My ears are still ringing from Caroline's onslaught, but I can hear Shay opening the bathroom door.

"Look, Caroline, I'm really sorry, but I sorta kinda gotta go." The words are a hiss through the phone line, rushed by awkward panic.

Caroline is laughing on the other end, bell like and euphoric. "Of course you do, Nikki. Go! Call me tomorrow! We're doing brunch before I go into work, no excuses. Love you, have fun!"

The line goes dead.

For a second I just stare at my phone, pondering my life's choices. Then my shoulders slump and I drop heavily onto the couch, tossing the damn phone onto the cushions beside me. Groaning, I curl forward to hold my face in my hands.

This is my life. These are my choices...Fucking hell.

"Everything alright?"

Shay's voice, timidly inquisitive, coaxes me out of the fetal position in order to look at her. I heave a sigh, but nod my head slowly after a moment.

"Does this whole living a double life thing ever get easier?" I mutter, grabbing a pillow into my lap and reclining back into the couch. Shay chuckles dryly.

"In some ways, yes. In others, no. It's a price we have to pay to live among humans."

The she-wolf has composed herself once more. There's none of the lingering...whatever that had swayed me to emotional insanity earlier. It's a true relief; the room feels lighter, less suffocating, but...also emptier.

I swallow thickly, and sigh again, using my whole body. "Wonderful, good to know."

Shay takes a step closer, just one. She pauses, seems to hesitate as if testing the waters, then draws closer still, standing near the couch within arm's reach of me. She doesn't sit.

"It's hard sometimes, Nikole, being what we are in this world...But this life is worth it, I promise you. I know you can't see that now, but you will."

I shut my eyes, and for the briefest of seconds, I feel like crying. "I hope so." My voice comes out smaller than I intended, meek. But I am so tired of struggling with this; my life has been less than easy since being turned. Despite my obvious success in coping, most days, my actions were driven primarily by fear. Fear of discovery. Fear of hurting someone. Fear of death.

Beside me, Shay draws in a slow, deep breath, and looks down at me with a small frown and sad eyes. "You don't know it now, Rabbit, but things are already better. You're not alone anymore. You have a pack. Something every Varg needs...I know they're strangers now, but they don't have to stay that way."

The look I fix her with is incredulous at best. I'm still not sure how I feel about interacting with other werewolves. Meeting Marian, Darren, and even Gavin had helped set aside some doubts, but most of my interactions had been with Shay and she...well... Shay was still an enigma, albeit one I was slowly becoming more accustomed to.

As if she could tell the moment my thoughts drifted to her, the she-wolf abruptly gave me a small smirk. "And you've got me now, of course. Lucky you, really."

There's nothing I can do to keep from scowling. "Oh yeah, lucky, lucky me."

Shay just chuckles, then surprises me by snatching my discarded phone up off the couch, and holding it out to me.

"Put in your passcode." She instructs. I blink up at her, confused, but comply nonetheless. Shay is quick to steal my phone back, and I watch her typing away for a minute, before she holds the screen up in front of my face to show me something.

My contacts App is open to a new addition, listing a number, an address, and a name.

Shay Kerrigan.

Warmth spreads its way from the center of my chest, moving laterally through the rest of my body. Pink flushes my cheeks, and my breath hitches in my throat.

Fuck, why am I acting like a God damn middle school girl? It made perfect sense for her to give me her number. Perfect, practical sense, free of any sentimentality. There was absolutely nothing regarding this situation that warranted this kind of reaction from me.

I blamed it on the fact that Shay was pretty. Like really pretty. Like, unfairly pretty.

Fucking werewolf genetics.

"That's my cell. Feel free to text or call me if you need anything. Like, if you have questions, or if you're worried about something, or..." Shay paused, and shifted slightly on her feet. "Or, if, 'ya know, you're just feeling overwhelmed and need to talk...." She straightened her posture, and cleared her throat. "I'm here to help."

The she-wolf holds my phone out to me, and I hesitate a moment before taking it. Shay seems to be acting pretty low-key about this whole thing, but something about this moment seems significant in a way I can't understand. When I take my phone from her, our fingers brush, and I tell myself that the jolt of electricity I feel is nothing but a delusion, because that type of shit is cliché and vomit-inducing.

However, there's something in the way Shay watches this miniscule interaction unfold that makes my stomach flutter; makes me think that each move she makes is the product of careful calculation. Her eyes are focused on our hands, the point of fleeting physical contact.

There is nothing to mirror the response from earlier, from the last time we touched. No emotional cascade effect, no torrential downpour of desperation, no overwhelming instinct to press closer out of necessity and plead for more.

There is only the ephemeral, perhaps accidental, brushing of skin. Soft and warm and guiltless.

I draw back slowly from the contact, clutching my phone to my chest. Shay, now focused in on my facial expressions, cocks her head to one side in a manner both curious and bemused. When she makes eye contact, and gives me the smallest of smiles, I blush and drop my gaze.

A breathy titter of laughter escapes Shay's lips, and she steps back, creating more space between us. "It's a continuous surprise just how honest your eyes are, Rabbit. You have an open soul, even if the rest of you is closed off." The she-wolf sounded amused, and almost...touched.

More color rises to my cheeks, and not for the first time, I curse my fair complexion. "And what exactly do you mean by that?" I huff, standing and moving to collect the empty tea cups from the table. The one I had knocked over earlier is still dripping tea onto my rug. Just perfect.

"Nothing, Rabbit. It was a compliment." Shay laughs, shaking her head as she follows me into the kitchen at a safe distance.

"Sounded a little backhanded to me." I grumble, depositing the mugs in the sink. I then turned to snatch a roll of paper towels from the panty, before stomping back into the living room to tend to the stain on my rug. Shay lingered behind a moment, only to follow after me once more.

"It wasn't meant to be an insult, Nikole. I like your eyes."

I drop the tea-laden paper towel in my hand, and it lands with a with wet 'plop'. Embarrassed, I scramble to pick it up, and continue on with my chore, trying to remain unaffected. The heck? What kind of statement was that? There had been nothing flirty about her tone of voice, nothing suggestive in the least. Rather, it came across as rather matter-of-fact.

"Uh huh, sure." I scoff. Surely, she was attempting to placate me.

The she wolf drifts behind me like a shadow, feet silent, and I watch her out of the corner of my eye.

"Can I help?" Her voice comes soft over my shoulder, seeking peace.

I sigh, and shake my head. "No, I'm almost done. It wasn't bad." I dab the rug with another paper towel, making sure it was dry, then ball up the trash and get to my feet. Shay stands aside to allow me passage back to the kitchen, where I toss the soggy paper towels into the trash can.

The black wolf continues to loiter nearby, looking somewhat self-conscious. Her eyes flicker to the clock on the microwave, and I see her suck in a breath through her teeth. I follow her line of sight to check the time myself. It's late now, half past 11.

"I should go, Nikole. I've taken up too much of your time." Shay sighs, and steps toward the door, shoulders drawn.

"It's alright. Not like I need much sleep anymore." I jest half-heartedly, following the wolf to the door to show her out.

Shay chuckles wryly, and shakes her head. "You should try and get some rest anyway. Don't you have tests coming up?"

I wrinkle my nose up at her. "Don't remind me."

That earns a real laugh from Shay, who turns her body towards me and smiles. It's then that I realize that the space, before constant between us, has now diminished in the small entryway of my apartment. We are close enough to touch with ease, and the scent of the woman before me tickles my nose and ignites a strange tingle at the base of my spine.

"Thank you, Rabbit. For the tea and company." Her voice is quiet, just a few notes above a whisper, and almost guilty.

It is through conscious effort that I avoid eye contact when Shay leans in ever so slightly to bid me good night in a soft, hopeful, voice that speaks of tentative future hellos. I barely manage to whisper my own farewell before the she-wolf is out the door.

Left in the silence of my apartment, I listen to Shay's receding footsteps as she walks down the hall, getting fainter and fainter still, until she is gone. A strange sort of vacancy descends in her absence. My small apartment suddenly seems vast, and empty, and too quite. And I am left feeling drained, hollow.

I am suddenly exhausted. The effort needed to lock my front door, then drift ghost-like to my bedroom is almost too much for me to handle. There had been too many ups and downs today. Too much strangeness that I had no hope of explaining. It left me withered and drained, physically and emotionally.

Groaning, I kick off my pants, remove my bra, and crawl into bed wearing only a shirt and a pair of boy-shorts. The sheets are cold as I crawl beneath them, and a shiver runs up my spine as the cool fabric glides over my bare legs. In contrast, my body is warm, and I curl in on myself, burying my nose beneath the covers, eyes tightly shut.

I draw in breath slowly through my nose and hold it in my lungs as I try to relax myself. But when I exhale through my mouth, I can taste on my tongue that the air carries with it a foreign scent, one otherwise alien to my bedroom. It's Shay's scent, I realize after a heartbeat of confusion. Before I can consider the implications, I pull the collar of my shirt over my nose and breath deep. The action was probably instinctual, I rationalized.

The she-wolf's scent stands out among the normal smells of my home, rich, wild, and certainly not helping me sleep. Its woven its way into the fabric of my shirt, and I'm wary of the train of thought that leads me briefly to consider just how this fact came to be; I'm wary of memories that revolve around Shay's arms around me, the warmth of her chest beneath my cheek, and the sounds of my own piteous whimpering.

"Fucking hell, Nikole. Get your shit together!"

With an annoyed growl I rip my shirt up and over my head, then fling it at the floor, startling my cats. I'm thankful to find that my skin doesn't hold Shay's scent in the same way, because I really wasn't in the mood to take a shower.

I spend an ungodly amount of time tossing and turning before sleep finally finds me.

It is not an easily earned rest, and it ends all too abruptly come morning.

At first, when I awake, I am disoriented, and unsure about what had woken me. I spend several seconds blinking slowly, orienting myself to being conscious. The clock reads 9:02, and I'm beginning to grow irritated at being up so early on a Sunday, when I hear someone knocking on the front door.

"The hell?" I mutter as I throw myself out of bed and scramble to grab some clothes to wear, settling on a pair of purple and black flannel pj pants and a loose fitting grey shirt that both pass a quick sniff test. Who the hell could that be?

On the way out of my room, I catch a fleeting glance of my terrible bed head in the mirror, and cringe. Half of my hair is plastered to the side of my head, while the other half looks like it's been through a wind tunnel. Wow, just wow.

I do what I can with my fingers as I run to the door, skidding to a stop and taking a second to look out the peep hole. The sight that greets me causes me to choke on my own spit. Fuck, oh fuck. This had to be a bad dream, or at least a terribly cruel joke.

Outside my door is a werewolf elder. Eira, if I remembered correctly. The silver-haired woman is smiling and holding up what looks to be a cup of coffee in one hand.

"Good morning Nikole." She speaks cheerily through the door, having obviously heard me. I forcibly close my gaping mouth, and slowly unlock the door with clumsy, shaking fingers.

When I open the door, all I can think of is 'why, why is she here?" Eira is immaculately dressed in a neatly pressed white blouse, and a modest dark blue skirt. Her long silver hair is tied into a neat braid that rests over one of her shoulders. In contrast, I am the definition of the word 'mess.'

"G-good morning, ma'am." I offer weakly, nervously, my gaze dropped submissively low.

The elder takes in my bed-ragged appearance, and smiles. "Sorry to have woken you dear, but I brought breakfast." She holds up caddy with two coffee cups, and a bag wafting with a delightfully sweet aroma. "I was hoping me might have a little chat."

"O-of course ma'am, please come in." I pray I'm being polite enough as I step out of the doorway to allow the woman inside. Fucking hell, my apartment is in no way fit to receive such a surprise guest. Eira stands with the presence of a God in my narrow entry way; tall, refined, and self-assured. There is an energy about her that billows like steam, churning my stomach and igniting a current of adrenaline through my body. Every fiber of my being screams that this woman is one of power.

Well, almost every fiber.

My traitorous stomach chooses that moment to rumble, no doubt sold on the promise of a free meal, and I fight the urge to curl into myself and pray for death. To her credit, Eira just laughs and presses the bag of food into my hand as she enters my home.

"Those are some of the best apple danishes you'll ever have." She grins at me as she carries the coffee caddy into the living room where she sets it down on the table and takes a seat on the couch. Her body language is relaxed and refined, her movements unhurried. The woman looks far too elegant to be sitting so comfortably on my cheap, tacky sofa.

Eira pats the seat cushion next to her. "Please dear, come sit." For a second it's hard to believe that this woman is a wolf in disguise. Her smile is bright and easy, and her presence seems to shift; she radiates a sort of sophisticated serenity now, like a proud, aging queen. Around her dances the faint scent of an expensive floral perfume.

I humbly fulfill her request, sitting down slowly with a stiff back and what I hope is a polite smile on my face.

For a moment, I feel as if I am being studied beneath a microscope; Eira's pale grey-hazel eyes watch me intently; detached and analytical. But the sensation of scrutiny passes quickly, and the werewolf picks up one of the coffee cups from the table.

"Here you go. Consider it an apology for disturbing you so early." She smiles easily at me and takes a sip of her own coffee, while I clutch at the proffered cup dumbly.

"Oh, um, you're not disturbing me ma'am! I'm sorry I'm, uh, not exactly decent." I cringe. Be polite Nikole! Don't fuck this up!

Eira waves a blasé hand in the air. " You have nothing to apologize for. But please, do stop calling me 'ma'am'." She grins warmly at me over the ridge of her coffee cup. "I'm not here on any official business; so rest assured that you're not in trouble. This is just a little social call. I wanted to check up on you, see how you were doing with everything. These past few nights have been difficult, I'm sure."

I bow my head, biting my lip. "I-I'm doing alright, ma'am." The honorific slips from me before I can consider it. I honestly can't fathom referring to her in any casual way.

Eira shakes her head with a small smile, then motions gently to the bag of pastries left untouched on the table. In that moment, she reads every bit as a young grandmother. Unlike the other members of the werewolf council, Eira looks to be in her 50s, rather than her early 30s, and the energy she radiates seems to be more controlled...less animal.

"Why don't you eat something, dear." She watches me expectantly, serene smile ever-in-place. I hesitate the length of several heartbeats, before reaching for the bag and delicately pulling out a danish. It smells like sugary sweet heaven, and my stomach grumbles in agreement with Eira's suggestion.

Mortified, I awkwardly clear my throat and offer the danish to Eira with my best attempt at a smile. The elder merely shakes her head at me, and motions for me to eat myself.

"You go ahead, dear. I already ate my fill on the way here. I'm weak to sweets, you see, especially when it comes to breakfast. Always need a little sugar in the morning to coax me out of bed." Her tone is humorous, and light-hearted. Eira comes across as genuine and kind, but the fact of the matter is she holds a position of power, and that knowledge alone is enough to temper my reactions.

"Thank you ma'am, that's very kind of you. They smell delicious." I thank her, shy but earnest, and Eira just smiles and nods, encouraging me.

The first bite is bliss, and I have the choke back the contented sounds that threaten to reverberate in my throat as I chew. I seldom indulge in sweets so early in the morning, outside some sugar in my coffee. This danish is a rare, tasty treat, and despite the awkward circumstances surrounding it, I cannot help but enjoy it. My stomach is starting to become a real weakness.

Eira watches me with patiently gentle eyes, crossing one of her long legs leisurely over the other, and sitting back. "Good?" She asks with a smile, and I can only nod, my mouth currently full off food.