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“I still feel like it doesn’t make sense that I’ve only just started suffering from PTSD after four months have passed,” I said. “I think it’s just regular stress.”
“Your psychiatrist seems to think otherwise, as does your psychologist,” he said. “Do you not trust their judgment?”
“I do...I just...think I don’t have the time to deal with it,” I said, rubbing my temple. “It’s already stressful enough, trying to undo the conditioning a bunch of these new pack members have. I don’t need a new neurosis to go with it.”
“It’s not a neurosis; it’s a set of symptoms and conditions that develop from experiencing something traumatic. And you were dealing with those things with or without having a word for it,” he said. “You’re splitting hairs. Having a term for what you’re struggling with just gives us more ways to treat it. It doesn’t give you more problems.”
“I know. You’re right,” I said. “But it still sucks.”
“We can agree that it sucks,” he said with a quirk of a smile.
“Well, what news you got for me?” I asked him. “Do we know what this mystery chemical is doing to us yet?”
“Yes and no,” he said, opening up my chart. He crossed his legs at the ankle as he thumbed through the pages. When he got to the one he was looking for, he pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket and slid them on. “Your genetic results came back clean. The very same genes we’d expect you to be expressing as a lycanthrope are still all in the ‘on’ position, if you like. I can’t speak for everyone else, given the laws about medical privacy in place, but since a few of your pack mates have given consent, I can tell you about them.”
I nodded, straightening up.
“The first is Travis, who seemed to have only parts of his genes turned off. If I remember correctly, he can still partially shift.”
I nodded. “Yes. Similar to how we can if we set out to claim a mate.”
“I see. Then, there’s your grandfather.”
I was surprised by that. Gramps hadn’t told me anything about how he was faring after the incident. I’d assumed he was holding up just fine. “Gramps came to see you?” I asked.
“Just before he headed back to Georgia with the others,” the doctor said. “He didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head, my stomach going queasy. “Is he alright?”
“Well, this explains why he kept asking me if we would tell you things,” the doctor said under his breath. “Your grandfather isn’t able to shift at all anymore, I’m afraid.”
“So...that shitty serum they were using worked?” I asked, my heart sinking into my stomach.
“Only in about twenty percent of cases, but yes. It appears it did work on him. Your grandfather retains his enhanced strength and stamina, but he can't shift into a lycan form, partial or otherwise.”
“So, what do we do to fix it?” I asked, feeling a stab of panic. “He can’t just lose his ability to shift. Not when it was my fault that he was here in the first place.”
“Cole, are you good? Do we need to take a minute?”
“Don’t fucking patronize me. Just tell me what we do to fix it,” I snapped. I felt like I was going to either pass out or throw up. My stomach twisted and ached. “How do we get people back to normal?”
“Cole, if we’re going to continue talking about this, I need you to calm down,” he said. “You are not going to be able to absorb the information if you are agitated, and I am going to struggle to give it to you in full if I feel like you’re about to tear my throat out.”
“How can you expect me to be calm when… Ah, fuck, I can’t breathe,” I said, dropping my face into my hands. I needed Marley. I needed to be at home with my wife and my son. It wasn’t the first time it felt as if my world was closing down on top of me, but most days, Marley was there to help guide me through it. “If we can’t fix it, I can never get away from it.”
“Do you need a sedative?” the doctor asked.
“Fuck you,” I snarled.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he said with irritatingly good humor. I couldn’t blame him—he dealt with the burgeoning aggression of transitioning shifters all the time. Didn’t mean that I didn’t want to punch him in his stupid face, though.
He took his phone out of his pocket and shot off a text message before returning to watching me quietly as I spiraled into an anxious fit. Part of me shouted at the other part to breathe—to remember the steps I was supposed to take when this happened. The other part of me just wanted to let myself crumble into it.
I was so exhausted and scared all the time. Sometimes, I just wanted to throw in the towel and run away with Marley and Noah. Build a house out in the countryside and rest.
A few moments later, a gentle knock came on the door before it opened a second later. The nurse who’d taken my blood handed a cordless phone to the doctor. “Thank you,” he said to her, dismissing her with a nod. When she was gone, he handed the phone to me.
I looked up from where I was resting my head. “What’s this?”
