Noah was in his house in minutes. He called Harvey, his wolf raging inside his head.

"Where?" he growled out as soon as Harvey picked up.

"Good to hear from you, too," Harvey drawled out.

Noah wasn't in the mood for jokes. He growled, and the glass on the windows clattered.

"Relax. My people found him in a hovel in Nevada. We have him in custody," Harvey said. "He's a crazy bastard. I'll have him in Arthur's holding cells near your territory as soon as possible."

"I appreciate it." Noah hung up. He wanted to drive there right now and wait for their arrival. But he wouldn't make the same mistake again. Lillian deserved to know that they got the bastard who'd hurt her.

He went after Lillian. She was with Irene and the Seer. He'd sent a couple of wolves to keep an eye on them discreetly. Irene was a strong shapeshifter, not to mention her kind usually had several tricks up their sleeve.

He found them by the creek near Arthur's cabin. The burbling water drowned their voices. The three women sat on a fallen log facing the running water.

Lillian was up and walking towards him before he even came into view. Good. She was learning to use her senses.

"Something is wrong," she said, a frown tugging down her brows.

Right. The bond.

"Harvey found him," Noah said.

She sucked in a sharp breath. Wrapping her arms around herself, she looked back at the creek, her eyes haunted.

"Do you want to go?" He asked.

"I should go, shouldn't I?" she said.

"You should do what feels right to you," Noah replied.

"I-I don't know." She closed her eyes tightly, her shoulders hunched. "Are you sure he's the one...?"

"We can have Harvey run another DNA test if you want."

She blew a breath. "Yes, if it's not too much trouble. That would put my mind at ease."

"He's going to be held in Arthur's cells."

"Okay. I don't want to see him before I'm certain of it."

Noah squeezed her hand, but Lillian stepped closer and hugged him. He wrapped his arms around her, kissing her head. Lillian looked up and poked a finger to his chest. "Tell me once Harvey has the result. Don't go running off on your own again."

Noah smiled. "I'll try."

"Hmph."

She held his hand and they turned to the creek, intending to join the two women. Noah's eyes found the Seer's eyes. The blank look on her face melted into one of horror and shock, and her pupils swallowed the pale green of her irises. Noah felt a sharp tug of her magic and then she screamed, the shrill sound splitting the air. Birds fluttered away, rustling the trees. Irene shot to her feet and hovered over her.

Noah was between Lillian and the two women in a heartbeat. The Seer slumped down, curling on herself and holding her head.

"Are you okay?" Irene asked, putting her hand on the Seer's shoulder. "Hey."

The Seer looked up, her eyes dark through the curtain of nearly white hair. She looked straight at Lillian. "You," she whispered.

Then her eyes rolled back, and Irene caught her as she fell.

*** **** ***

"She does that when she has visions," Elle said, looking at the woman sleeping soundly on the bed. "Usually, after she wakes up, she's more lucid. Let's hope it's no different this time."

Lillian stood near the window with her arms crossed. She was still reeling from the news Noah had dumped on her. Trying hard not to think too much about it, she focused on the Seer.

The woman slept peacefully, the raised scars standing out on her pale skin. But the room was heavy with anticipation. Elle paced back and forth and Irene sat on the bed beside the Seer. Noah and Arthur waited in the living room. Elle didn't want the men nearby when the Seer awakened.

They were in Arthur and Elle's cabin. It had a similar layout to Lillian's cabin. The room the women were in had two single beds, pushed against the walls, on either side of a large window. Light filtered in through the glass, dimmed by the shadows of the tall trees outside the cabin.

Lillian didn't even know her senses were attuned to the Seer until the woman stirred. All three of them stood straighter and watched her.

Her white lashes fluttered open, revealing lucid eyes. She blinked and slowly sat up.

Her gaze was more focused, aware. She glanced around the room, at Irene, at Elle, then her eyes fell on Lillian and stayed there. Blowing out a soft, shaky breath, the Seer cocked her head to the side.

"Lillian."

The word was a raspy whisper. Lillian stepped closer as Irene took a bottle containing a red liquid from the bedside table and handed it to the Seer. She took it, the bones and veins of her hands pushing painfully against her skin.

She hesitated, then took several small sips. Her movements were unhurried.

Elle shifted from foot to foot. "Are you okay?"

The Seer nodded and gave the bottle back to Irene. "Thank you."

She linked her hand neatly on her lap and looked between Elle and Irene. "I'm aware you're caring for me," she said, her English heavily accented. "I thank you for not letting others get their hands on me."

Irene and Elle shared a look. The Seer's eyes shifted back to Lillian. "I assume you're the reason I'm here."

Lillian glanced at Elle. She didn't know what they'd told the Seer.

"Yes, you remember me telling you about her?" Elle said.

"Some." The Seer nodded. "I believe she is the person for whom the White Stag appeared. Yes?"

"Yes," Lillian replied.

"I'm afraid I can only speculate on the reason for the White stag's appearance," the Seer said. "However, I do know that they do not appear unless the matter is of great import."

The Seer frowned and went quiet for several minutes, lost in thought. "I can only judge their motives from what I see in relation to you."

"And what do you see?" Elle asked.

"I know I have visions when I'm not... me. But my memories of them are messy." The Seer held out her hand to Lillian. "Do you mind?"

Lillian approached and put her hand in the Seer's. She sucked in a sharp breath. Her skin was cold, too cold. Lillian's wolf recoiled at the contact, sensing her odd magic as it curved around her.

The Seer closed her eyes and tilted her head to the side. She stayed frozen that way for several minutes, then she opened her eyes with a sharp gasp, her pulse fluttering in her neck, taking her hand away from Lillian's.

"What? What is it?" Elle asked, stepping closer.

"What I said before..." She licked her lips.

"Your earlier prophecy for Lillian?" Irene said. The Seer nodded. "You said that it was time for the wolf to claim the unborn woman."

The Seer looked at Lillian with a haunted expression.

"What is it?" Irene asked.

The Seer's hands gripped the blanket on her lap. "Unborn babies. So many of them."

"Dead?" Elle said.

"No, alive yet unborn, like her," The Seer said, waving her hand toward Lillian. What?

"How could they be alive and unborn?" Irene asked.

"I cannot always explain my prophecies. I just know," she said. "But I saw a wall. A glass wall, containing babies. And then I saw those same babies brought to life without a mother's labor."

Elle sucked in a sharp breath. She rushed out of the room and came back seconds later with the old leather-bound volume Lillian had seen her read before. Her mother's diary.

She sat down on the other bed and flipped through the pages, cursing under her breath. "Where did I see it? Where did I see it, Damn it!"

Lillian and Irene hovered over Elle. Lillian caught sight of words scribbled in an elegant hand. She didn't recognize the letters. Her brain buzzed and her ears rang, pressure rising inside her head. Her wolf growled in a sharp sting of pain.

A hand cut her view of the book. Lillian drew a deep breath and looked at Irene. The fox smiled. "Don't look at it too long. It's the First Tongue."

"Are you okay?" Noah asked, a twinge of his worry reaching her.

"Yes. What's the First Tongue?" Lillian asked.

"The language of the very first immortals," Noah replied. "It's magic in itself. Only descendants of the original immortals can read it or speak it."

"Here!" Elle said triumphantly, slapping her palm down on a page.

Lillian focused her sight on the sketches filling the page instead of the words she couldn't read.

Drawings of circles and symbols, spells, she realized, filled one page. The next held some sort of sketch. Lillian cocked her head to the side and frowned. "Is that a baby?"

An intricate drawing of a baby curled into a fetus position. It looked like it was floating inside a glass box filled with some sort of liquid.

Irene plucked the book from Elle and put it on the Seer's lap. "Something like this?"

The Seer frowned. "Yes. Quite similar. The wall I saw is composed of these boxes. Hundreds of them. The liquid looked viscous of a sheer purple color."

Elle cursed. "Artificial wombs."

"What the hell?" Irene said. "This actually exist?"

"Apparently." Elle blew out a heavy breath. "We could use the opinion of a professional."

"Eva," Lillian said. "Our pack doctor. She studied human medicine and follows their news closely."

Elle's eyes widened, she nodded. "That would be great. Can you call her here?"

Lillian nodded and told Noah about Elle's request.

"She'll be here soon," he responded immediately.

Elle pulled out a dagger from her thigh sheath and twirled it around. She couldn't seem to stay still. The Seer pushed off the covers and put her feet on the ground.

"Where to?" Irene asked.

"Outside," she padded to the door on her own, Irene hovering nearby like a worried mother hen.

"Wait," Elle said. "Let me tell Arthur to-"

"No," the Seer said firmly, her hand on the door knob. "I should be able to control myself. I know Arthur will not harm me. I must conquer this unreasonable fear."

She opened the door and froze.

Arthur and Noah were in the living room, the two big men filling the space. The Seer lifted her head and walked on. Irene threw Elle a wide-eyed glance over her shoulder and followed the Seer, then Lillian and Elle joined them.

One large, black couch set between two armchairs made up the living room, with a low wooden table on top of a gray wool carpet. Arthur and Noah loomed near the fireplace.

They straightened when the Seer sat down on one of the armchairs, folding her hands neatly in her lap. Lillian could hear the woman's skittering pulse, even smelled a hint of what she realized was fear.

The woman was terrified, yet she sat still, back straight and chin raised. What had she gone through to be so frightened? Lillian couldn't fathom. Seeing the Seer facing down her fear, Lillian felt a surge of courage. Her earlier reluctance to face the man who'd raped her buried under the determination to get over that dark night and shed the past's hold on her.

Elle put the open book on the table and briefed Arthur and Noah about their findings.

"Artificial wombs," Arthur said, shaking his head. "Well, we can't say your mother never thought outside of the box."

Elle grunted.

There was a knock on the door, and Eva walked inside, her hand on the small of her back. Lillian smelled one of the warriors right outside the door before it closed behind her.

"Hello," she said, scanning the room. Her eyes settled on the Seer for a moment longer before looking away. "I'm told I'm needed?"

The unoccupied armchair lifted inches off the ground and floated right next to Eva. Arthur waved a hand. "Please, make yourself comfortable."

Eva grinned. "Thank you," she lowered herself to the chair with a sigh.

Lillian remembered being that heavy. Her feet had been constantly swollen and her back ached. Eva's werewolf strength and healing abilities would make the pregnancy more manageable, but it would still be strenuous.

Elle stood near the window, Irene stood behind the Seer's chair, and Lillian sat down on the couch. "Artificial wombs," Noah said.

Eva's brows climbed high on her forehead. She leaned back in her chair and linked her hands under her protruding belly. "You have your hands on one?"

"We might have our hands full of several," Elle said, twirling her dagger again. "How do I even begin? You know about the fae's vulnerability to vampire venom, I assume?"

"Of course. Everyone does," Eva said. "If a vampire bites a fae and venom enters their bloodstream, the fae goes insane, nothing matters to them beyond blood lust."

Elle nodded. "My mother was trying to find a way around that. She wanted to eradicate the vulnerability to vampire venom from the fae race. To do that, she had done a lot of research, and she came up with countless theories."

Elle pointed her dagger at the book on the table. "We found sketches of artificial wombs and ways to use them, by incorporating them into magic spells, in order to produce a different kind of immortal."

"How?" Eva said, leaning forward.

"Using humans," Elle said. "My mother theorized that if we succeed in creating an immortal child from human and immortal parents, there are ways to make that child impervious to things that are harmful to immortals, but aren't harmful to humans."

"Transferring the human parent's immunity to the immortal child?" Eva asked. "But a human and an immortal cannot give birth to immortal children in the first place."

Elle pointed at Lillian. "Lillian is living proof that someone has found a way to do it."

"Elle's mother used the human technology of artificial wombs to her advantage," Arthur said. "Human and immortal pairings have a very low chance of conceiving, and when they do, only human babies see birth, the immortal ones die very shortly after conception.

"The theory is transferring fetuses conceived from human/immortal pairings into the artificial wombs, keeping them alive through the technology and developing their magic through strong spells."

"The Seer said that Lillian is an unborn child, meaning she was a result of such an experiment," Elle said. "She had been grown inside an artificial womb. She wasn't born."

Lillian shivered. "So you think I'm one of the results of those experiments? But I'm human. Or, well, I was. The experiments are supposed to give birth to immortal babies."

"Experiments are not always successful," Eva thought out loud.

"Indeed," Arthur said. "However, I would not call it a complete failure. After all, you were able to give birth to immortal pups. Also, your shift and transition to werewolf has been so laughably easy. Perhaps that was a side effect of the experiment itself."

"That's why they sent rogues after her, both times," Noah said, a growl in his voice. "To see if the shift does take place, if the experiment was in a way successful."

Eva leaned forward. "Do you guys realize the importance of what we're discussing? If these experiments are real, then we might have a way of increasing our population numbers. Immortals have always been the slowest to procreate, using your mother's theories will take away that handicap. And if she found a way to engineer the babies in order to take away their vulnerabilities to things like silver and vampire venom..." Eva shook her head. "I don't even want to think of the implications. It's going to be..."

"Death," the Seer said, her gaze distant. "So much death."

Eva blinked. "That wasn't exactly the word I was looking for..."

"But the Seer is right," Arthur said. "It might seem like a good thing, but nothing is free."

Noah nodded. "If we ruin the natural order of things, nature will clap back."

Eva looked at Lillian. "And if news of this gets out, there will be many people who'll want to get their hands on Lillian or the twins."

Lillian's wolf surged forward, her chest rumbling. Then a thought popped in her head. Noah must have come to the same conclusion, because he stood straighter, his eyes glowing. "The humans who chased you and the twins..."

Lillian's heart raced. "Do you think they knew about this? How? And why would they want us?"

She could understand immortals wanting to get their hands on them in order to study them or how to replicate the experiment. But humans?

Elle rubbed her head, disheveling her hair. "Ugh, I wish my mother was still alive."

Arthur put a hand on his mate's shoulder and squeezed.

The Seer looked at Lillian then, her gaze eerily iridescent. "The answer is in your past."

Lillian almost laughed at that. If her past held any answers, she didn't want them. She wanted nothing to do with her past.

"And what does that mean?" Irene said.

The Seer cocked her head to the side and shrugged. "I don't know. I'm only telling you what I'm sensing."

Elle chuckled. "Well, a Seer's senses must be trusted, I guess."

"Indeed." The Seer smiled.

It was a barely there smile, but Lillian saw its impact on Elle and Irene. The woman must not have smiled a lot before this.

"What do you think, Lillian?" Arthur asked. "Where would you start looking?"

She frowned. "I guess the orphanage should be the first place. All I know is that I was found near a hospital when I was an infant and then brought there."

"A visit to the orphanage, then," Arthur said.

Lillian sighed. That was the last place she wanted to go.

*** **** ***

They departed early the next morning.

Lillian had begun training with Kate again. She had knocked on her door before dawn and the two set off on a harsh run through the woods. The pace was brutal, and Lillian realized that Kate had been catering to Lillian's human nature before.

"You're a wolf, now," Kate said as they ran side by side. Lillian was gasping for breath while Kate sounded like she was out on a stroll. "You'll heal faster, your reflexes are quicker. Of course your training should be different."

Lillian was glad for the harsh training, though. The physical exertion kept her mind off things, namely on the man being held prisoner in Arthur's cells, and on the drive to her old town.

Arthur and Elle were in the front seats, Arthur driving, while Noah and Lillian sat in the back. The town didn't change much, but everything seemed smaller, less daunting. Lillian had lived here since she could remember, only moving to Lydia's town after giving birth to the twins.

Arthur navigated the car through the clean, smooth streets, avoiding the busy shopping district downtown. Harvey had gone through the orphanage records and found nothing particular about Lillian's story. It was exactly as she'd been told.

But the orphanage director might know something that wasn't in the records, and so Harvey found his address. He lived in a small white picket fence house in the suburbs.

"This is it?" Elle peered through the window at the two story house. Its lawn was well-cared for and the paint looked new. Lillian's heart pounded. She didn't want to see him again.

"Yes." Arthur parked the car in the driveway and exited, Elle followed. Lillian hesitated with her hand on the handle. Her heart beat harder and faster. She really didn't want to see him again.

Noah, still in the car, turned her to face him. He cupped her face and kissed her.

Lillian held onto his forearms, her thoughts blanking. She rested her forehead against his when he pulled back.

His amber eyes streaked with gold blinked at her. "Let's go. The twins are waiting back home."

Lillian smiled. He knew exactly what to say. Lillian took a deep breath, let go of Noah and stepped out of the car. She was no longer a child, afraid and alone. She was a grown woman, a mother, and she had survived and came out strong on the other side.

With a glance over his shoulder at them, Arthur knocked on the brown door. 

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Hello guys! I hope you're doing well.

This one is a short chapter, right? I hope you enjoyed it, though. Comment and vote if you did! I appreciate it.

Much love <3 <3 <3

M.B.