There was a sound in a clinical setting that stopped time.
She knew this theoretically — had known it since her first year of residency, when she'd stood in a room watching a monitor and understood for the first time that a heartbeat was not just data. That it was the specific proof of a person continuing.
She understood it differently on Thursday afternoon.
The room was small. Clean. Neutral territory practice, exactly as Bettany had specified — the physician had seventeen years of lycan obstetric experience and the specific quality of someone who asked the right questions before asking any questions at all. Zevran sat beside the exam table with his hands in his lap and the expression of a man who had been completely composed for the drive over and was now not managing anything at all.
