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“Eli, I’m sure there is some arnica in the bathroom cabinet. We can put some on after your shower tonight. It will help with the bruising and swelling,” Aspen says.

Bruising, yes. Swelling, well… that depends on the location. Arnica contains helenalin, a natural compound to alleviate inflammation, and speeds healing when applied in gel or cream form onto the skin. Unfortunately for the rest of us in the car, the swelling of another region isn’t lessened when Aspen talks in that sexy, raspy tone and bites that plush bottom lip. One glance at the prof in the mirror, and I’m certain his swelling isn’t going down anytime soon, either.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Aspen

THE BONDING PROCESS

When Fox showed us his phone, and we discovered the line of questioning, we were livid. Apart from his outrageous humor surrounding the detective’s personal hygiene, of course. Elijah ran through a slew of cuss words, and Jack didn’t say much at all. It’s been a crazy couple of days, and with Luk still up with his father, the four of us have turned to each other for support, while Luk is alone.

His dad is okay—sort of. An accident with one of the fellers damaged his arm when it kicked and he was too close. Whether his alcohol consumption contributed to the incident, or saved his life, is still to be determined. The last time he called us, his father was being prepared to be sent to Anchorage for specialist treatment. Luk is torn about coming back to us and then heading to Anchorage once his father has had his surgeries and has recovered enough to be lucid and responsive in hospital. Luk sitting alone in a waiting area for hours and days on end helps no one and might sink his mental health further.

We forged a bond of togetherness, no matter how absurd or taboo. I had positioned myself in the middle of the pentagon, and our mass missing one part of its dynamic was taking a toll. Fox needed his best friend to be there while the dipshits from law enforcement continued to bait him with assumptions and potential notions. Fox has a stoic personality with people he knows and trusts—like us—but with outsiders, he shuts down as a protective instinct. Luk can’t protect Fox if he’s a day’s drive away. And we can’t embrace him while his father undergoes surgery. This whole situation is beyond fucked up. Given I live in a household with four virile, sexy men, I’m yet to enjoy all of them at once. The closest we’ve come is the hiking hut, and Elijah was missed. I was repeatedly satiated and thoroughly satisfied only until my thoughts drifted to his absence. We were in the hut because of him and his vague half-answers to questions I have every right to know. He’s the prequel, the passageway, and the entire puzzle. The man who guards his secrets and only lets out enough rope for you to reach it, but not pull it in. His answers are the fibers through your grip, but not one thread more.

Elijah Wyldan and Jackson Bonner taking part in the Larch never entered the periphery of my thoughts that night when I took off. Faculty, and senior faculty at that. The utter lunacy of such an act. My father was turned into a pariah for far less. With reputations on the line, under masks of silicone anonymity, they risked everything to hunt me down. Not Poppi or Merda or Tali or anyone else in those woods that night. Me. My plan was to further my studies and continue the research that had started decades earlier. Limited friends meant few distractions, only I didn’t plan on a quorum of suitors, nor my reaction to them individually and part of our pact of five. Different personalities and physical traits, the same aching longing when one isn’t with me.

Elijah snaps his fingers, and judging by his pinched forehead, it’s not the first time he’s done so.

“Aspen. This is serious. How did you share your findings?”

Elijah was told about the email from Norway from Dean Grundy, because the Dean had been included in the encrypted email as a courtesy. All semester I’d spent countless hours in the lab around Eli’s Plant Biotechnology classes, working on joining particular proteins in order to form an injectable gel. The process of chemical ligation was only step one or two at most. If the gel was to be functional, it also had to bind to the outer layer of each motor neuron axon to prevent the breakdown of the sheath that interrupts the brain signals to move the muscles.

Each motor neuron has a long fiber that carries electrical signals away from the central nervous system toward muscles. My mother’s early theory was to protect the axons: this meant the signals were uninterrupted, staving off, or at least slowing the progress of the disease. Save the axon sheaths, save the world.

Cells naturally combine multiple protein and enzyme units into a single framework using scaffold proteins. Related enzymes group together so they can pass chemical reactions efficiently from one active site to the next. Minor and major muscle groups both require the gel inhibitor because MND not only affects actions like walking, gripping, and talking, but blinking, swallowing, and breathing. As long as the pathways are protected and preserved, the brain signals will always reach the intended muscle group. The membrane surrounding the Pepperberry seed held the key to maintaining axon integrity. Utilizing chemical ligation and bonding scaffold proteins was the breakthrough via the injectable gel.

“Files and findings were sent via an encrypted service, Elijah. I’m not stupid. Given the research and the sensitivity of the information, I wasn’t about to Gmail it to them. Relax.”

“Aspen. Your cavalier attitude makes my palms twitch with the urge to spank you again. Do you want to follow your father’s fate? Surely fucking not!”

“His shredded reputation? Or his disappearance? You’re going to need to be more specific, Elijah.”

“Do you think Amber was looking for the files when she went through her room, Eli?” Jack asks, and I freeze.

Here I was thinking she was some snooping bitch checking out my perfume collection or similar. I never thought her offending might be more sinister. “Why would she want them?”

“Why do you think?” Jack probes. “She’s a professor seeking tenure. She’s published, sure, but only analyses on subjects already discovered and stated. This sort of thing could launch her career into the stratosphere.”

“Not only that,” Eli clarifies. “She has connections with a biometrical company. Think it was an in-law connection; sister married into it or something like that. Anyway, if she can present any of the latest research and claim it as her own, how do you deny that?”

“By stating this was started decades earlier and continued through my family. When I met Amber, she claimed to never have even met my dad. Did she go to college in Colorado too?”

“Not with either of us,” Eli clarifies. “I didn’t meet her until I started at Wyldan. Jack knows her best, having worked with her the longest. Although the Dean has crossed paths with her too.”

“Would she have found anything in your dorm?”

“Nothing,” I confirm. “I don’t trust any of the computers at school, nor the dorm connections. Sorry, Elijah, but I don’t.”

“Good. I’m glad you don’t. That shows me you realize the implications of this landing in the wrong hands.”

“If this goes to market someday soon, I want to make sure it’s as cheap as possible. I refuse to profit from the hopelessness of families facing the decline of a loved one and being held to ransom by a syringe. Big pharma gets fatter and fatter on the misery and suffering of so many. It’s disgusting.”

“Heinous,” Fox adds, and I smile. His text exchange about SVU had me doubled over in tears. I just hope the investigation doesn’t tighten the screws on him because he was disrespectful. There is a line between apathetic and arrogant that Elijah floats on like a knife edge, but I don’t think Fox has mastered the balance yet.

“Playing devil’s advocate, then, there is a possibility that some of the bigger pharma companies might have criticized the initial findings because their profits were threatened. None of the CEOs like explaining to boards why second-quarter profits are a tenth of projected earnings because a rival product hit the market at low cost. This can reset stock values and change the management of chronic and degenerative illnesses. Aspen Aldereyne could be spoken about with the same awed reverence as Marie Curie, Alice Ball, and Gerty Cori. There will be companies and governments desperate to get their hands on this, and others just as desperate to shut it down, Aspen.”

Elijah and Fox nod along with Jack’s theory, and the idea of this breakthrough being scuttled by a government department profiting from the suffering of its citizens and the lack of funded hospital beds makes me want to scream myself hoarse. Instead, I look on while Eli and Fox set up a secure connection with Norway, so we can discuss in real time the implications of what I found and hear about their continued work and the testing. The screen blinks to life, the blackness transitioning to white lines before two unsmiling faces and a laboratory background fill the frame. Once we verify the connection as secure and identify everyone in the room with me, the scientists relax a little. The scowls marring their faces, which might have just been the cool, European stoicism, melted away to showcase broad grins and kind eyes surrounded by crinkled skin when they smiled.