Granny Tyne said, “Drink this,” and Casey drank, and slept. It happened more than once, but he wasn’t sure how many times.

Sometimes it was Pappa Otso, and Casey tried to cling to him, because he knew if he went to sleep, Pappa Otso would be gone when he woke. But Pappa Otso didn’t suffer nonsense much more than Granny Tyne, so Casey always drank in the end. And slept.

Casey woke up and it was dark, and Granny Tyne was sitting by his bed, which couldn’t mean anything good. He lay still for a moment, breathing in the cool autumn night air from the open window. He felt good, as if he could cuddle back into his pillow and sleep, or get up for the day, and either would be just fine.

It was a strange feeling, and he didn’t want to ask himself what was strange about it, why he felt like this in the middle of the night, why Granny Tyne was here.

That was when it came to him, of course, with a force like a car crash. He’d capped a two-week too-much-alpha freakout by mixing up a fresh batch of a calming wolfsbane mix, tweaking it by eye to be what he needed. What it had turned out to be was a solstice-party-worthy high, mellow as hell but stealing every ounce of his self-control along with his tension.

Casey put the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Did... Did I rub my naked body all over Beau’s doctor friend in the front yard?”

“And jumped off the roof for the chance to do it,” Granny Tyne said, in the particular dry voice that promised not only the usual kind of consequences but also a lifetime of having this story told about him.

“Moon fuck me blind,” Casey breathed.

“Well, I don’t think the moon will, but you may be able to convince Adam Vinick to give it a try.”

Casey could remember how Vinick smelled, the heat of him even through his stupid proper clothes, the way he’d caught Casey when he leaned into him. The way he’d pushed Casey away and shouted, like Casey had done something fantastically stupid and Vinick wasn’t just going to shake his head and say, Oh, poor dear Casey, what do you expect.

He felt himself flushing, wanting, and his stomach went tight with the same tension he’d dosed himself to escape. No, no, not again, not just from thinking about him, what the hell?

Casey turned his head and breathed in the clean scent of his pillowcase—thought it smelled more like he’d been sweating out wolfsbane for a couple of days straight than anything else. Casey wrinkled his nose and gingerly pushed himself upright. “You... how long did you keep me out?”

“The first sixteen hours or so,” Granny Tyne said. “The rest you did on your own—slept right through another day. It’s Wednesday night now. Thursday in the morning.”

“Moon,” Casey muttered, rubbing his face again. “I’m sorry, I—I’ll take all the weekend rounds, of course, I—”

“No,” Granny Tyne said. “No, I’m afraid you won’t be available for rounds for a while yet.”

Cold terror shot down Casey’s spine, drawing him bolt upright. “What—Granny, I—I know I messed up that dose, but—”

“Mm,” Granny said. “I took a look at that batch you mixed, and then I checked what you’ve got in your bedside drawer that you haven’t been using, because it wasn’t enough this time.”

Casey froze, hands clenched in the covers.

“You did rather a good job, I thought, given what you were attempting to treat. You did solve the patient’s main problem, and he didn’t come to any harm by it, physically. You’re a fine herbalist, Casey, better than any of us. Pappa Otso would be proud—he was proud, I don’t have to tell you that. You were a good apprentice to him, and I’m glad to know his skills are carried on in you.”

Casey was grinding his teeth by the time she finished speaking, his hands clenched hard, and he snapped, “But that’s not good enough. Because I’m—”

“You’re not well, Casey,” Granny Tyne said gently, the kind of gentleness that made him want to claw and bite and run. “There were times when it seemed like you might be, that you might work through everything without any grand crisis or any great intervention required. But you haven’t worked through anything; you’ve only hidden it from yourself. And hidden things have a way of finding the light, sooner or later.”

Casey could hardly breathe; he felt as if he was choking on rage, welling up red-hot inside him. “Fine—fine! I’m fucking sick of everyone knowing more about me than I do anyway, so just tell me, then! Tell me why the fuck I’m like this!”

Granny Tyne’s hand clapped across his mouth, more than a little bit of a slap as well as shutting him up. In the ringing silence Casey realized he’d been shouting, and heard Auntie Mark and Auntie Helen’s hearts beating fast down the hall, startled awake.

“We will talk outside,” Granny Tyne said, her voice gone sharp and cold enough to freeze any anger left in Casey after that. “Get dressed and come downstairs.”

Casey nodded behind her hand. Granny Tyne sighed and pressed a kiss to the top of his head before she turned away and left him sitting alone in the same little bed he’d been sleeping in since the first night Pappa Otso managed to pry him off and convinced him to sleep alone.

Casey wanted to cry, or scream, or break things, but he couldn’t do any of that here. He got up and yanked on the first clothes he found, worn jeans and a soft old t-shirt, and trotted downstairs barefoot. The front door was open, and Casey made for it, trying to straighten out his thoughts for what Granny Tyne was about to tell him, pushing through the screen door without breaking stride.

He let it slam behind him with a crack like thunder when he saw who was waiting on the porch with her.

“What—” He couldn’t speak; even now, he couldn’t bring himself to curse in front of Alpha. “What is this?”

Nat Niemi, who had been Alpha of the Niemi pack for nearly twenty years, who had once found a frightened werewolf pup running in the woods and brought him home and made him part of the pack, unfolded from his seat. He stood there, studying Casey silently, and Casey tried and tried and could not calm down; his hands were in fists, his feet braced on the boards of the porch.

“I’ve been worried about you, Casey,” Alpha said softly. “For a long time, but especially the last couple of days. I wanted to be here for this.”

Casey tore his gaze from Alpha to look at Granny Tyne, who was looking back at him with unmovable patience; he might as well yell demands at the house.

This wasn’t about what Casey had said upstairs, then; whatever Alpha wanted to be here for, it hadn’t depended on Casey demanding the truth he’d never wanted to know, after all this time. It was something they’d planned while Casey slept.

Whatever this was, Casey couldn’t stop it. He could only, maybe, put it off for a while.

“Tell me,” he insisted, looking back and forth between them and settling on Alpha as slightly more likely to indulge him. “You said—you said whenever I wanted to know, you’d tell me. I’m ready, let’s go, tell me.”

It felt like the floating moment between jumping and landing, but it stretched on and on until finally Alpha shook his head and said, “No, Casey. Not like this. Not when you’re already upset.”

“I’m not a child,” Casey snarled. “I’m not your little lost boy, it happened to me, how dare you not tell me!?”

“What he means is it won’t help,” Granny Tyne said sharply, making Casey whirl to face her. “Just being told what happened won’t make a difference right now. Not if you’re not ready to hear it. And even if you were as ready as could be, it wouldn’t change anything for you just to know.”

“Then what do you want me—” Casey stopped sharply. He knew what they would want him to do, and the thought that they were going to make him do it left his head ringing like a blow. “I’m—I’m not—I can—”

“No,” Alpha said gently. “No, Casey. You’re not all right, and you can’t go on like this. Up until now you’ve been managing, but the other day it officially became a problem. Amy’s father heard about it, and not from Amy, which didn’t help any. He doesn’t want her under the same roof with you.”

Casey turned to look up toward the bulk of the Midwives’ House. He heard Auntie Mark and Auntie Helen inside. Auntie June must be out on a call somewhere.

Amy wasn’t inside.

“They’re both staying up at the Big House, for now,” Alpha said. “And if he were being unjust, there are other ways we could solve this, but the fact is, something has to be done. It’s been getting worse for years, Casey. You can’t go through life like this, unable to so much as touch one in five of your pack, going into a tailspin for weeks because somebody sleeps over in the guest room.”

Casey shook his head, feeling all off balance between rage and fear; there was poison on the back of his tongue that he couldn’t bring himself to spit, even now, at Alpha. He moved instead, reaching his hands out, trying to force himself to touch. “I can—I’ll be better, I’ll—”

Alpha shook his head, taking a long step back that froze Casey in place. Alpha had never denied him, never refused when Casey reached for him.

“No,” Casey said, numb at first and then warmed by the rising anger breaking through. “No! You said I could stay, you said I could be safe here, you said I belonged here, you promised—”

“Casey.” Alpha’s voice wasn’t sharp or loud, but that low, firm tone still shut him up. Even now, even when he was to be sent away, to be orphaned again. “You do belong here, sweetheart. This is your home. But everybody’s got to go from home for a while sometime, and your time has come. Now for me, I’d still rather you go up north for a while and get yourself back in balance.”

Casey shook his head wildly, turning away to grip the porch rail as he struggled to breathe. Up north was the polite euphemism for the universal werewolf cure for everything that couldn’t be healed any other way: take wolf shape and live like that until the trouble sorted itself out, or was forgotten along with all other human concerns. But he’d forgotten enough, lost enough of himself already. He’d spent enough time in his wolf shape, running from danger.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shifted for more than minutes at a time, but he felt frantic at the thought of having to.

Alpha was still talking, reminding him that Auntie Robin was up with a pack near Thunder Bay, or he could go clear out to Alaska if he wanted, to the pack Gil had stayed with.

Casey looked over at Granny Tyne. “What—what do you want, then?”

Alpha had said, for me. That meant Granny Tyne didn’t agree. Granny Tyne was going to push some other option.

She gave him a wry smile. “I don’t know if you’ll like it all that much better, but... Adam Vinick is going to be visiting all the other local packs for the next week or so, and after that as many other packs as we can talk into at least hearing him out about the study. And he’ll need an omega with him, someone who understands packs. Someone who cares about seeing the study done for our reasons.”

Casey stared for a moment, everything else wiped blank while he tried to make sense of that. “You want to send me along because you think I will persuade more people to listen to him?”

Granny Tyne tilted her head. “I don’t think he’ll let you actually murder him, and even you can only keep snapping and snarling for so long. Between you, I’m sure you’ll work it out. And I’ve never seen you interested in another alpha the way you are in Adam.”

Casey shook his head, not denying what she’d said so much as he was unable to believe that it could matter. “What, you think that means he’s—that I’m gonna fall in love with him and that’s going to fix me?”

“No,” Granny Tyne said. “You have to fix you, but if you’re interested in him you’ll have some incentive to do it. Better than running up north and finding a new way to hide, I think.”

Casey looked from Granny Tyne to Alpha and back, both of them showing their determination in every line of their bodies, every last layer of their scent. This was what it meant to be between a rock and a hard place.

“Can I go back inside?” Casey asked finally, his voice coming out utterly expressionless as he struggled not to give himself away, or give them room to choose for him.

“Of course,” Alpha said, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “You don’t have to decide in the middle of the night. Get a little more sleep—”

Casey shook his head and headed for the door. “No time to sleep, I’ll be in the stillroom. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know I’m going to need a better calming formula when I get there.”

He let the screen door slam again behind him, and didn’t look back.