Alpha's Solace (Black Moon Saga Book 1)

Tests and Answers

Once they arrive at the clinic, Adam carries Kylie inside to an exam room to wait for Dr. Kosh. He mind-linked her on the way over so that she is aware of the situation and already has a room ready for them.

Marc is just as concerned as his father and insists on staying to hear what the doctor has to say, not to mention keep his friend company and her spirits up. His intentions are good, but his presence just serves to make Kylie more self-conscious and uncomfortable, though she is too glad to have him back in her life to tell him that.

Once the doctor enters the room and looks Kylie over, she wears a grim expression as she looks to Adam. She informs him over mind-link that though she has basic training in human medical conditions, what Kylie is facing far exceeds her knowledge and experience. She also hasn’t had to keep human medications stocked in the medical supplies in over a decade, so she cautions him that there may be little she can do.

“Well, hello again, Kylie,” Dr. Kosh greets her out loud. “I am happy to see you again, though I wish it were under better circumstances. Can you tell me what you know about what we have going on here?”

“Sure,” Kylie sighs unintentionally, already exhausted by having to summarize her experiences and symptoms to yet another doctor. “I can’t tell you a specific disease name or anything, but all my doctors agree that I have a lot of auto-immune dysfunction going on. There’s something arthritic going on with my joints, though my doctors disagree which type exactly. There’s some evidence to support one, and other evidence to support another. Maybe multiple, who knows. At this point, I have so many conditions seemingly acting all at once that it’s pretty much like you can pick a part and assume it’s probably inflamed, painful, and not behaving properly.”

Feeling awkward about how she’s positioned, which makes it hard to look Dr. Kosh in the face as she speaks to her, Kylie attempts to shift slightly, but quickly realizes it’s not going to work.

Sighing again, she continues explaining, “Today, it’s my joints. They get all stiff and seized up and I get these painful swollen pockets around them. It feels like something might break if I open my elbow all the way, for instance, not to mention the pain from trying. It’s like that all over – knees, hips, back. I tried a heating blanket because heat usually helps it feel better, and we tried to soak in a tub for the same reason. I’m still just all locked up. From experience, I know if I keep my joints warm and just rest for a day or two, it might eventually ease up. But it has been a few months since my last steroid shot, so that’s a route that often works better, if you’ve got them.”

Dr. Kosh places a gentle hand on Kylie’s upper arm and says, “You’re kind of a pro at this, aren’t you?”

“Sadly, yes,” Kylie agrees. “I know I’m no doctor and wouldn’t dream of telling you how to do your job, but I do know my body better than anyone.”

“Well, that’s true, and you’re not wrong. Those injections were my first thought. Unfortunately, I don’t keep them on hand and will have to call around to some other local clinics and see if I can get my hands on them for you today.”

“I wasn’t planning to go anywhere, so I’ll be here,” Kylie comments humorously.

Dr. Kosh chuckles for a moment before sobering her expression to inform her patient, “In the meantime, I would like to run some tests of my own. I’m sure your other doctors have already run most if not all of these, but I’d like to try my hand, with your permission.”

“Sure. Just do me a favor and draw the blood from my hands. My arms are so inflamed right now that you’d have to dig around with your needles, and I’m not crazy about that idea.”

“You really are a pro,” the doctor says in a soft, sympathetic voice. “Listen, how about while you wait, I can offer you a mild sedative that could help you get some rest and be a little more comfortable in the meantime.”

“Now you’re talking,” Kylie makes a clucking sound and points finger guns at the doctor, a move which is executed awkwardly because of how she is lying on her side on the exam table and has only limited mobility of her arms, not to mention one of them being in a cast.

Dr. Kosh chuckles again at Kylie's attempt to make light of the situation.

That’s quite a mate you have there, Adam, she compliments him.

Don’t I know it, Adam agrees, the admiration in his tone coming across even through the mind-link.

The doctor leaves for a moment and returns with an injection which she administers to Kylie, who begins to drift off shortly thereafter. Then Dr. Kosh uses the opportunity to draw blood from Kylie’s hands, as requested, and hurries off to call around for the medications she needs, leaving her patient to rest. Adam pulls his seat up next to the exam table, while Marc stands leaning against the wall near the door.

“Hey Dad, could I speak to you?” Marc uses his thumb to gesture over his shoulder toward the door leading to the hallway.

“Sure,” Adam agrees with one last longing look at his sleeping mate before rising to go with his son. “Probably best to let her rest anyway, though I don’t want to be gone long.”

“Of course, she needs you here,” Marc concurs as he leads his father out the door and a little way down the hallway into a small office.

Once there, he closes the door and turns to him, a serious expression on his face.

“What is this about?” Adam wonders, beginning to dread whatever he is about to tell him.

“I think we should run some DNA tests on Kylie since the doctor is already testing her blood anyway.”

“What?”

Adam is appalled at the suggestion to violate her privacy while she’s sleeping, and from her best friend at that.

“Just hear me out,” Marc pleads. “You and I both know there are a lot of mysteries surrounding her family, and I feel like this is a chance to potentially put some of them to rest. I already have some test results from Jonah, but Kylie’s might give us some more answers.”

“When did you run tests on Jonah?”

This is the first that Adam is hearing of this, and though he understands that he’s no longer the Alpha around here, it was him who began the investigation into the Logan siblings in the first place. He’d have figured on his son cluing him in on something like this.

“Awhile back,” Marc explains matter-of-factly. “It was a formality, really, since we don’t know his biological parentage for certain and he was my pick for the successor to the Beta position. The Elders just wanted me to show that in addition to him being the best person for the job because he had already proven himself to be, he is also of a solid genetic makeup. Nate has always suspected he was at least a Beta, and it turns out that he is at least that.”

“The way you phrased that leads me to believe there’s more,” Adam surmises with interest, his curiosity winning out over his outrage at being excluded.

“Oh, there is. He isn’t a Beta, he’s an Alpha,” Marc grins, watching with interest to see how his father reacts to the news. “I’ll say it again, he’s an Alpha. And since his mother was human and his father was David, who let’s face it, was all brains and no brawn and definitely not from Alpha stock, how is that even possible, right?”

He’s still grinning, and now shaking his head at how unbelievable he finds it all to be, at least until his expression suddenly sobers.

Giving his father a serious but also rather mysterious look, he adds, “It’s not possible. And you know what that means?”

“Goddess, no.” The horror hits Adam, and he slowly runs his hand down his face as he recognizes the probable truth of what he has always suspected but never wanted to be true. “Jonah wasn’t their son, which means they must have taken him from somewhere.”

“Exactly. And where does an Alpha wolf come from?” Marc questions next, dramatically drawing out the revelation of the information that he so obviously already knows all the answers to, and frustrating his father beyond measure in the process. “An Alpha bloodline. David was hiding away some Alpha’s son, and Goddess only knows whose.”

“Does Jonah know this?” Adam can’t help wondering, assuming that if the boy did know, then he definitely would have heard something about it by now.

“No, I don’t know enough details to stir up that pot. The Elders know, and they discreetly sniffed around a bit to see if an Alpha had ever reported a son or a pregnant mate missing. No solid leads have turned up, so the assumption is that Jonah might be a secret lovechild or something. Maybe David was doing someone a favor and it wasn’t a k********g or anything like that. No way to tell without more information, but I’d rather give the man the benefit of the doubt until I learn more about it all.”

“Which you were hoping to do with Kylie’s DNA?” Adam questions him again, feeling a bit protective of his mate and not wanting to give his son consent to poke unnecessary holes in her. “But they wouldn’t even be related, I can already tell you that.”

“Of course they wouldn’t be, but actually no. What I want with Kylie’s DNA is to see if she was related to the mother, Olivia,” Marc explains. “We have her DNA and David’s taken from various places around the house at the time of their disappearances, hairbrushes and things like that. I figure if they had one baby that wasn’t theirs, we can’t rule out that Kylie wasn’t theirs either until we compare her DNA to Olivia’s.”

“That makes sense,” Adam concedes and rubs his beard thoughtfully as he considers the situation. “So, you already ran David’s with Jonah’s, and he’s not the father?”

“No, but we don’t need to. He couldn’t possibly be,” Marc insists incredulously.

“He could be if he mated with an Alpha female,” his father points out.

“Have you even heard of one of those in any recent generations?”

The notion seems entirely far-fetched to Marc, who is well aware of the rarity of an Alpha female among his kind. The odds of his best friend’s kid brother being the son of one are so low that it seems practically impossible, and a waste of time to even consider.

“No, but have you heard of a missing Alpha male of Jonah’s age? No. But there he is,” Adam points out, frustrated by the negligence of failing to do something so simple that would have provided an answer to an important question. “You can’t rule anything out, and if you have the means to run one simple test, then I don’t know why you haven’t already.”

Marc chews the inside of his cheek and looks thoughtful for a moment. “I suppose you’re right. That was an oversight on my part,” he admits sheepishly, kicking himself for not thinking of it that way, a way which seems so obvious in hindsight. And so embarrassing to have pointed out by his father like this.

“I can’t believe the Elders would have overlooked that either.”

“Well, they were involved only to the extent that they wanted to know Jonah’s genetic makeup, and now they do. Then, they wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to stir any trouble with other packs if he happens to be the long-lost child of an Alpha, one who would be bothered by his disappearance. Once they were satisfied that whatever happened was meant to be discreet, they bowed out,” Marc explains, comforted only by the fact that even they seemed content to let him handle the mystery after that point.

Though, of course, that was the point where he dropped the ball, which still stings to realize.

“So no, this one’s on me, but I’ll definitely run it now,” he assures Adam, and himself, before letting his Alpha instincts take over.

He’s had about enough of standing here feeling like an inadequate failure. He’s the Alpha, damn it, and he shouldn’t even have had to explain any of this for his father to just agree to what he’s asking from him.

“And honestly, asking you about Kylie’s DNA is just me being considerate. I’ll pull rank if I have to,” he reminds his father of his place, as he's no longer the Alpha here. “This seems like the easiest part of the mystery to solve, so why wouldn’t we just run a few simple tests?”

It’s not lost on him that he didn’t even wait a full minute to throw his father’s words back at him, but he chalks it up to feeling restless and helpless from seeing his friend in such misery today. Though he and Adam have a good relationship and barely ever butt heads, and he’s really trying not to now, of course they’d both be a little overly easy to upset when it comes to pretty much anything having to do with Kylie or her family.

“True, but I just don’t like the idea of doing it behind her back and violating her privacy like that,” Adam argues back. “I can’t even think of how we would explain to her that we need to see if she is related to her human mother because her werewolf brother might not be her brother at all.”

“Just tell her that Dr. Kosh might be able to learn some things about her conditions from her DNA that other blood tests can’t show, like genetic markers or something,” Marc suggests, the answer seeming so obvious to him. “It’s not entirely untrue because maybe Dr. Kosh really can do that, or knows someone who can.”

“Now it’s my turn to feel silly for not thinking of that. Of course. Hide the truth with the truth, same as always. I do hate that I’ve had to lie to my mate so much over the years, though, and it apparently isn't over yet.”

“So, were you planning on marking her soon so that you won’t have to anymore?” Marc wonders hopefully.

“Oh, that’s right,” Adam sighs. “I haven’t told you yet.”

“Dad, you can’t be serious. Not her.”

Marc’s fists are already clenching at his sides, an action that he isn’t even aware of yet, though the idea of his father having the audacity to reject his long-awaited second-chance mate, someone they both consider to be family, has started his blood to boiling.

“Relax, I’m not going to reject her," Adam sighs, sensing his son’s agitation. "I’m just scared to make her go through all that. Even for an Alpha’s mate, a human’s best chance is to train as much as they can and build their strength and endurance before the first shift. She couldn’t possibly train in the condition she is in, and her body is already so weak. I’m not taking the chance.”

Marc’s nostrils flare as he regards his father, obviously no less angry about this decision than if Adam had said he planned to reject her.

“I don’t believe you,” he seethes. “She’s the strongest person I know. Endurance? Think of what she already endures every day of her life. She’s probably the best prepared human out there. Just do it. It’s her only hope, because if you hate how she is now, it’s only going to get worse.”

“We don’t know for sure what she would have to endure,” Adam doesn’t hesitate to point out in his defense. “I’ve never seen a human turn, have you? Do you want to take the chance of losing her? Because I don’t.”

Marc huffs and lets his fingernails dig into his palms as he tightens the fists at his sides, not ready to accept that his father might be right. He was ecstatic when he learned that Kylie was Adam’s mate for this very reason, and he is not ready to admit defeat and accept that they can’t help her.

Suddenly feeling restless and wanting to clear his head a bit, he turns and opens the door to the hallway.

“I’m going for a run,” he declares, hoping that it will help him get his emotions back in check before he explodes. “Tell Dr. Kosh to collect Kylie’s DNA, run those tests, and send me the results. We’ll talk more about this later.”

Despite wishing that there was more he could do or say to soothe his son, Adam lets him go and returns to Kylie’s bedside. When the doctor peeks back in to check up on her, he does as instructed by his Alpha and tells her about Marc’s plan.

Dr. Kosh agrees to run the additional tests and confirms that with some time and a significant financial contribution, she can send the blood to a friend, a geneticist who is discreet and trustworthy and can in fact test for genetic markers of certain diseases to see whether some answers about Kylie’s condition can be found in her DNA. All she needs is written consent.

After letting her rest for a couple hours, the doctor finally wakes Kylie with the news that the medicines she ordered for her have arrived and she can administer the shots now. She also speaks with her about the additional tests she would like to run, which Kylie readily agrees to because it feels like covering new ground. Her doctors in the city haven’t done this yet.

Adam holds her hand and strokes her hair, hating how much handling his mate has had to endure on this day when all she asked for was to be left alone. He also hopes that it is worth it if the marvels of modern human medicine can at least provide her some relief.

Cautiously hopeful that this small-town doctor might uncover something the big-city doctors have missed, Kylie holds the hand of the tall, broad, ruggedly handsome older man with the shaggy hair and crazy beard beside her, and waits for the relief she hopes is coming. She knows from experience that the shots won’t cure her, but they do tend to get her body moving less painfully for a short while. It could be a week, or a month, but regardless of how long, she intends to enjoy the reprieve and spend some time with this man who is gazing at her with those dark, intense eyes in a way she used to fantasize about.

Adam notices the sly smile spreading across her face and smiles back, stroking his thumb across her fingers.

“Were you thinking about heading out to your family’s cabin after this? Assuming you’re feeling better? Because I was,” he tells her coyly, chuckling at the surprised yet delighted expression she gives him.

She giggles softly as a blush creeps across her cheeks and she struggles a bit to think of how to respond.

“Well, I wasn’t, but I am now,” she admits after a moment, smiling at him appreciatively. “I was just thinking I’d like some quality time with you, so that sounds perfect.”