me with sudden interest. “Is something wrong, Sire?”

I shake my head, moving deeper into the room to examine the vials of completed antidote. “Not necessarily. I just wanted to speak with her.”

Jerry returns to his microscope, leaving me to prowl restlessly around the laboratory. I find myself drawn to Maya’s workstation, meticulously organized despite the complexity of her work. Notebooks filled with her neat handwriting are stacked beside the computer, her observations recorded in detailed entries with pages of calculations and chemical formulas that mean nothing to me.

I flip through the most recent notebook, trying to gauge how close she is to a final version of the antidote. Her latest notes indicate successful tests on blood samples from infected shifters, including Aria. The treatment appears to reverse the separation of shifter and wolf, restoring the connection without side effects.

A breakthrough that could save hundreds of lives.

Something else catches my eye: a small sketchbook partially hidden beneath her laptop. I pull it out.

Flipping it open, I find page after page of her mother’s face—Helen smiling, Helen reading, Helen gardening. The drawings are exquisite, capturing not just her likeness but her spirit. They’re also dated, the most recent from just yesterday. These aren’t old sketches; Maya has been drawing her mother from memory, keeping her close the only way she can.

The constant ache in my chest intensifies. This is how she copes with her grief—not by talking about it, not by sharing it, but by preserving her mother’s image on paper, one portrait at a time.

I set the sketchbook down carefully and continue inspecting the workstation. My elbow knocks against a messenger bag slumped against the side of the desk—Mathew’s, judging by thegarish purple patches sewn on the canvas. It tips over, spilling some of its contents to the floor.

Cursing under my breath, I crouch to gather the scattered items—a protein bar, a dog-eared paperback, a small, leather-bound journal. As I reach for the journal, I notice that something has rolled under the desk.

A pocket watch, antique silver with an intricate engraving on the case.

I freeze, my hand suspended in midair.

I’ve seen this pocket watch before.

Not once, but many times, swinging before my eyes like a pendulum as questions were fired at me, as needles pierced my skin, as they tried to break me apart from my wolf.

Memory fragments that have eluded me for months suddenly crystallize with awful clarity. A voice instructing assistants, ordering tests, discussing my responses as if I were nothing more than an interesting specimen.

Mathew’s voice.

Not the cheerful, vibrant persona he presents now, but colder, more clinical—yet undeniably the same. The mental image shifts, resolving into perfect focus: a younger man with brown hair instead of purple, wearing casual clothes instead of a white lab coat, but with the same blue eyes that watched me with detached fascination as I howled in pain.