Danae’s POV
My brother’s voice came through the line before my mother had steadied enough to speak.
“Dana.” Dorian always led with my name when the news was bad—a one-word warning.
“It’s Dad.
The tumor’s grown.
The doctors say it’s pressing on his brainstem now.”
The room went muffled.
Like something had sealed around me to contain the impact.
“How bad is it?” My voice barely reached my own ears.
“He needs surgery.
High-precision neurosurgery.” A pause with too much inside it.
“The local hospital doesn’t have the equipment or the team.
They’re working on a referral to a specialist center, but the waitlist is—” He stopped.
“Months, Dana.
Minimum.”
After I hung up, Eirwen pressed a tissue into my hand.
I hadn’t realized I’d been crying.
She sat beside me in the specific, decent silence of someone who knows some pain doesn’t need words so much as witness.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, eventually.
I pressed my hands flat against my thighs.
“I need work.
Fast.” The word fast didn’t capture the math of it—the hospital bills quietly accumulating since January, the empty savings account, the near-maxed credit card.
“His surgery alone will cost—” I stopped.
“He can’t wait months on a list.
His symptoms are getting worse every day.”
I didn’t sleep.
I scrolled job listings until the sky turned grey, running numbers in the careful methodical way you run numbers when you don’t want to arrive at the answer. This chapter was taken from novelping.com without permission.
Months.
Possibly a year.
And that was assuming I found something immediately and spent nothing else.
Then the thought surfaced.
I argued with it for approximately forty seconds.
Caspian Jorah.
I borrowed Eirwen’s navy pencil skirt and cream blouse and applied concealer over the evidence of sleeplessness.
Stood in the bathroom mirror practicing an expression that said I’m not here out of desperation, acknowledged without sentimentality that I wasn’t going to fool anyone, and went anyway.
An hour later I stood in the lobby of Jorah Enterprises, his business card in my hand.
The receptionist gave me the professional once-over.
“Do you have an appointment?
Mr.
Jorah’s schedule is fully booked today.”
I had prepared for this.
“Please tell him Danae Ashgrave has important information about Galen Bryneholm violating Ashmoon rules.”
Something moved across the receptionist’s face—a micro-expression she contained quickly.
She picked up the phone, turned away, and murmured.
When she turned back, her posture had shifted by two careful degrees.
“Please wait a moment, Miss Ashgrave.”
I waited.
I was already regretting the card I’d played before I’d finished playing it.
But I was out of moves that didn’t involve leveraging the few pieces of information I actually had.
When I stepped into Caspian’s office, his eyes found mine before I’d taken three steps through the door—a precise, unhurried arrival at my face, as if he’d known where to look before I’d announced myself.
“So,” he said, leaned back in his chair with the ease of a man who had never been uncomfortable in a room he occupied. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
“What’s this important information about Galen breaking rules?” The faintest edge of something in the corner of his voice.
“Or is this just another one of your little tricks?”
Heat climbed my neck.
“I’m sorry for coming like this.
I needed to see you, and they wouldn’t let me up otherwise.”
“You could have called.” He raised an eyebrow.
“My direct line is on the card.”
I looked down at the card in my hand.
I had not noticed the direct line.
“My father has a brainstem glioma,” I said, because there was no graceful approach and I’d spent my last reserves of grace in the elevator.
“It’s grown.
He needs specialized surgery—the kind our family cannot afford and cannot access through normal channels.
The waitlists are months long, and his symptoms are worsening every day.” I met his gaze directly.
“I’m looking for work.
Receptionist, assistant, anything you might have.”
Caspian regarded me for a moment.
Nothing in his expression moved.
“Why would I give a position to you—a human with no pack affiliation—over someone from our pack who needs work?”
The question was even, ungentle, and not unreasonable.
“If I had other options,” I said, keeping my voice steady through the way it wanted to fracture, “I wouldn’t be asking you.
I’m not here because I want to be.
I’m here because I’m desperate.”
The word landed between us.
He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the desk, and studied me with the focused attention of someone cataloguing micro-expressions and finding them useful.
“Desperate,” he repeated, rolling the word on his tongue as if tasting it.
“And what makes you think I’d help you, Miss Ashgrave?
What makes you think I care about your desperation?” A pause, almost meditative.
“Especially after you refused me and walked away last night?”