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Her mouth twitches. “He’s very responsive.” Her cheeks turn pink. “I meant to feedback.”

“I’m sure you meant it in a purely academic sense.”

She elbows me lightly, and my laugh comes easier than it has in days. It feels good in my chest. Solid. Mine.

Then my phone chimes. Dr. Cole. That steals the laugh right out of me.

Pepper’s hand pauses in my hair. “Dr. Cole?”

I open the email and read the first lines twice before my brain agrees to hold them. Dr. Cole has sent Dr. Lucy Sawyer’s credentials, one published study, a consent packet, and a note that says we can start with a remote consult if I choose. She wrote my name first. Mine. Theo and Pepper are copied because I asked for that.

It’s a small mercy that matters more than it should. Too many conversations about my bond have happened with Theo being the first asked because it is assumed the alpha gets the final say. This time, the doctor is speaking to me as the patient.

Pepper shifts closer, then stops herself.

I angle the screen against my chest. “My body. My weird paperwork. Let me get a read on this first before anyone else’s feelings get a say.”

“You’re absolutely right.” She lifts both hands. “My grabby little science paws are in timeout.”

I kiss her forehead because she’s adorably enthusiastic and because her hair smells like home.

Then I read. Dr. Lucy Sawyer isn’t easy to dismiss. I hate that first. If she were sloppy, I could make jokes until we all moved on. If she were a weird fringe scientist, Pepper would find three problems in the first paragraph and Theo would growl with her assessment. Instead, Dr. Sawyer has clinic affiliations, case studies, conference panels, and a long list of work on failed suppressant response, bond-pain disorders, recognition disruption, and secondary-gender compound injury.

On paper, she looks like the woman people call when everything else fails. The hope of that lands so hard my hands shake.

I open the study. The title makes my eyes want to mutiny, but the abstract is clear. Severe bond-feedback instability. Experimental pharmacologic stabilization. Improved continuity in recognition response. Reduced distress markers. Fewer acute pain episodes.

Pepper’s hand slides from my hair to the back of my neck. “What are you seeing?”

“Annoyingly legitimate miracle science that I’m afraid is going to give me hope.”

“That is terribly scary.” She breathes a laugh, but it doesn’t last.

I scroll until the tables blur together. Then I find the part every miracle tries to hide in smaller print. Adverse responses.

Blunted scent reactivity. Emotional flattening. Reduced spontaneous recognition. Attachment confusion during stabilization window.

My skin goes cold.

The back door opens, and Theo comes in carrying a clipboard as if it might explode.

“It matches the other markings,” he says.

Pepper reaches for the clipboard.

The rubbing shows the dock mark clearer than the photo ever did. An open curve with three short water lines, the same basic pattern carved on the charity marker and recorded in Jessamine’s water notes. The shape is worn into the original dock post beneath layers of weather and stain.

Pepper sets it beside the charity sketch. For half a breath, all three of us only stare.

“It’s the same symbol family,” she says. “And the same connection to water.”

Theo crouches in front of the coffee table. “Give me the plain version.”

“It means your dock isn’t just part of the property. The same open-curve mark appears at the dock and in the charity-ground records. That means your dock was probably one point on the old east-side water route we’ve been reconstructing.”

“So the house and the old graves connect.”

“Yes.”