Chapter 84

Rowena

A soft sigh escaped my lips as I focused the microscope lens. Carefully arranged on the glass slide were thin smears of the warrior’s infected blood sample—the very sample I had secretly obtained right before…

Well, everything.

My jaw clenched, and I couldn’t keep myself from thinking about Eric’s pale, motionless form being hauled into that white van like a sack of bad potatoes. I squeezed my eyes shut against the memory, forcing myself to take a slow, steadying breath.

He was still in there, I reminded myself firmly. Still fighting, still Eric. I just had to find a way to cure him of this virus before it consumed him completely.

With renewed determination, I refocused my attention on the microscope, adjusting the knobs to increase the magnification. The warrior’s blood stared up at me in stark red detail—every single corrupted cell visible in high resolution.

Tainted. Diseased. But beyond repair?

No. I refused to accept that possibility—there simply had to be something, some weakness or experimental countermeasure that could potentially reverse the effects of Wolf’s Fury before it reached the point of complete neurological destruction.

But as I swapped out the sample slides, scrutinizing every tiny detail of the infected blood for what felt like the millionth time, nothing remotely promising revealed itself—once again.

Sighing, I slumped back against my chair, running my hands over my face in a futile effort to rub away the exhaustion weighing on my eyelids.

There had to be something I was missing, some factor I wasn’t taking into account. But what?

For the hundredth time, my gaze flitted across my desk toward the collection of vials arranged in a neat row. Uninfected blood samples that I had taken from myself, even though I had felt myself getting weaker with each draw.

But in truth, I knew I had been lying to myself. Drawing those vials of my own blood had been a purely impulsive decision made in the heat of desperation—the part of me that still clung stubbornly to a shred of scientific logic insisting that I would need a healthy control variable to measure against.

With my jaw tensing, I reached out and plucked one of the tubes up from the desk, giving it a little swirl to watch the deep crimson liquid slosh around inside. With a shake of my head, I prepped a new slide and carefully extracted a droplet of the blood, smearing it out into a thin, evenly dispersed layer.

For several long moments, I simply stared at it, watching the individual cells lazily drift across the plane of glass. Nothing outwardly remarkable, nothing too out of the ordinary.

Just regular old blood. Just as it had been the last dozen times I had decided to inspect it beneath the microscope.

Letting out a soft exhale, I reached for the controls to adjust the focus once again. Surely there was something I missed… Surely…

“What?” I murmured, focusing the lens a little better.

As I stared at the slide, something began to stand out to me. Maybe it was just my own exhaustion making my eyes play tricks on me, but I swore that something about the composition of my blood wasn’t quite... right.

Not diseased or corrupted by any means—just a little different from the average blood sample.

I frowned, chewing my lip as I continued meticulously studying the slide. The harder I looked, the more I could see it: a slight discrepancy in the shape of my red blood cells.

Confusion welled up in me and, on impulse, I reached for my phone—ready to send a text to Emma asking if she wouldn’t mind stopping by to allow me to take a blood sample. Something to compare my own blood to this time.

But then my thumb stopped as it hovered over the screen.

Emma... She already had enough on her plate, and I had already asked so much of her just by telling her my dirty little secret about me and Eric. I didn’t want to bother her.

Besides, something deep in my gut told me that this peculiarity in my blood probably didn’t have anything to do with differentiating blood types. No, it was—

Suddenly, the loud ping of an incoming email notification startled me, and I turned toward the laptop sitting on the corner of my desk. My brow furrowed as I squinted at the sender information displayed across the lock screen.

GenLife DNA Testing Services.

Oh god. My DNA test results—the ones I had secretly submitted weeks ago in a desperate attempt to prove whether Eric was truly my blood relative or not. They had finally arrived, waiting for me behind that blinking notification icon like the answer to every question I had been torturing myself over.

For several endless moments, I couldn’t bring myself to move—utterly paralyzed by the sudden wave of anxiety and anticipation that took over me. On one hand, this could finally give me the definitive confirmation I needed to justify the unnatural lust I had been battling when it came to Eric ever since my eighteenth birthday.

But on the other hand... What if the results only solidified our blood relation beyond any shadow of a doubt? How could I possibly go on living with that, knowing that I genuinely did have an unnatural lust for my own brother?

My lungs began to burn, and I felt lightheaded as nausea churned in the pit of my stomach. I needed to know, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to have the answer yet.

Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to take a deep, shuddering breath. No more delaying the inevitable, Rowena, I chided myself firmly. I knew I would never have any peace of mind if I didn’t rip off the band-aid once and for all.

With a few taps on the keyboard, my laptop flickered to life—the answer I so desperately craved staring back at me with the header: Genetic Ancestry Results.

So this was it. The moment of truth.

My cursor hovered over the ‘View Report’ button, my hand trembling violently. “Just do it,” I growled at myself through gritted teeth. “Just do it, you coward.”

With a harsh inhale, I clicked the link and held my breath as an endless stream of medical jargon and complicated DNA mapping visuals flooded the screen. I didn’t even attempt to decipher the technical words, instead rapidly scanning for the key data point that could irrevocably change the course of my entire existence.

And then, near the very end of the report... there it was.

Heritage Ancestry: 100% Northern Territories.

My thoughts ground to a halt, the rest of the words falling out of focus as the blood drained from my face.

Northern territories… not a single percentage point tied in any way to the regions Eric and the rest of the Griffith family originated from. Not so much as a drop of Southern territory blood.

With mounting horror, it finally clicked—the clues stringing together with sickening clarity. The slight differences in appearance. The lack of a wolf when no one in the Griffith family had ever been wolfless. The… lust for Eric.

I wasn’t related to Eric. Not by blood, at least.

The revelation hit me like a punch in the chest, leaving me feeling as though the wind had been knocked out of my lungs. My mind began spinning, the world tilting beneath me. Suddenly, I was no longer at my desk in my bedroom. Rather, I was floating through space, the entire universe whirling faster and faster until—

Clarity hit me.

I needed to see Eric. Now.

Before I could even think twice, I was on my feet and bolting out the door.