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He nodded, and with a glance at Sarah —interesting, Abby thought —he began. “Without the serum, 80 percent of shifter girls don’t make it through first shift,” he said.
The woman with the hoarse voice frowned. “You mean they stay human? What does thatmean?”
“It means they die,” Stefan said bluntly. There were murmurs of horror. “At least 80 percent of our girls die during first shift.” He gestured to the rows of girls in the back of the room. “Without the serum, only 1 out of 5 of those girls would be alive in a year.”
“Dear God,” the woman said. “And with the serum?”
“Since the serum, we have not lost a girl during first shift,” Stefan said. “Your sacrifice saves lives. It probably saved shifters from extinction. We owe you. We made mistakes.” He corrected himself. “I made mistakes. And if I’d listened to Cujo, your lives would have been much easier.”
Abby felt Cujo’s surprise at that. It was quite the admission, she conceded. She hadn’t thought Stefan would ever be able to say that.
“But I have to tell you, that if we had to do it over again? I would. I would hope to make fewer mistakes, but I’d do it all over again.”
“Why didn’t you ask us!” Sarah Blair blurted out her question. “Do you not think I would have volunteered? Of course I would have. All of us would have.” She looked from woman to woman, and they nodded.
“First rule,” Benny said woodenly. “Tell them, Cujo.”
Cujo grimaced. “Shifters live in packs and really a pack Alpha’s word is the word of God. A Council of Alphas for each region serves as arbitrators when disputes arise between packs,” he explained. “But there is really only one rule that the Council enforces rigidly. It’s called first rule. Do nothing that exposes shifters to humans. So, a shifter who might be starting speculation among his coworkers because he’s not aging like they are? He disappears and starts over somewhere else. If he doesn’t, someone from that Council will show up and urge him on. Or kill him if he risks exposure.”
There was a murmur at that. Apparently most of the women didn’t know that? She’d been criminally negligent, Abby thought. Some did, though. They needed a school for new wolves obviously.
“So if we came to you and said, we’re werewolves, and we need a favor? If you said no, that’s not for me, we would have had to kill you,” Cujo said. “That sounds ugly, and it is. So asking you would have been a false question — because the only answer that would allow you to live, would be yes. No would have meant death. Instead, Stefan chose to bring you here without your permission, leaving you in ignorance. He believed that the reward of long life and good health was enough to offset what was done to you.”
“We destroyed their lives, Cujo,” Benny said. “We took them away from everything they’d built. We’ve asked them to start over.”
“Yes,” Cujo said simply. “That’s what we did.”
Abby realized that Cujo had already had this epiphany that Benny was struggling with, and he’d somehow managed to come through it. She wondered if that would offer help to Benny.Probably not,Cujo said in her mind.It took experiencing Olivia’s torture for a year. Although I grant you I was probably a tougher nut to crack than Benny.
Abby agreed that wasn’t a solution.
“I can actually understand that,” one woman said. “There’s more I’d like to know — no offense Stefan, but you’re not the most empathetic person.” There was gentle laughter, and Stefan smiled at her. Who knew? Stefan was actually a handsome man when he smiled. “And I’d like to hear how you came to make this your mission in life. And I’ve got all kinds of questions about the process. I was a nurse. Before.”
Abby glanced at Alice in the back, who nodded. She’d grab the woman later. They needed nurses!
“But what I can’t understand is why you sent us away,” the woman continued. Her voice broke. “We thought you liked us.”
Benny flinched.
And that’s the crux of it, Abby thought soberly. Not the serum study but throwing the women away afterwards.
Stefan swallowed hard. But he took the question head on. “That’s my fault,” he said steadily. “I took grant money from a shifter named Jedediah Jones without vetting him thoroughly. His representative who I dealt with, Rick Ricci, was a very smooth, sophisticated man.” He grimaced. “Not hard for a psychopath to become whatever it is you want them to be,” he said ruefully. “And Ricci played the grant administrator to the hilt. By the time I realized I’d screwed up, we were in too deep to get out. So that was screw up number 1. Number 2, is I didn’t plan for success.”
There was some laughter at that. And surprisingly it was King who intervened. “No, he’s right,” he said earnestly. “It’s something that they talk about a lot in business classes. The number one thing that kills a new business is success. Too much, too fast.... If the entrepreneur doesn’t think about that, he can make all kinds of bad decisions.”
Abby gave him a nod of approval.
“And I didn’t think about that,” Stefan agreed. “I didn’t think about if this works, we’re going to have six new wolves. I was thinking about if this works, we’re going to save the girls.”
“So then, there you are, with six new wolves, and what did you do?” Olivia asked.
“In the first cohort two died,” Stefan said. “And one? She got younger, but never got a wolf.” He paused at that and looked at Abby. “We should talk about that,” he said. She nodded, a bit puzzled, but she knew the look of epiphany when she saw it. She’d remember to ask him later. “So we had three new shifters. And I panicked. I asked Rick Ricci for advice.” He snorted and shook his head. “His first answer was kill them, which should have been all the red flags I needed. God help me, I told myself he was joking. He went away and came back with a separate grant-funded program that would help with the re-integration of women who succeeded in the program adjust back into their lives. It hit all the right notes with me, and with the University of Washington research office. It was called innovative.”
“University of Washington?” another woman asked puzzled.
“Stefan is actually Dr. Stefan Lebenev, a professor at the University of Washington,” Abby explained. “He’s been on research leave to pursue an innovative supplement strategy that is restorative for aging women. His protocol may have left out a few significant details.”
“Like a wolf?” Marilyn Abbott said. “That always cracks me up.”
