“Yes,” Elowen says, and something in her expression shifts. "After the funeral, I went home and…" She pauses. "That's when I transitioned."
The room shifts again, a different kind of quiet settling over it.
"I was in my bedroom," she says, her voice barely above a whisper now. "The day after we buried them. And I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I was being torn apart from the inside out. The pain was so sharp, so deep, it felt like my bones were cracking and splintering into pieces. I was burning up, sweating through my sheets, and there was this... this wetness between my thighs.” She shifts like she’s embarrassed even thinking about it. “I was so confused and scared, I didn’t even understand that it was slick.”
She lets out a long, unsteady breath. "I locked the door,and I sat on the floor for three days waiting to die. I didn't know what a heat felt like. I'd never heard someone transitioning in their twenties. As far as I knew, I was a beta. I had always been a beta." She shakes her head slowly. "And then the heat broke, and I was still alive.” She lets out a heavy sigh. “I was terrified someone would find out what I was, and I'd get locked up."
Raff's thumb moves slowly across the back of her hand.
Cliff leans closer, his eyes still trained on her sweet face.
“Anyway,” she clears her throat roughly. “After…everything…I went back to clean up the pharmacy. And I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor behind the counter, and I found a business card that had slid underneath one of the shelves."
Cliff’s head tilts slightly. "What kind of business card?"
Elowen looks across the room toward the duffel bag filled with the medications from her apartment. "Can someone grab my notebook? It should be in the front pocket."
Raff is already up, crossing the room in three long strides. He unzips the front pocket and pulls the notebook out, then brings it back and holds it out to her. She takes it carefully with both hands, and opens it to a page near the front. She works a small piece of card stock free from where it's been tucked against the inside cover and holds it out to Cliff.
He takes it between two fingers and looks at it.
It's a plain white card, with clean black font. And across the bottom left corner, right over The Morder’s stamp, is a smear of blood.
Cliff stares at it for a long moment. Then he looks up at Elowen. "This is why you were working at the Morder.” It’s not a question.
She holds his gaze and nods once. "I was trying to find out who killed my parents." Her jaw stiffens, and underneath all her grief, something harder surfaces.
“Were you close to finding out who did it?” Raff asks.
“I’m not sure,” she says honestly. “I had a few leads, but it was so hard to question people without drawing attention.” She looks down at the worn notebook. “It also didn’t help that I was trying desperately to hide my dynamic.”
"What were you working on?" Raff asks. “Did you have a lead?”
Elowen flips her notebook open and turns to the back, finding the last page with writing on it.
"The last thing I got was a shipping label," she says, smoothing her hand across the page. "It came in on a damaged box of suppressants, which was unusual because nothing that comes through the Morder ever has a proper label on it. Everything is unmarked. All we got were lot numbers.” She tilts the notebook slightly so both alphas can see. "But this box had a partial label. Torn at the edges, so I didn't get an address, but I got the name."
"Montclare Family Pharmacy," Cliffreads.
"Yeah." She closes the notebook carefully and sets it in her lap. "I was hoping to talk to whoever runs the place, and see if they knew anything about who collected the medications from them." She shakes her head. "But I never got the chance."
"Do you think that's how the black market does it?" I ask. "Source the drugs, I mean. Small independent pharmacies instead of the big chains?"
“Yeah.” Elowen smiles like she’s happy someone else made that connection too. "It's the only thing that makes sense," she says. "While all pharmacies have inventory systems, the big chains have massive security and corporate audits. It would be nearly impossible to siphon product out of a place like that without drawing a lot of attention." Her hand smooths over her notebook.
"But a small family operation has fewer people and less oversight?” Raff says and Elowen nods. “So if someone applied the right kind of pressure, or made the right kind of offer, it would be a much cleaner pipeline."
“Exactly.”
"But what if that pharmacy, Montclare,” Adam says, “didn’t want to give those meds to the Morder?” He glances up at me, then back to Elle. “What if they were attacked? Or…” he shakes his head. “It could be dangerous going there.”
Elowen looks at my brother for a moment, and something passes across her face that's equal parts gratitude and grief. "Yeah," she says softly. "I know." She turns the notebook over in her hands. "But I never got the chance to find out."
Cliff is quiet for a long moment, still holding the business card between two fingers. He’s turning it slightly, his eyes moving over the dried bloodstain at the corner.
Then he sets the card down on the coffee table with a soft, deliberate tap.
"Raff and I will talk to them," he says, and Elle’s eyes go wide.
