Out in the corridor, Robert found him again. "You okay?"
Brendon stared at his hands — the long knuckles, the places where fur could have met skin. "I am," he answered. "For now."
Robert's voice was honest, small and sympathetic. "You did what you had to. Don't let it be used against you. Or the town."
Back on the steps, the world already had its clips. A dozen versions had been posted: an angular twelve-second video of the roar, a slo-mo of the iris change, one dramatic Black and White with a whispered headline: SHERIFF WOLF LOSES IT IN LOBBY. The comments were a litany of fear and fervor.
As they hustled through the station to set the new plan into motion — statements, interviews, the slow choreography of damage control — Brendon felt the wolf curl like a cat inside his chest. It had been unleashed and then tamed. Tamed now by duty, by strategy, and by the brittle anchors of friendship; Robert's steady presence had been the rope around the animal's foot.
Hours later, after Tyson had given his press line to a dozen outlets, after the rookies had been taken aside and interrogated, after Rosa had been offered temporary security and a formal apology that smelled faintly of contractual obligation, Brendon sat alone in his apartment room with his head in his hands. The phone buzzed in his pocket with notifications: clips, takes, armchair psychologists and cruel editors.
He breathed in slowly, counting like Donna had taught him in the clinic. One. Two. Three.
Tomorrow there would be hearings. There would be petitions. There would be mayoral cables and the inevitable counsel from higher up. Major outlets would compare his howl to every myth about wolves and villains. But right now, in the smell of his apartment room sweat and metal, he felt the cost of being what he both was and wasn't allowed to be: a protector who could become the very thing some feared.
He pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders and walked out into the rain. The town's evening sunset turns into molten in colors under the storm. Somewhere in the distance a reporter shouted another question at the station doors, but the words were rolled into a grey that faded into patience.
The wolf inside him slept, coiled, for now. The man walked away with his hands in his pockets, feeling the weight of public spectacle as if it were a second, heavier coat. He had given the people a show and, for better or worse, a reminder that beneath his badge was something older and more dangerous than the law.
At home, the phone pulsed once more. A new clip had appeared online — a minute longer than the first, with a shaky hand pulling back to show the shocked faces of the lobby. The comments were already burning. Brendon read one aloud to himself and then put the phone face down.
"I'll clean it up," he said into the empty kitchen, as if promising someone else.
Outside, the rain hollowed like a drum. Inside, his pulse slowed. He'd stopped the immediate violence, but the echo would follow — in headlines, in councilrooms, in the jitter of Mayor Guerieo's next phone call. The town's fragile trust had taken another bruise.
He rubbed his face and wondered who would be brave enough to keep him from himself next time.
The answer was the same he'd had since the start: people who believed in law more than fear. People like Robert. People like Judith. People like Jason. Even Devina. People who'd shown up even when the town asked them not to.
He swallowed and let the silence fill the sheriff's office. The howl had left its memory in his bones. He would have to live with it, and he would have to answer for it. He would put it in the ledger of this case like every other wound: accounted for, catalogued, and, when the time came, explained.
Down in the lobby of the Ridgecliff Police Station, a recorder hummed as someone edited the clip into another iteration, and the world kept reshaping itself around the story.