Sarah had been our shield against the outside world, navigating the legal and political nightmare. The CDC, the media, the local authorities who wanted to seal the settlement in concrete and throw away the key—she'd handled them all. Without her, this place would've been locked down tighter than Fort Knox, everyone inside treated like biological weapons instead of victims.
And Tori. God bless Tori and her enormous heart. Every day like clockwork, deliveries from her winery's restaurant kept us fed. Roasted chicken that fell off the bone, vegetables that still held freshness, bread that steamed when you broke it open, fruit that tasted like something other than tin. Real food for people who desperately needed to remember what normal felt like. It had been medicine in its own right.
Zuhra shouldered through the back room doorway, arms piled high with linens that threatened to topple with each step. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, but her jaw was set with that stubborn determination I'd come to recognize in the settlement's residents. "Last batch," she announced, dropping the stack onto a nearby table with a grunt. "Everything else went into the burn pile."
I pushed myself up from the floor, my knees cracking in protest. An hour of scrubbing had left me feeling like I'd aged a decade. "We're almost done here. Give it a few more hours and this place will be sterile enough to perform surgery in."
"Thank the ancestors." Zuhra planted her hands on her hips and swept her gaze across the common house, taking inventory with the eye of someone who knew and loved every inch of this space. "People keep asking when we can open the doors again. They're going stir-crazy in their own homes. This place—" she gestured around us, "—it's where we come together as clan. Not just exist."
The ache in her voice hit me square in the chest. The common house wasn't just a building. It was the settlement's beating heart—where meals turned into celebrations, where arguments became decisions, where isolated families became a community. The outbreak had ripped that away, transforming their sanctuary into a quarantine ward, then a contamination site that no one dared enter.
But we were taking it back. Inch by scrubbed inch, we were reclaiming it. Soon it would pulse with life again—clean, safe, and ready to welcome them home.
Zuhra patted the top of the stack of blankets, her expression smug. "These have been through hell and back—boiled twice, bleached until the water ran clear. Think they're safe enough to use again?"
"Absolutely. Nothing could survive that treatment."
She hefted the pile again in her arms and turned toward the storage area, and that's when I saw them. Really saw them. The blue-and-white stripes running through the fabric like veins. That particular institutional heft that came from industrial looms. The edges bound with that specific reinforced stitching that only manufacturers used.
The world tilted sideways.
"Wait." The word came out sharper than I intended. I crossed the distance between us in three strides, my hand reaching for the top blanket. "Zuhra. Where did you get these?"
She glanced down at the stack, then back at me, confusion flickering across her face. "Care packages. We get them all the time—churches, community groups, do-gooders who think we need saving." A wry smile tugged at her lips. "The irony is most of the Orcs here could buy and sell half the humans who donate to us. But we live in huts and grow our own food, so obviously we must be destitute." She shook her head. "Blankets, canned soup, secondhand clothes. The charity never stops."
But I wasn't listening anymore. My fingers had found the fabric, tracing that blue stripe like it might burn me. Because I knew these blankets. I'd walked past hundreds of them in the supply closets at Franklin Memorial. Standard hospital surplus. Mass-produced, mass-distributed, utterly unremarkable.
Except when they showed up here.
Ice crystallized in my veins, spreading outward from my chest until my whole body felt brittle enough to shatter. The blanket slipped through my suddenly nerveless fingers.
"When?" The word scraped out of my throat. "When did these arrive?"
Zuhra's expression shifted from confusion to concern. She hugged the blankets closer, her brow furrowing as she thought back. "The same day Chieftain Ruka left to claim his mate." Her face creased as she winked at me. "I remember because half the village was in an uproar—everyone placing bets on whether he'd actually convince you to come back with him." A fond smile ghosted across her lips. "Kael was running a whole betting pool. The delivery truck showed up right in the middle of it all. Everyone was so excited about you and Ruka, I just had a couple of warriors carry all the boxes to storage to deal with later."
"Which warriors?" My voice sounded sharp and choked.
Zohra blinked at my tone but answered readily enough. "Akkak and Turvost. They were on perimeter duty that day, so they were closest when the truck arrived."
Akkak. I remembered Ruka mentioning he was one of the first to fall ill. One of the warriors who'd been strong and healthy one moment, then burning with fever the next.
"When did Akkak get sick?" My voice sounded distant to my own ears, like it was coming from underwater.
Zohra's face went still, her eyes unfocused as she reached back through her memory. "That same day, actually. Later that evening." Her hand drifted to her throat. "I remember because it seemed so sudden. He said at dinner that he felt bad—headache, chills." Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. "By morning, he couldn't get out of bed."
The same day.
The exact same day Ruka had driven to Franklin to claim me. Five days before we'd returned to find children covered in pustules, elders burning with fever, the village transformed into a plague ward.
My stomach lurched. Not a coincidence. It couldn't be.
"What did you use from the shipment?" I asked, my mind racing through possibilities. "The blankets, the food—what got distributed first?"
Zohra's brow furrowed as she thought back. "Only the blankets. "Once everyone started falling ill, we needed them." Her eyes met mine, suddenly sharp with understanding. "Why? Jordan, what are you thinking?"
"I don’t know yet,” I shook off her question, my mind still scrambling to piece together a theory. “The packaging," I said, fighting to keep my voice level even as my pulse thundered in my ears. "Do you still have it? The boxes, bags, whatever they came in?"
Zuhra studied my face, and whatever she saw there made her straighten. "We unloaded the boxes so the CDC could spray everything down with disinfectant, but we save everything for reuse. She didn't ask why. She just turned toward the door. "Follow me."