Ivy POV
The screen glows blue at 2:47 AM and Marcus is still crying.
"I don't know how to do this," he says into the camera. His face is blotchy. He hasn't slept in days. "She's been gone six months and I still set her coffee cup on the table every morning. Like she's going to walk down the stairs and drink it."
Ivy leans forward. Her apartment is dark except for the laptop light cutting across her face. She's still in her work clothes even though she finished her office hours four hours ago. She should be asleep. Instead she's here, listening to a man fall apart at an hour when most people are dreaming.
"That's not crazy," she says softly. "That's love. Love doesn't just stop because someone dies."
Marcus nods but he doesn't look convinced. He looks like he's drowning and she's the only rope he can see.
This is what Ivy does. She saves people. Or tries to anyway. She sits in her small apartment in Seattle and she listens to other people's broken stories and she tells them it's going to be okay even when she has no idea if it will be.
"You're going to have days where you forget she's gone for like thirty seconds," Ivy says. "And then you remember and it hits you all over again. But eventually there will be more seconds. More minutes. More hours where you can think about her without feeling like you're dying."
She knows this because she's watched a hundred people crawl through grief. She's learned what helps and what doesn't. She's learned that sometimes people just need someone to sit with them in the dark and tell them they're not alone.
What she's never learned is how to tell anyone that she's lonely too.
"How do you know that?" Marcus asks. "How do you know it gets better?"
Ivy doesn't answer that question directly. She never does. Instead she says, "Because I've watched it happen. I've watched people like you survive the unsurvivable. You're stronger than you think you are."
It's a script she's perfected over five years of being a grief counselor. Kind. Professional. True enough. But it's also a lie because while she's telling Marcus that he's strong, she's thinking about her own empty apartment. About how she finished college and got her degree and moved into this place and somehow forgot to build a life around the career. How she went from having friends and hobbies and dreams to having a job and a laptop and the sound of other people's pain on repeat.
She gave up her life to help people fix theirs.
The trade felt fair when she was twenty-two and believed helping others would somehow heal her too. Now at twenty-six it just feels like she's slowly disappearing.
"I think I'm going to try tomorrow," Marcus says. "I'm going to not set out her coffee cup. I'm going to see if I can make it through the morning."
Pride hits her. This small victory that took all of their energy. This one cup not being set out is somehow huge.
"That's brave," Ivy says and means it. "Call me if you can't make it. Don't suffer alone just to prove something."
"You'll be awake?" he asks.
She laughs because what else can she do. "Probably."
The call ends at 3:04 AM and Ivy closes the laptop. The apartment goes dark except for the city lights bleeding through the windows. Seattle never really goes quiet. There's always traffic. Always sirens. Always the sound of a city that's alive while she sits alone watching it.
She moves to the couch because going to bed feels pointless. She's too wired and too tired at the same time. That weird hour where your body is broken but your brain won't shut down.
She's maybe asleep for forty minutes when it happens.
The window doesn't break like a window normally breaks. There's no sound of something hitting it. No warning at all. One second there's glass and the next there's nothing but empty space and night air and something massive pouring through the opening like the window wasn't even there.
A wolf crashes into her living room.
Not a wolf shaped like a large dog. A wolf that's the size of a car. A wolf with black fur matted in blood, with a wound in its side so deep she can see the muscle underneath, with eyes that are grey and conscious and absolutely desperate.
Ivy's scream catches in her throat and dies.
She's supposed to scream. She's supposed to run. She's supposed to call 911 and lock herself in a bedroom and wait for animal control that will probably shoot this thing on sight because nobody's ever seen a wolf this big and this close to a human without understanding that it means death.
But Ivy doesn't do any of those things.
She watches the wolf collapse onto her hardwood floor, its breathing ragged, its whole body shaking. She watches it try to stand and fail. She watches it drag itself forward like it's trying to get away from something worse than dying on a stranger's floor.
Her counselor brain doesn't know how to process this. But her body knows what to do.
She doesn't think about the teeth. She doesn't think about the fact that this thing could kill her with one movement. She thinks about a creature in pain that needs help and about the fact that she's good at helping things that hurt.
Ivy moves before she makes a decision. She grabs the blanket from the back of the couch and moves toward the wolf but stops short because some part of her still remembers that this is dangerous.
The wolf's eyes track her. They're so smart. So aware. Like there's a person in there trapped behind fur and blood.
"I'm not going to hurt you," she whispers like she's talking to a frightened client instead of a nightmare made physical.
The wolf's breathing starts to slow. It's watching her like it's trying to decide if she's real.
Ivy grabs her first aid kit from under the sink. She moves slowly. Carefully. Like she's approaching something that could shatter. When she gets close, the wolf doesn't move. It just breathes and bleeds and exists in her living room like this is normal, like crashed wolves through windows happen all the time.
The wound in its side is bad. She can see that even in the dark. She cleans it with shaking hands. She wraps it with the bandages she has on hand even though she knows they're not going to be enough. Nothing's going to be enough for something this damaged.
"You're okay," she whispers. "You're going to be okay. I've got you."
She doesn't know if she's lying or not.
By the time she finishes, the wolf isn't moving anymore. Its eyes are still open, still watching her, but its breathing has settled into something closer to normal. She moves to the couch and sits down across from it.
That's when the wolf does something that stops her heart.
It shifts.
There's a sound like breaking bones except softer somehow. Like a secret being told. The fur disappears. The body stretches and changes and suddenly there's a man on her floor instead of a wolf. A massive man with broad shoulders and a bare chest covered in cuts and blood. A man who's completely naked and unconscious and somehow more terrifying than the wolf because he's human and that means he's real.
His face is beautiful in a way that feels dangerous. Strong jaw. High cheekbones. Grey eyes still open and still watching her even though he's unconscious.
Ivy should be screaming now.
She gets up instead and grabs her blanket. She covers him because he's bleeding on her carpet and that seems like something she should care about, except the only thing she can focus on is his eyes. Even unconscious, even bleeding, even in human form, he's looking at her like she's the first real thing he's ever seen.
Her phone is on the couch. 911 is waiting. She could make one call and this nightmare ends. Police. Ambulance. Someone else's problem.
Her hand moves toward it.
But before she can pick it up, his hand shoots out and grabs her wrist. His grip is gentle but absolute. His eyes snap fully open and lock on hers and in that moment Ivy realizes something that changes everything.
He's not trying to hurt her.
He's trying to keep her from calling for help.
And the worst part is that knowing this, understanding that he's a threat to her safety, Ivy doesn't pull away. She stays exactly where she is with her wrist in the grip of a bleeding stranger who just crashed through her window and turned from a wolf into a man.
"Don't," he whispers. His voice is rough and broken and it sounds like it's being dragged up from somewhere deep inside his chest. "Please don't."
The door to her safe, predictable life just slammed shut.
And Ivy Monroe, who has spent twenty-six years playing it safe, who has built walls around her heart the same way she builds them around her life, does the most dangerous thing she's ever done.
She nods.