Ivy POV
Her client is talking about losing his job and Ivy is nodding at the right moments but she's not really hearing him.
"I feel like I failed," the man says. His name is David and he's been unemployed for three months. "Like I was supposed to be better at this."
Ivy should tell him that losing a job doesn't define his value. She should tell him the company's loss is their failure, not his. She should tell him all the things she's trained to say.
Instead she's thinking about Rurik.
She's thinking about how his hands felt on her face. How his voice sounded when he said he was sorry. How he looked back at her door one last time before leaving.
"I don't think you failed," she tells David because she still knows how to do her job even though her own life is imploding. "I think something outside your control happened and you're processing it."
David nods and keeps talking.
Ivy keeps pretending to listen.
By evening she's exhausted. Not from work. From pretending. From maintaining the version of herself that's functional and put together when the real her is shattered into a thousand pieces.
She goes home and her apartment feels wrong.
It's the same apartment. The same couch where she held him. The same balcony where he kissed her like the world was ending. The same bedroom where she lay awake listening to him breathe.
But he's not here so it all feels like a lie.
Day three of his absence, she stops answering her phone.
Her supervisor texts asking if she's coming in. A client cancels their session. Her mother calls twice.
Ivy turns her phone on silent.
She sits in her apartment and she waits because some part of her still believes he's going to come back. Some part of her thinks this is temporary. That he'll realize he can't stay away and he'll show up at her door again.
By day five she's stopped eating.
Not intentionally. She just looks at food and can't imagine putting it in her body. She can't imagine functioning in a way that assumes there's a future worth living for.
She's had clients like this. Depressed. Disconnected. Going through the motions but not really alive. She always told them it would get better.
She never believed it until now.
On day six her boss shows up at her apartment.
His name is Gerald and he's been her supervisor for three years. He's kind in a distant, professional way.
"You look terrible," he says when she opens the door.
"I'm fine."
"No you're not. You're not answering calls. You called in sick twice. You missed three sessions. This isn't like you."
Ivy wants to tell him the truth. Wants to say that she met someone who made her feel alive and then he left and now she understands what her clients are actually feeling when they talk about emptiness. But she can't say that because it's insane. A man turned into a wolf and crashed through her window and she let him stay and now her entire world is broken.
"I'm just tired," she says.
Gerald steps inside without being invited. He looks around her apartment like he's searching for evidence of what's wrong with her.
"Is there someone I should call? Family? A doctor?"
"No. I'm okay. I just need rest."
He doesn't believe her but he leaves his business card anyway and tells her to call if she needs anything. After he leaves, Ivy looks at the card and feels nothing.
Day seven. One week.
She goes back to work because she can't afford not to. She counsels clients. She tells them they're going to survive this. She tells them pain is temporary.
She's lying to all of them.
Between sessions, she walks to the window of her office and she looks out at the city. All those people living their lives. Going to work. Going home. Building connections. And there's her. Twenty-six years old and realizing that she was never actually alive before Rurik showed up.
Her safe life wasn't safe. It was slow death.
Her job helping people wasn't noble. It was her way of disappearing.
And now that she knows what it feels like to matter to someone, she can't go back to not mattering.
By night, she stops pretending.
She's lying in bed staring at the ceiling and she's thinking about what he said. Find someone human. Build a normal life. Like that was a gift he was giving her instead of the cruelest thing anyone's ever said.
She doesn't want normal. She never wanted normal. She wanted him. She wants to feel like she matters again.
Around midnight she gets up.
She goes to her laptop and she starts searching. She searches for Rurik Thorne. She searches for Northern Cascade pack. She searches for werewolf packs in Washington state.
Nothing comes up that's real.
Of course not. They hide in plain sight. They don't have social media or websites. They exist in a world that humans aren't supposed to find.
But she has to try.
She has to do something besides sit in her apartment slowly disappearing.
She's still at her laptop at 2 AM when she hears the sound.
At first she thinks it's her imagination. But then she hears it again. A noise from outside. A sound that doesn't belong in the middle of the night in a city apartment complex.
Ivy closes her laptop and goes to the window.
There's a wolf standing at the edge of her apartment complex courtyard.
It's massive. Black fur. Still as a statue. And its eyes are locked on her window.
Her heart stops.
Every rational part of her brain says this is dangerous. This is a wild animal. This is something that's going to hurt her.
But her body recognizes something that her mind can't explain.
She knows this wolf.
She knows the way it stands. The way it watches. The way it looks at her like she's the only real thing in its world.
It's him.
Ivy doesn't think. She moves to her door and she's pulling it open before she realizes what she's doing. She steps into the hallway in her pajamas at 2 AM and she takes the stairs down to the courtyard.
The wolf doesn't move.
She walks toward it slowly, aware that one wrong move could end this. That he could decide she's a threat or that this is a mistake.
When she gets close enough to touch him, the wolf's entire body tenses.
"Hi," she whispers like she's talking to a frightened animal instead of the man she's been breaking apart over all week.
The wolf takes a step toward her.
Then another.
She reaches out and puts her hand on his head. His fur is warm and solid and real under her fingers.
He leans into her touch and she can feel him shaking.
"You came back," she says.
The wolf doesn't shift. Doesn't transform. Just stands there letting her touch him while the city sleeps around them and everything changes again.
He came back.
He couldn't stay away.
He's standing in her courtyard in wolf form at 2 AM which means he's been watching her. Following her. Unable to leave her alone just like he said.
His wolf won't let him.
And now she knows with absolute certainty that she's not going crazy. That what happened between them was real. That he's been suffering just like she's been suffering.
"Don't leave again," she says.
The wolf tilts its head and looks at her like it's trying to communicate something it can't say in this form.
"Please," she whispers. "I can't survive you leaving again."
The wolf makes a sound. Not a growl. Something softer. Something that sounds like a response to her breaking.
And then, as she's standing there with her hand on his head, his eyes change.
The grey becomes something else. Something brighter. Something that looks like recognition and desperation and a love so fierce it could burn the entire world down.
This is the moment.
This is when everything shifts.
The wolf lowers its head and presses it against her body like it's trying to absorb her through her skin. Like it's trying to merge with her so they can never be separated again.
Ivy wraps her arms around his neck and she holds on.
"I love you," she says into his fur. "I don't care if you're broken. I don't care if you're dangerous. I love you and I'm not letting you go."
The wolf's entire body goes rigid.
For a moment nothing moves.
Then slowly, carefully, the wolf shifts.