ELENA.
“And then I loved myself more.” The words come easily, surprising me with how completely true they are.
“Eventually.”
“Yeah.” He is quiet for a moment.
“For what it’s worth, when I saw you walk into that interrogation room, not shaking, not folding, not giving Chen a single inch to work with I thought: that’s the wolf Damien described.”
“And what wolf was that?”
“One who doesn’t break just because someone stops holding her together.”
The office feels warmer.
Or perhaps that is my wolf, who has been forming increasingly vocal opinions about Alexander for approximately six weeks.
“Are you a walk-in patient?” I ask.
“Or a walk-in or something else?”
He smiles.
It changes his whole face.
“Damien says you haven’t agreed to come to a pack dinner yet.
He’d like you there this Friday.”
“Damien has a phone.”
“Damien also has a sister who ignores his calls when she’s at the clinic.”
“Fair.” I close the patient file.
“Tell him I’ll come.
And tell him to make sure there’s good whiskey.”
“I’ll tell him.” Alexander stands.
“Also… for the record: Grey is my mother’s name.
I use both.
I thought you should know.”
He leaves before I can respond.
I sit in my office for a moment I can’t entirely afford in the middle of a packed schedule, staring at the doorway he just walked out of.
My wolf makes a sound that isn’t quite a howl.
Dominic comes to the clinic on a Thursday afternoon.
He calls ahead this time, which is new.
I tell Jamie to put him in the small consultation room with the good chairs, which is also new.
I have stopped letting things simply happen to me and started arranging them instead.
He looks like a man who has been taking apart his own life with a wrench and rebuilding it differently.
I sit across from him and wait.
“The council appointed a new Alpha for the Ashford pack,” he says.
“Pending the trial.”
“I heard.”
“It’s not me.
I stepped down.” He says it with the quiet decisiveness of someone who has made peace with a hard decision.
“I don’t think I ever truly wanted to be Alpha.
I think I wanted to be left alone to make different choices than the ones I made.
Stepping down felt like the first honest thing I’ve done in years.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet.
Something smaller.
Something real.” He exhales.
“I came to tell you that the last of the frozen accounts have been cleared.
Your name is fully removed from everything.
Sage has the confirmation.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s not enough.”
“No,” I agree.
“It isn’t.
But it’s something.”
He looks at his hands.
“I dream about that drawer.
The one with your father’s crest.”
“Dominic.” I called out his name in shock.
“I know.
I know it’s too late for this.
I just….” He stops.
“I need you to know that I see it now.
The whole picture.
What I had and what I squandered and who I could have been if I’d been braver.” His grey eyes lift to mine.
“I’m not asking for anything.
I just need you to know that you were never less than enough.
You were always more.
More than I deserved.
More than I saw.
More than I knew what to do with.”
The room is very quiet.
I think about the nineteen-year-old girl who fell in love with a gift of medicinal herbs.
The twenty-two-year-old who walked down an aisle her brother refused to witness.
The woman who baked cookies at two in the morning because the bed was too empty and work was the only thing that still felt real.
“I forgive you,” I say.
He blinks.
“Not for you,” I clarify.
“For me.
Because I’m a healer, and I know what unforgiveness does to a body over time.
And because you were also a victim of your mother’s ambitions, even if you participated in mine.” I hold his gaze.
“But forgiveness isn’t an invitation, Dominic.
It’s a door I’m closing on my own terms.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” I stand.
“I hope you find something real to build.
I genuinely do.”
He rises.
Offers his hand.
I shake it.
And that quietly, without drama, without tears is the end of three years.
He walks out.
I stand at my window and watch the ordinary Thursday afternoon traffic below.
A woman walking a dog.
Two children racing their bikes.
The city is going on doing what cities do.
My wolf is still.
Just still.
Waiting for whatever comes next.