“Yes! The blueberry kind. I’m a bit of a chemist.” She frowned at how close she was getting to the secret of the cure. “I can send a jar of it with Link when he visits if you want.”
“We want,” Elyse said through a grin. “And someday, you can teach us how to make it. Winters around the homestead sure get long.” Elyse’s smile faded, and she looked up at Ian, her heart in her eyes as he hugged her to his ribs.
If only Vera could tell them she was going to try to fix that, but Tobias was right. If for some reason the cure didn’t work on grizzlies, she couldn’t get their hopes up. She liked Lena and Elyse too much to hurt them like that. “It was really nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” Lena said. “Hey, Vera?”
“Yes?”
“Would you mind if I took your picture?”
“Really?” she asked, patting her wild hair.
Lena nodded, then lifted her camera in front of her face and aimed it.
When Tobias slid his hands gently around her waist from behind, she was warmed to her core that he was willing to take a picture with her. This would be their first together. She snuggled her face against his cheek as he leaned forward and cheesed for the camera. After Lena clicked a picture, Tobias kissed her on the cheek. Damn, what that man could do to her insides.
“You have the strangest color eyes,” Lena said, canting her head with a frown. “Gold in the middle and blue on the outside. In the sunlight, they look otherworldly.”
Tobias waved to his family and Link did the same, and as she started to back away from Lena and Elyse, she admitted low, “That’s because I’m a fox.”
As she turned away from Lena and Elyse’s shocked smiles, her heartbeat raced, and inside her fox made that soft satisfied humming sound she had the other night.
For the first time ever, Vera was proud to claim her animal out loud.
Chapter Fifteen
Tobias could see how tired his mate was becoming. How drained she was with everything she had to balance. His woman was strong, but at what point should he intervene?
Vera and Link worked relentlessly over the long table of vials, jars, flasks, clamps, microscopes, burners, beakers, funnels, and test tubes. Link’s usually clutter-free cabin was now ground zero for organized chaos.
It had been six weeks since she’d met Elyse and Lena, and while their relationship over the radio had flourished, Vera had missed Jenner and Lena’s wedding because she was stuck as a fox at the time. That had done something terrible to her. It had snowed for the first time while Tobias was out at the lodge, standing for his brother in a suit and tie, and Vera had been here at Link’s place alone, panicking over the shift in weather.
To her, snow meant hibernation, and by the time he’d come back, she had Changed back to her human self and was working through the nights on the cure.
Link had become an assistant for her since Tobias couldn’t pick up on the science of it all. All he heard was long, barely pronounceable names and experiments he didn’t understand, but Link was a good student and had even done a few tasks while Vera was a fox. Nothing big, mostly storage, but at least Link had been good for something. Tobias felt helpless to ease her worries.
Vera was fighting time, and from the constant wide-eyed panic on her face, she’d already lost.
“Not too hot,” she murmured as she held a test tube of blue liquid over an open flame. “Slow heat.”
Tobias crossed his arms and leaned against the kitchen counter, then stared at the full plate on the table that had gone cold long ago. Getting Vera to take a break long enough to eat was a challenge these days. He couldn’t even recall the last time she’d slept for more than an hour, and last night he’d woken up to her crying. She had tried to be quiet about it, but the sound of her soft weeping had broken something inside of him.
Avoiding hibernation wasn’t worth this. It wasn’t worth watching her deteriorate.
A small explosion of shattering glass sounded.
“Shit!” Vera yelled, holding half of the jagged vial in her tongs.
Link backed away and sank down into a chair, hands running through his hair in a steady rhythm. He hadn’t been sleeping much either.
When Vera looked back at Tobias, her face had crumpled and her eyes were rimmed with tears. “I need more of your blood.”
“Okay,” he murmured. “Whatever you need.”
Her shoulders shook with her quiet sobbing as she set the broken vial on the table. She pulled off her safety glasses and latex gloves as tears dripped from her jaw to the white lab coat she wore.
Vera strode for the door and threw it open, but just before she disappeared into the night, she turned and said, “I need you!”
The door slammed so hard it rattled the small cabin.