Adam said as little as possible through the rest of his meeting with the midwives, after Casey had been hurried out of the room like a madwoman escaped from the attic.

His objection just then had obviously been much more emotional than rational, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t have been allowed to express it. Adam would doubtless encounter a lot of emotional objections, anyway; he needed to learn how to counter and overcome them, and...

And he wanted more than anything to convince Casey. He wanted to take him away from these people who didn’t listen to him and sent him away like he was inconvenient, who didn’t give him the title of Auntie like the other midwives, just because he was young.

Adam retained just enough of his own rationality to recognize that those were also emotional objections. His alpha instincts had somehow latched on to Casey, and he couldn’t give in to them. He would have other opportunities to speak to Casey, to listen to him and try to persuade him, to find out if he could possibly be extracted from this pack that didn’t deserve him.

Adam just had to win over the midwives, first, and get permission to speak to other omegas in the pack. That was bound to include Casey sooner or later.

The midwives didn’t seem inclined to drag out the meeting either. They’d had some quite sharp questions about his methods and goals, and the availability of the data and final results. Adam had explained that all NIH studies ultimately belonged to the public anyway, and he was happy to share preliminary data before anything went to press; if the Niemi omegas made this study possible they certainly deserved whatever access they wanted to his results.

And that was that, apparently. Adam enrolled four new omegas in his study, carefully labeling DNA samples and filing consent forms and filled-out surveys. Together with Rory’s data, collected last night, that made five new participants in under twenty-four hours, more than he’d been able to secure in three months of trying so far.

He was hustled out the door before he’d been there an hour, with Rory to assist—more likely, supervise—him. Rory had a hand-drawn map explaining where they should go to speak to more omegas over the course of the day.

Their first stop was a pair of barns on what was, judging from Rory’s map, the northwestern edge of the pack lands.

“Cider and honey works,” Rory explained, though from the way he looked around, Adam didn’t think he was especially familiar with the place himself. “The pack makes stuff for internal use and for sale and trade, and a lot of the omegas who aren’t busy with kids work here.”

Rory was still looking indecisively from one barn to the other when a tall, dark-haired woman walked out to meet them. Rory clearly recognized her, sagging a little with relief when she came into view; there was something alpha in her squared shoulders and long stride, and in her scent as well.

“Callie Niemi,” Rory said, gesturing toward her as she approached, confirming Adam’s senses with his next words. “Alpha Niemi’s daughter and next in line as Alpha. She’s, uh, Casey’s...”

“Foster sister, more or less,” Callie said, offering a hand when she came within reach. Adam shook it, studying her with interest. Female alphas—or rather, women who dared to lay claim to that aspect, despite centuries of tradition reserving it for men in defiance of obvious biological realities—were still rather rare. “You must be Dr. Vinick? Granny let me know you were on your way over, so I rounded up the omegas for you.”

Adam didn’t know quite how to feel about this—female alphas weren’t exactly like male alphas, although, as the pack Alpha’s daughter and successor, Callie might be closer than most—but Rory seemed comfortable with her. It ought to be clear enough if she was pressuring any of the omegas here to cooperate.

“Thank you,” Adam said, nodding to her. “I’ll just get the forms.”

Callie nodded, visibly dismissing him from her attention even before he turned away. She dropped her voice a little, but made no particular attempt to actually prevent him from hearing her as she said to Rory, “You just came from the house, didn’t you? Granny didn’t say anything about Casey, but...”

“He, ah,” Rory fidgeted for a moment while Adam occupied himself gathering sample kits and forms from the box in the back seat. “He met Adam and... he seemed upset, but he’s with Amy now, picking apples. That’ll be good for him, won’t it?”

Callie sighed. “I wish I knew. I haven’t seen him in days, he’s—”

Adam slammed the car door and Callie cut herself off, gesturing toward the left-hand barn. “Your test subjects await, Doc.”

“Ah,” Adam said. “Study participants, please. There are absolutely no experiments being conducted on anyone.”

“Sure, sure,” Callie said, with a careless grin, striding on into the barn, which smelled strongly of apples and fermentation. About a dozen omegas were gathered. They seemed to range in age from their late teens to sixties or so, plus a couple of small children playing nearby. “Hey, gang, Rory and Dr. V are here with Granny’s blessing, ask away.”

Adam opened his mouth to explain what he was doing there, only to have a young woman call out, “So are you gonna make a DNA database? Like Ancestry for werewolves?”

Adam closed his mouth and hastily adjusted his expectations. “Not at this time, although the analysis may help future efforts to build such a database. This study will anonymize all samples collected; we’re looking to identify the genes that make omegas omegas, primarily.”

With Casey’s reaction in mind, he said nothing about omega, or werewolf, origins, though it did cross his mind now to wonder what story Casey had been shouting about. Casey had said every werewolf knew it; Adam probably ought to find a copy somewhere so he would know the context.

“So, you went to med school with Rory’s Beau?” This omega was older, clothing and haircut both somewhat gender-ambiguous. “Any good stories to tell about him?”

Adam blinked, frozen, struggling to remember any interaction he’d had with Beau that might qualify as a story.

“Come on,” Rory said cheerfully. “You know Beau never did anything interesting until he married me. Adam’s still single, he hasn’t done anything interesting at all yet.”

This brought a wave of laughter and teasing in Rory’s direction, and Rory blushed but smiled.

When the crowd quieted, before anyone else spoke up, Adam tried to—not regain control of the situation, necessarily, but to steer a little. “I take it you’ve all heard that I’m collecting DNA samples and questionnaire responses from omegas, then? I do need participants to be over eighteen and to make up their own minds to enter the study. I’m happy to take questions on the study, or if anyone is ready to take a look at the questionnaire and consent form I have them here.”

“About the study,” a male omega who looked to be in his twenties called out. “You ran it by the midwives, didn’t you?”

Adam nodded.

The man smiled slightly. “So what’d Casey say?”

Adam glanced over at Rory, who looked like he was attempting not to look at anyone. No help there, and Adam was suddenly very away of Callie in his peripheral vision, also saying nothing. Also listening for his answer.

Adam studied the group in front of him, who all looked cheerfully anticipatory of his answer. He thought back over his interactions with Casey, struggling for something true and not utterly damning. Finally, when Rory seemed to be bracing himself to rescue Adam again, Adam glanced toward the toddlers and said, “I’m... not sure I should repeat what Casey said when there are children present.”

That got an even louder laugh than Rory’s answer about Beau, and just like that people started coming forward, forming into a tidy line. Evidently Casey’s objections were predictable to everyone who knew him, and didn’t faze them. Adam hurried to open the envelopes that held the blank forms, tucking the box of sample kits awkwardly under his arm.

Rory did rescue him then, taking the box and an envelope. “Did you bring pens?”

“Uh,” Adam said.

He had, actually. He had an entire box of pens out in the car, printed with the name and logo of the Lycanthropic Research Division of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. It was on the forms, too, but people were somehow more likely to read all the words printed on a pen than on a piece of paper they were signing.

Adam hadn’t done his standard spiel and no one in this group had asked him who he worked for, so he hadn’t had an opportunity to assure them that although, yes, he worked for a federal agency, he was not here from the government. He wasn’t sure that the pens were the right place to start, but was it dishonest to withhold the pens to avoid that discussion?

“Callie?” Rory said, taking Adam’s hesitation as a no. “Pens?”

“Yeah, lemme grab some,” Callie said, striding off toward an enclosed office. There weren’t any convenient writing surfaces, either, but Callie came back with a handful of clipboards as well as the pens, and all the omegas were soon sharing them around, a few putting their papers up against a wall or on the clean-swept concrete floor.

Adam finally got a chance to actually count them up, now that they were mostly holding still and not looking expectantly at him for answers. There were fourteen of them filling out the forms. Only one had drifted away to check on the kids, and Adam thought that one might not have been eighteen yet, from the youthful roundness of their cheeks.

Fourteen. That would make nineteen added to the study. He’d hit n=22 and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.

“Rory?” Adam asked quietly. “How many other stops are we making today?”

“Oh, uh,” Rory tugged the little map from his pocket. “Another... well, there’s twelve more on the map, who knows if we’ll get to them all today. These will probably be the quickest and easiest.” Rory squinted over the group and added, “Some of these are Brysons, though, I think. You can probably ask Granny Tyne to put you in touch with their midwives if you have time to stick around for a few days. They’re sort of cousins to the Niemis, and everybody else in the pack will have heard about it from these by the end of the day.”

Adam nodded, feeling a little stunned, and then shook it off and started getting the DNA sampling kits ready.

They hadn’t made it to their next stop yet, and Adam hadn’t gotten his head around the sudden acceleration of his research, when Rory’s phone rang. His scent spiked with sharp worry when he glanced at the screen, and Adam pulled over to one side of the dirt road as Rory picked up, his voice carefully calm as he said, “Amy? Is everything...”

“Could you come home?” Amy sounded... old enough to be confident operating a phone, young enough to need an adult. Adam had never been good at kids’ ages unless he could gauge developmental milestones. “I mean, could you—Casey’s being really weird. He said his medicine might—”

Rory made a cut-off noise and gestured sharply for Adam to continue down the narrow dirt road. Adam put the car in gear, going as fast as he dared.

“Are you okay?” Rory was asking. “Where are you right now?”

“In the kitchen,” Amy said. “There’s a pie in the oven, but Casey—he said he was just going to clean up a little in the parlor, but then he said he had to take some medicine to, to calm down? And I think he took too much?”

“If you want to go in your room and shut the door, or in the bathroom,” Rory said, his voice gone firm, authoritative, “don’t you worry about the pie. Adam and I will be back in a few minutes, so even if it’s too burnt to eat it’s not going to be a problem, okay?”

“I’m all right,” Amy said. “I’m just worried about Casey. I think he went up on the roof.”

Adam wasn’t aware of anything but a pounding, desperate urgency for the rest of the drive, the distant sound of a child’s voice, too small for so much responsibility. The sunny morning was blindingly bright now; the pleasantly winding roads through the pack lands had become a horrible maze.

He was surprised for a moment when they pulled up in front of a stone house he’d never seen before that morning; he’d somehow expected white wooden siding and green shutters, and his own bike leaning against the porch steps.

Rory threw his door open, flinging himself out of the car, and Adam shook off that flash of the past. He barely remembered to put the car in park and turn it off before he was following Rory. Adam nearly crashed into him, because Rory had stopped right in front of the porch.

Casey was there—not on the porch roof, but the second-story roof up above it. He was sitting on the edge, his knees hooked over the gutter, bare feet dangling.

He was... entirely bare, all creamy pale skin under the dappled shade of the tall trees flanking the Midwives’ House—his jeans were dangling from a nearby branch, so he must have shucked them off after he climbed up—and he was beaming down at them.

“Rory!” Casey called out. “Rory, holy shit, this batch is the best. I’m gonna give you some, okay? You’re gonna love it!”

Adam dragged his gaze away from Casey to look at Rory, in time to watch Rory’s expression go from anxious to relieved to resigned. Rory pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead and muttered, “I don’t know what I expected.”

“Rory?” Casey called out. “Rory, do you want some now? You can have some now if you want, I just thought you were busy! You should come hang out with me now, it’s so nice up here.”

Rory dropped his hand and looked up. “No, Case, I’m going to go check on Amy, see how that pie’s doing.”

“She’s got oven mitts!” Casey replied brightly, making a gesture with each hand that was probably supposed to describe oven mitts. “It’s fine! Pie for everyone!”

Rory took a breath like he was going to say something and then shook his head. He glanced up at Adam, his expression turning faintly apologetic, and then hurried inside.

That left Adam, and all his leftover adrenaline, alone with Casey.

“Oh, hey, it’s you!” Casey called down, as though he’d only just noticed Adam’s presence. “You should—we should do an experiment, I’m gonna—”

And with no more warning than that, Casey jumped.

He was a werewolf, only twenty feet off the ground; there was no reason for Adam’s heart to lurch the way it did, for a fresh flush of adrenaline to run through him in the fraction of a second Casey was falling, arms raised above his head, dark hair flying. He landed lightly on the porch roof, trotted forward and jumped again, landing neatly on the grass while Adam was still struggling to contain his own unreasonable reaction.

Casey beamed at him, spreading his arms. Adam couldn’t smell whatever he was on, although the remembered scent of sweet wolfsbane smoke was almost tangible. What he could smell was omega, now without that sickening overlay of fear; Casey just smelled warm and happy and... aroused.

Adam’s hands closed into fists and he pressed his heels into the ground, forcing himself not to move, not to react, but there were parts of his body not so easily governed.

He couldn’t help. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be seeing this, smelling this, Casey’s slim body, all that pale bare skin.

Adam ought to leave, or go inside and send Rory out, or—

Casey took a step forward and wrapped his arms around Adam, every bit as loose and pliant as Adam was desperately rigid. He rubbed himself up against Adam.

Adam squeezed his eyes shut as if that would help, as though not seeing would keep him from being painfully hard with a naked omega rubbing against him. He could feel Casey’s arousal pressing against him, couldn’t breathe without half choking on the scent of slick.

“Mm,” Casey murmured, low and throaty and pleased. “Hypothesis confirmed. Thank you for your assistance, Doctor.”

Adam gritted his teeth and struggled to string words together, something about how he had not in fact consented to participate in Casey’s experiment.

Before he’d managed it, Casey went abruptly boneless against him; Adam caught him instinctively, taking a half-step back even though he was well able to bear the weight of even a limp omega.

Casey hadn’t lost consciousness, though. He was blinking up at Adam, his smile settled down to just curling the corners of his mouth. The vivid blue of his eyes was reduced to a silvery rim around pools of black. He was, in the technical parlance Adam had learned in medical school, high as balls.

“This is all your fault, you know,” Casey said, serious and steady. Adam reacted before he had time to tell himself not to, letting go of Casey so emphatically it was almost a shove and backpedaling a few more steps.

Casey stumbled and dropped to his knees, looking up at Adam in apparent bewilderment, and there was something in the back of Adam’s head already wailing, No, no, don’t, don’t be mad at him, don’t hurt him, as he snarled, “How fucking dare you try to blame this on me when you’re the one getting wasted when you’re supposed to be taking care of your child.”

Casey blinked at him, just slightly slower than normal, and then said, “She’s actually not—”

“Don’t you dare—” Adam felt the shout swelling into an actual roar and stumbled back another step as he cut it off.

In the silence he became abruptly aware of two heartbeats, a presence he hadn’t noticed before. With a sick sense of dread, he turned to see Granny Tyne and Auntie Mark standing a few yards away. There was no knowing how much of that they’d witnessed, but it hardly mattered. They had to have seen enough.

The sick feeling worsened, and Adam looked back at Casey, who was curled in on himself now, his eyes turned down. The darkness of his eyelashes was stark against his bone-pale skin. Adam wanted to fix it, wanted to apologize, wanted to do whatever it took to see Casey smiling and warm and carefree again.

But he was the alpha responsible for this. He’d known Casey for two hours and already driven him from diamond-bright anger to a refuge in God knew what intoxicants, and then spoiled even that simulated happiness.

“Excuse me,” Adam said stiffly, and walked back to his car. Both doors were still open, the keys still in the ignition. He dropped into the driver’s seat and closed his eyes, just for a moment, just until he could make himself reach over and shut the other door.

He might as well leave now. Drive straight back to the airport. He wasn’t going to get another participant out of this; he’d be lucky if the Niemi pack omegas stopped at demanding his samples be destroyed and didn’t file a complaint against him. This had been his last, best chance to get this study off the ground, and he hadn’t lasted half a day among the exact people he wanted to help before he let loose his worst alpha impulses.

Behind his closed eyes, he watched Casey stumbling and falling, over and over. Adam had done that. Adam had hurt him, and—

He only registered omega in the first second, when someone settled into the passenger seat beside him and pulled the door shut. His heart leaped in wild, incoherent hope, and he looked over with his lips already parted to say—whatever he had to say, to make it all right, if only...

It wasn’t Casey.

It wasn’t even Rory.

Auntie Mark gave Adam a wry smile and then looked down pointedly, smoothing a folded and crumpled hand-drawn map over his knees, giving Adam a few seconds’ grace to face forward and try to settle himself from that instant of utter insanity. Adam took a few careful breaths, settling his heartbeat and trying to make sense of what was happening now.

Casey and Granny Tyne had clearly gone inside; the front door was shut now.

Adam looked over at Auntie Mark again. He had Rory’s map on his knee. He... he couldn’t mean...

“I’m not saying Granny Tyne is best pleased with you right now,” Auntie Mark said. “Nor Rory, for that matter. But we’ve all known Casey long enough to know that when he really puts his mind to it he can try the patience of the Moon herself, and he’s... well, he’s outdone himself today, in a way that’s been a long time coming.”

Adam gritted his teeth and said nothing, frowning down at the steering wheel. He was being let off the hook, his project wasn’t doomed, he should just—

“It wasn’t his fault,” Adam said, without unclenching his jaw but also without raising his voice.

Auntie Mark was silent beside him for a few beats and then said, “Well, no, not entirely. And not entirely yours. As you said.”

Adam closed his eyes and struggled to speak, struggled to even know what he wanted to say. The inside of his head was a howling mess, and none of the things he wanted made any sense, or would be any good to anyone.

“Anyway,” Auntie Mark added briskly, reaching over as he spoke to turn the keys in the ignition. “The study’s still a good idea whether you’re an asshole or not, and word from the gang down at the barns is that you’re not too offensive as long as you’re properly supervised. Also, I need to check in on eighteen households today if we’re gonna be without Casey and Granny Tyne, so let’s get a move on.”

Just this once, Adam was happy to do as he was told.