Rurik POV
Rurik sits on her couch and tries to figure out how to tell her that everything she believes about the world is wrong.
Ivy is in the kitchen making tea. He can hear her moving around. The sound of water boiling. The clink of mugs. She's trying to make this normal and it's not normal and they both know it.
She comes back and sits next to him. Not close. Not far. Just close enough that he can smell her and it makes his wolf lose its mind.
His wolf has been losing its mind for four days.
"Tell me," she says simply.
"Tell you what?"
"Everything. What you are. What that man wanted. What you're hiding from."
Rurik has built his entire life on control. On keeping his emotions locked down. On being the Alpha that his pack needs instead of the man he is. But looking at her right now, he feels that control cracking.
"Werewolves are real," he says and watches her face. She doesn't flinch. "We've existed for thousands of years. We hide in plain sight. We have packs. We have hierarchies. We have laws."
"Okay," she says like he just told her it was going to rain.
"I'm an Alpha. That means I lead a pack. I make decisions for them. I protect them. I've been doing it since I was seventeen years old."
"What happened when you were seventeen?"
"My father was Alpha before me. A rival pack attacked our territory and killed him. I had to take over immediately. There was no time to prepare. No time to be afraid. The pack needed a leader and I became one."
He pauses and looks at his hands. His knuckles are bruised from the fight. From running. From the desperation of trying to survive.
"Four days ago that same rival pack attacked me. Their Alpha, Silas Crane, he's been trying to take our territory for years. This time he got me alone. He got me badly."
Rurik lifts his shirt and shows her the bandages she wrapped around his side. They're already stained with blood but they're holding.
"If my pack sees this, they'll see it as weakness. They'll see it as proof that I'm vulnerable. Silas will use it to push for a challenge to my leadership. People will die because of how badly I'm injured."
Ivy leans forward slightly. She's looking at his wound and her expression is focused. Clinical. But there's something underneath it. Something that looks like care.
"So you hid," she says.
"Yes."
"Why my window?"
"I was running. I wasn't thinking. Your apartment was safe. It smelled like safety. And you..." He trails off because he can't explain the way his wolf knew her. Can't explain the feeling of coming home that hit him the moment he crashed into her living room.
"I needed somewhere to heal where nobody would think to look. I needed silence. I needed someone who wouldn't ask questions."
"But I did ask questions," Ivy says.
"Not the ones that mattered. You asked me if I was okay. You asked me what I needed. You didn't ask me to prove myself or explain my weakness or justify my existence."
She sips her tea and watches him over the rim of the mug.
"How long do you need to hide?" she asks.
"Two weeks. Maybe three. My wounds will heal faster than a human's would but I still need time. I need to be functional before I go back to my pack."
"And when you go back?"
"You forget this happened. You forget me. You build your safe life and you don't look back."
The words cost him. He can feel his wolf pushing against his skin, refusing to accept that this woman is temporary. That this woman is something he's going to have to give up.
Ivy sets her tea down and stands up.
"I'm going to make you food," she says. "You need to eat. You've lost blood and your body is healing itself. You need fuel."
She moves to the kitchen before he can respond.
Rurik sits on her couch and feels something break inside him.
Nobody has asked him what he needs in seventeen years. Not since he became Alpha.
His pack asks what he needs them to do. His father asks what he needs to prove. His enemies ask what he needs to surrender. But nobody asks what Rurik Thorne the man needs. What keeps him alive. What makes him feel human instead of just a weapon.
Ivy Monroe asked him what he needed and she barely knows him.
She comes back with pasta and vegetables and meat. Real food. Substantial food. Food made for someone who eats like a wolf because he is a wolf and his body burns through calories like he's running a fever.
"Eat," she says.
He eats and she watches him like she's making sure he's actually doing it. Like she cares whether he survives this.
When he's finished she asks if he wants more and he says no and she nods like that's acceptable. Like she trusts his judgment about his own body.
"Come on," she says. "You should rest. Your body needs sleep to heal."
She leads him to her bedroom but doesn't come inside. She puts fresh bandages and first aid supplies on her nightstand and tells him to call if he needs anything. Then she closes the door and leaves him alone.
Rurik lies on her bed and he can smell her everywhere. On the sheets. In the air. In his chest.
His wolf is screaming.
It's not the kind of screaming that comes from pain. It's the kind that comes from recognition. From knowing something so deeply that it lives inside your bones. From finding what you've been searching for your entire life and having to pretend you haven't.
She's his mate.
Not just a woman. Not just someone who helped him. His fated mate. The person the universe designed specifically for him. The one his wolf recognizes as home.
Rurik has never had a mate. He's always believed he didn't need one. That love was a weakness he couldn't afford. That attachment was a liability.
But lying in Ivy Monroe's bed, surrounded by the smell of her, feeling his wolf clawing at his skin because she's so close and he wants to go to her and claim her and tell her that she's his, he realizes he's been wrong about everything.
He's been empty his whole life and didn't know it until she opened her door.
Around midnight he can't take it anymore.
He gets out of bed and goes to her apartment. She's asleep on her couch again. She gave him her bedroom but she's sleeping out here like she's standing guard. Like she's making sure he's safe.
She looks so small. So breakable. So human in a world that has suddenly become too big and too dangerous and too full of things that want to hurt her.
Rurik stands over her couch and every cell in his body is screaming at him to touch her. To lean down and kiss her. To scent mark her so that every wolf within a hundred miles knows she belongs to him.
His wolf is clawing at his skin. Pushing. Demanding. Begging to come out and claim what's his.
He can feel his hands shaking.
If he touches her right now, if he lets his wolf have even an inch of control, he won't be able to stop. He'll mark her. He'll bind them together in ways that will change both of their lives forever. He'll make a choice for her that she hasn't agreed to.
And he won't regret it for a single second.
Rurik clenches his fists and forces himself to step back.
Not yet.
He has to tell her the truth first. Has to give her the choice. Has to accept that she might say no even though the thought of her saying no is destroying him from the inside out.
Ivy shifts in her sleep and reaches out like she's looking for something.
Her hand lands on the empty space next to her on the couch.
The space where he's supposed to be.
Rurik stares at her reaching hand and feels his control slipping.
Two weeks.
He has two weeks to keep his wolf locked down. Two weeks to be near her without claiming her. Two weeks to pretend that his entire world hasn't just reorganized itself around one human woman.
He doesn't know if he's strong enough.
But as he watches her sleep, he knows one thing for certain. He's done running. He's done hiding. When he goes back to his pack, he's going back as a different man.
And if they can't accept that, if they can't accept her, then he's going to burn his entire empire down to build something real with this woman who asked him what he needed when nobody else ever has.
His wolf roars inside him and this time he doesn't push it back.
He lets it acknowledge the truth.
She's his.
And he's going to spend the rest of his life making sure she knows it.