Devina stood and gave Donna a quick, warm embrace. The two women's greeting held the easy intimacy of old friends, and for a moment Brendon felt like an intruder — as if he had stepped into a chapel where the pews had already been claimed.
Donna pulled up an armchair and settled in with a professional ease. She turned to Brendon, and the casual kindness slipped into a practiced clinical scrutiny. "You look tired," she said, not as a statement but as an incision, precise and unavoidable.
He could have lied. He almost did. In the end, he let the silence answer for him.
"You missed your appointment last week, to be honest you didn't attend any since you cane back." Donna continued, voice steady. "And your medication refill was last done a year ago. Have you been taking them?"
He fumbled. He had expected this question, and he had rehearsed evasions; none of them felt honest. "Are you roasting me... in any case," he offered finally. "I already told I was busy."
Donna's mouth tightened. "Busy is a thing that makes people forget about their condition." She softened then. "I suppose the rational world says that being busy keeps you safe. The clinical world says that when you avoid the habits that keep you anchored, you risk falling out of orbit."
Devina watched him with interest. "You disappear for over a year, and then the town collapses under scandals and stage murders, and you didn't think to check in with Donna? Not even one voicemail?" She looked amused but not unkind. "You're a total mess."
"Aren't we all?" he replied. The words came out like a joke, but Donna's expression remained steady.
"It's been quiet on my side of town," Devina said conversationally, playing with her cup. "Mostly budget meetings and a lot of people asking why their potholes haven't been filled." She gave him a small smile that could have been consolation or a siren. "Mayor's been under pressure. You looked… exhausted at the last time I saw you."
He remembered the mayor's tirade. He remembered the way the room had felt too small for all the anger that spread through the air. He thought about how wary Devina had looked when he'd first returned — calm, measured, like a person who had learned how to shade herself from a burning sun.
"You and Donna… are old friends?" He tried to keep his tone casual.
"We were schoolmates." Devina's eyes softened, and she took a breath as if the memories were older and heavier than her age suggested. "We used to be inseparable in seventh form. Then life happens. We met again recently — Donna was a godsend of a reunion." She smiled at Donna in a way that was not secretive, but gently grateful. "She anchors me."
Donna laughed. "I anchor a lot of people. It's what we, therapists do."
Brendon watched them. It was disorienting to see this civic figure reduced to someone who liked a morning chat and a quiet cup of tea. He had expected the assistant mayor to be a political appliance — a set of speeches and briefings and guarded smiles. Instead she was human-sized, with a laugh and a perfume and a daily yoga practice.
"Do you know the mayor well?" Brendon asked; his voice was careful. It was as close to politics as he would get in this room.
Devina was candid. "Professional proximity," she said. "Mayor Guerieo... is a man of big speeches and bigger gestures. He needs the town to look like it's working. When things get ugly, he panics. Which is how it becomes my problem." She shrugged. "Mostly, I patch things so his public face doesn't crack."
"And why are you here this morning?" Brendon wanted to ask; curiosity had lengthened into a suspicion he didn't trust to say aloud.
Donna answered before Devina could. "I asked her to come. To see you." There was a small flare of mischief in her tone. "I suggested she'd help because political muscle sometimes smooths the rougher edges — workloads, threats, public pressure." She looked at Brendon with an expression that blended compassion and steel. "I think you need a buffer. Someone to handle the noise while you do the digging. That someone might have a megaphone and a press secretary."
Brendon felt the old reflexive bristle — the autonomy he'd stolen back one day at a time, the half-truths, the scars. "Oh! No no no. Hell no." he said. "Let me clear it. I don't need this kind of favor. I doesn't actually... deserve it."
Devina's eyes were honest. "No one is offering you a favor, Sheriff. I'm offering a choice. I can use the channels available to me — quietly, professionally — to free you from some of the smaller threats. The daze of Mayor Guerieo's PR tantrums, the budget oversight calls, the petty harassment to your team. I can take that weight for you, so you don't have to carry it all."
"That's a political advantage you can take of," Donna added. "He owes her small favors for calm days. He will listen if she asks him to."
Brendon looked at both women. He could feel the calculus happening in his chest. Accepting would place him under a new obligation. But refusing might mean burning slower, alone.
"And why would you do that?" he asked Devina, still having a little suspicion in his tone. "What's in it for you?"
Devina's smile was small and real. "Because I believe in a Ridgecliff where people with ears and tails can walk in daylight without being catalogued as threats. Because you've done work here that actually mattered. And because sometimes, the person who gets their hands dirty should also get to clean their boots when the job is done."
He almost laughed. He almost refused. Instead he said, "That sounds like a speech."
"I can be florid when I want," she said. "But under the speeches, I mean it."
He let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. The lavender around her was strong — not a smell that proved anything and yet the mind wanted coincidence like a thread. It didn't mean she was the Ninja Fox. It didn't mean anything that mattered except that humans and anthros could be kind and useful.
Donna leaned forward, practical as always. "One condition: you need to start coming back for sessions. And you need to commit to your medication. Small things, Mr. Wolf. These are non-negotiable."
He caught himself before he lied again. "I've been… poor at this," he admitted. The confession tasted like metal.
"That's not an indictment," Donna said. "It's fact. You're sleep-deprived, reactive, and in the middle of an investigation that could, if mismanaged, bury you or make you disappear again. You're not an island, no matter how much you want to be. You keep things together better when you have anchors. Medication is an anchor. Therapy is another. Devina is offering to remove political sandbags. Take the help while the tide is out."
There was no theatrics in the clinic — just the earnestness of people trying to keep one another afloat. Brendon felt, with a shock, how very much he wanted to accept. Not because someone had offered advantage, but because he was tired. He was tired of carrying everything until it frayed.
"All right," he said, finally. "I'll come back tomorrow. I'll take the refill." It sounded meager, but it was more than he'd offered in weeks.
Devina's face softened. "Good. And if you let me, I'll talk to a few people. Quietly. I don't promise miracles, but I can nudge the mayor. I can organize cover. Let me know what you need — personnel relief, public statements turned down, reassigned PR tasks."
He looked at her: three years older than him, city-slick, competent. The idea of owing a favor to a politician tightened something at the back of his mind, but the alternative — doing this without help — looked like a slow, preventable collapse.
"Keep it quiet," he said. "We do not need more headlines."
Devina inclined her head. "Quietness is my specialty," she said. "Publicly louder, privately quieter. I'll see what I can do."
Their conversation slid into smaller territories again. Devina asked about the case without pressing for specifics. He told her what was safe: the leak, the masked victim, the pressure from the mayor, and that Whitney Johnson — the online alias — might not be who everyone hoped. He left out the details that could compromise an ongoing interrogation.
Donna listened, knitting together fragments into her clinical framework. She said. "Your chief is asking a lot of yourself. It's fine to accept delegation."
Brendon wanted to be stubborn. It was easier than being vulnerable. But he also wanted, at some primitive level, to be better — for his team, for the victims, for the small town that has offered him a new headstart that he needed. He accepted the help because it felt like the last and only sensible option.
When they stood to leave, Devina slipped a business card across to him, the kind printed on heavy stock. On the corner was a private number, and a small note: For urgent matters, text. No protocols are required.
He took the card and felt the weight of it. She had given him a line to pull when the town threatened to drown him.