Chapter 14 - Rosa

Kaila is gone again the next morning.

This time, I rouse myself slowly, then get to my feet and wander out into the living room. Once again, Kaila is sitting on the counter while Bigby cooks, but this time, omelets. When he sees me, he serves one up in front of me, then says, "California style," with a wink as he slides a few slices of avocado on the top.

"Good morning, dear," I say to Kaila, who opens her mouth for a bite of my omelet. "Have you eaten yet this morning?"

"She had an omelet," Bigby says, "but I can make another if she wants."

"No, I'm full," Kaila says, opening her mouth for another bite of mine. Kaila always looks adorable in the morning, her blonde hair—the exact shade as mine—mussed from sleep, the imprints of the blanket still wrinkled on her cheeks.

"If you're so full, why are you eating my food?" I laugh, and Kaila shrugs, grinning through her bite.

"Tastes better when it's someone else's."

This makes Bigby chuckles, and I shake my head, pulling my plate away from her. When Bigby laughs like that, I see Kaila. When Kaila wrinkles her nose at me, I see Bigby. It's too much.

"Why don't you go take a shower?" I say, gaze flicking to Bigby, who's moving the pan to the sink and wiping down the counters.

Kaila grumbles but eventually goes, and Bigby and I are alone in the kitchen. I swallow, trying to keep my eyes on my eggs instead of tracking to his biceps as he washes the pan in the sink.

"I'd like to go back to the compound today," I say, trying to keep my voice as even as possible. Bigby looks over at me sharply, and I can see he's already going to protest, so I keep going.

"I'm assuming security has increased, and Byron is still working hard to figure out who the intruder was. I saw those people down there, Bigby. I know I can help."

"Rosa, we have chemists who have been down there, working day after day, and none of them have been able to come up with a solution. I know you're brilliant, but don't you think it's a little unlikely that you'll be able to solve a problem you've just learned about?"

"A new perspective on a problem can change everything. You know that. I bet the people working on it right now are trying to solve it the same way again and again—which is fair; sometimes we get stuck in ruts. But I have the skills and knowledge, and I want to help solve this problem."

I can't stop thinking about the people locked up in cages down in the compound. As someone on the run for most of her life, I know what it's like to feel locked up. Mine was nowhere near as bad—at least we had the beach and fresh air—but concerts, farmers markets, and all other public events were an immediate no. Kaila has grown up like Rapunzel because I needed to make sure we stayed under the scent cover of my mother's home.

And even that wasn't enough.

"Fine," Bigby says, his Adam's apple working in his neck, "but only if you have a member of the team with you at all times. I have a meeting with Aris today, otherwise, I would come with you."

Looking at his face and the worry in his brow, I suddenly realized that he felt everything I just felt. I know it, the same way I know I can feel his apprehension, his protectiveness over me, like it's a scent in the air rather than another person's feelings.

I stand abruptly from the counter, omelet half-finished, just as Bigby sets down a mug of coffee in front of me. He meets my eyes, his slightly wide, and we stand there, staring at each other.

It's our mating bond getting stronger. Pretty soon, it will snap into place, and we'll be able to communicate without speaking the way alphas can with their closest pack mates. I eye Bigby up and down—if it's bad for me, trying to resist crawling into his bed in the middle of the night, it must be horrible for him.

When the mating bond snaps into place, we will either have to give into this, or I'll have to be gone long before that can happen.

"I'm going to get ready," I say, ripping my eyes away from his and moving to the bedroom. Every day I spend with Bigby, I forget more and more what he did to me and that I need to hate him. I can't forget because when you forget how someone has hurt you in the past, you're just giving them the opportunity to do it to you again.

And I will never let Kaila experience the pain of the person you love most, leaving you when you need them.

"Rosa," Bigby says softly, his voice breaking, and I close the door to the bedroom, shutting him out.

***

"Here we are," Byron says, lifting his hands sarcastically, "home sweet home."

"Good morning," a bright young voluptuous woman says, sticking her hand out for me to take. "I'm so pleased you'll be joining us. We've been working on this for ages, and at this point, it just feels like we're going in circles."

"I'm very excited to try my hand at it," I say, accepting a lab coat from her. "I'm Rosa."

"Oh! Sorry, sometimes I forget about things like introductions. I'm Maisie, Rosecreek-born-and-raised. I have a bachelor's degree in chemistry and nursing, so I'm here mostly to administer medical treatment to the shifters under our care. Try to keep them calm and as free of pain as possible."

An older man in the corner, hunched over a microscope, makes a sound low in his throat. I glance at him, eyebrows raised.

"That's Gerard," Maisie whispers, "he doesn't think we need any outsider help."

I nod, feeling a strange sense of satisfaction. After dropping out of my master's program and having to finish online, I didn't get a chance to work in a lab—commercial, research, or otherwise. I went right to making perfumes and shipping them to the farmers market for someone else to sell, hoping we would make enough money to buy groceries. There's something gratifying about finally experiencing a rivalry in the lab.

After grabbing a pair of goggles, I'm given my own sample of the serum and an analysis of its structure. Maisie settles down next to my workstation, her chin in her hands.

"I don't mean to crowd you," she says, "but Bigby has said so much about you, and I just think you're exactly what we need to figure this out."

I jerk my head back.

"Bigby has said a lot about me?"

"Well—yeah," Maisie says, shifting uncomfortably on her stool. "He always talked about his friend from college, who was a genius. You have a degree in biochemical engineering, right?"

"Yes," I breathe, something in my chest fluttering at the thought that Bigby was down here, talking about me before he ever came to California and took Kaila and me from our home. "Yes, I do. I was actually double majoring before I had to drop out. But that's another story for another time."

"Agreed," Maisie says, bouncing a little, shifting her bright eyes to mine.

"So," I say, clearing my throat and looking through the microscope at the sample. When I pull back, looking for a hair tie, Maisie reaches into her pocket and hands one to me, no questions asked. "Why even use silver in the compound to begin with?"

"That was my question, too!" Maisie says, lacing her fingers together. "Obviously, silver has long been disproven as a way to kill shifters—simply using it in a weapon isn't enough to take us down. But I thought perhaps Varun's chemists thought that diluting it to its purest form might actually work?"

"But the human thinking behind the silver superstition was due to silver's germicidal properties," I say, tying my hair back. "And though the ability to shift was originally considered a virus, it's been proven to exist as a genetic mutation, rather. So germicidal compounds would have no effect. Even in their purest form."

"That's a good point."

"There are some non-metallic chemical compounds here. Have you identified them?"

"Yes, they're derived from botanical elements, but we've agreed they're more than likely binders to make the metal and liquid cohesive."

"Actually—" the man from the other side of the room says, his hand in his beard as he walks toward us. He's older, about fifty, and seems like he's trying not to be interested in the conversation. "I asserted that the botanical elements were in place to stabilize the silver in the compound—it's partially melted, as you can see. That's why the serum feels warm to the touch in a vial—if we had any vials left."

"So, you think the botanical element raises the temperature of the serum, keeping the silver partially melted? What's the average temperature of the serum?"

"Just above 200 Celsius, which obviously isn't enough to melt actual silver metal, but I think the compound is formulated in a way that binds the botanical element directly to the silver, increasing its temperature without doing so the rest of the compound."

"Interesting," I say just as the door bursts open, and Olivia comes marching in, her tablet in her hand.

"I told you!" she says, pointing at Byron, who looks up at her, startled.

"Told me what?" he says, crossing his arms, actually removing his fingers from the keyboard for a moment.

"I told you that there were no exploitations in the system—this was not a hacking job, Byron!"

Byron sighs, leaning forward and running a hand through his hair, which looks a little duller than usual.

"Olivia," he says, glancing up at her with his hands together. "Do you have an explanation for how someone could break into our facility without exploiting the system? There has to be something with the cybersecurity that I'm missing."

"Yes, I do have an explanation," Olivia says, putting her tablet in his face. Byron reaches up slowly, taking the tablet and scrolling through whatever is on the screen.

"Oh, no," he murmurs before pushing the tablet back into Olivia's hands and taking off for the door.

"You're welcome!" she hollers at him, before turning around and jumping when she sees the rest of us staring at her. She's wearing a little white tennis skirt and a striped collared shirt. With her pink hair, it's stunning.

"Oh, hey," she says, giving us a little wave. "What's going on here?"