a's

r the clipboard. She nodded once. "You can mop blood?" "Yes, ma'am." "Then you're hired." That's how I started again. I worked the back rooms. Cleaned instruments. Organized expired meds. Held the hands of patients who didn't have names, only numbers. I became invisible. Reliable. Silent. And for the first time in a long time... I started to breathe again. But healing in silence doesn't erase memory. Not when your wolf still paces every night, waiting for a bond that should've been hers. Three months passed before I even touched a needle again. Six before I stepped into an operating room-not to lead, just to hand tools. Nine before someone finally looked me in the eye and said, "You're good." I wanted to scream then. Not out of joy-but grief. Because I had always been good. And they still buried me. Somewhere between cleaning floors and reading donated textbooks by flashlight, I found an online program for displaced shifter students. It wasn't accredited by the national board. Not yet. But it gave me something I hadn't had since that night at the gala. Direction. I studied with a rage I couldn't name. I slept three hours a night. I passed out more than once on a textbook. But I passed every exam. Every test. I finished two years in one. Greta saw me one morning, passed out on the clinic couch with papers in my lap. She didn't say anything. Just threw a blanket over me and walked away. Weeks later, he showed up. Dr. Tarek Iver. An ethics auditor from the National Medical Oversight Board. He wasn't supposed to be there. Just a surprise drop-in. One of those rotating checks for legal compliance. I was assisting an emergency-lung puncture. A young male wolf, barely seventeen. The lead nurse froze. No doctor on call. I stepped in. My hands didn't shake. My voice didn't waver. Dr. Iver watched the whole thing from behind a glass wall. When the boy stabilized, I turned around-and saw him still watching. Two days later, I was called into the clinic's office. "You're too good for this place," he said, flipping through m