Page 83 of Mate
Koen sits on the piano stool, his back a bare expanse interrupted only by the waistband of his jeans. He is, at once, relaxed and in movement, muscles shifting occasionally, always in time with the music. What would it be like, to feel them vibrate against my cheek, or the flesh of my palm?
Sitting up is difficult, because my limbs are pulled pork. “Is this . . . ?”
“Still not Bach, killer.” His long fingers don’t miss a single key.
I really need to broaden my operatic horizons. “How did your meeting with the huddle leaders go?”
Koen feels distant, which surprises me after our hug yesterday, on the porch. He’s not the type for mood swings— his mood tends to be consistently shitty. Am I missing something? “They all acknowledge the threat, and we’re all on the same page. Which is more than I can say about the first time this happened.” One last, oddly strident note, and he turns to face me directly. He leans forward, elbows on his spread thighs. His eyesbore, debone me, until I can’t help fidgeting.
“Is anything . . .” I run a hand through my hair. “Are you— ”
Why is my hair wet?
What is this T- shirt that I’m wearing?
And the claw marks on my forearms—
Last night’s events hit me like a sledgehammer. Fuck.
Fuck.
I pull back the covers, intending to run for the bathroom mirror, but my quads are incapable of supporting me, and I fall back into the mattress. “My eyes— ”
“Are as usual,” he replies calmly.
I rub my face. Shit. That was bad. That wassobad—
“How long have you been feeling poorly?” Koen asks, rudely interrupting my panic tailspin.
I can tell with a millisecond-long glance that he’s willing to slow roast the truth out of me. But what kind of veteran liar would I even be if I didn’t attempt a weak “I’m not. It was just— ”
“Serena.” He looks at me like I’m not just insulting his intelligence, but also lowering the IQ of the entire pack.
Okay. Fine. No games. “I don’t know.”
“You don’tknow.”
“Four months. Twelve years.”
His eyes harden. “What a helpfully narrow interval.”
“I really don’t know. None of this is normal, Koen. None of this isnotterrible, and— ” I stop. Take a deep breath, letting the soothing scents of Koen and tea spread through my lungs. Thereis a steaming mug on the nightstand, and after a few sips I no longer feel like blurting my entire miserable story out to him. Progress. “The fevers began four or five months ago. But Dr. Henshaw says that this is a degenerative condition that starts before symptoms manifest.” Koen stares at me like I’m wasting his time by not telling him everything that happened in the last decade of my life, so I continue. “It’s a Were disorder that has no equivalent among Humans. Relatively common among Weres in their ninth or tenth decade, but not unheard of in younger patients. It’s called CSD, which stands for— ”
“Cortisol surge disorder.”
“You’re familiar. Good.” His look tells me that nothing about this is in any realm adjacent togood. I avert my gaze. “The fevers are caused by . . . Basically, chronic stress fucked up my inflammatory and anti-inflammatory signals. Again, not uncommon.”
“CSD can be treated.”
“Yeah. In Weres, it can. Sometimes. But my hybrid biology hasn’t been responding to meds. My hormonal levels are getting worse, and Dr. Henshaw said . . .” I suck my teeth. “Not compatible with life. That’s how he put it.”
Koen’s eyelids are the only moving parts of his body. They flutter closed, then open again as he asks calmly, “How long?”
“Six months at the most. But that was . . . two months ago.”
“I see.” He seems bizarrely unperturbed. An Alpha trait, maybe: set aside emotions, absorb information. I’m sure it’s useful in a crisis, but his cold grilling is somewhat disturbing. “What treatments did he attempt?”
“All of them. He involved his colleagues, and . . . believe me when I say, no stone was left unturned. But the side effects were bad, and my deterioration was steady. Linear, originally, then exponential.”
