As the dream ends, I lie in the aftershock and commit his words to memory. I needed to close the door on that part of my life. 

If I wish to be without him, he has made his point clear that he wants to remain in the holding facility. I struggle with the side of myself that sees this as a compromise, that he could be close without having to see him. 

What happens to me in that room, that night, is a transformation of sorts. I step out of the man that was 'Nic' and step into the role of the formal 'Nicolas'. I put 'Nic' in the closet and lock the door, sealing it up as part of myself that I don't wish to revisit. 

While I don't know if I will be the same, what has been reborn will be stronger and more independent, and I promise myself that I'll be fine on my own for at least the time being. Verando was remorseful, but not enough to prevent Marisol from kissing him. 

Not enough to tell me the truth in the dozens of opportunities he'd had to reveal what he'd done with Anuetta. 

Days roll by, and the sharp pain begins to dull into a continual, low, throbbing ache in the pit of my chest. Without him in front of me, it's easier to villainize him; his charm can't reach me here. My dreams slowly become my own, and I see him less and less, though he never speaks to me again as he did that night. 

I have my hard limits, as he likes to call them, and this is one of them. Verando had betrayed me for the last time, and I have to stop allowing myself to be responsible for what happens to him, no matter how tangled our lives had become.

 As the days become weeks, I stop thinking about him so much. 

I stop wondering what he's doing, if he's alright, how he might be coping with his confinement. I begin to see the light in that while I'm not happy, I am surviving far better than what I'd predicted, and I finally start to rebuild a fraction of what I had.

It helps that I have plenty to do; I throw myself into my work. Doing what I came here to do, what I was meant to do, and what I'm now required to do, becomes what consumes every moment of my conscious life, for sleep is something I avoid at all costs.

 It's a tireless job that seems to have no end. 

Things are not always as they appear. 

As strained as that relationship can be, I work with Rhea to track the weather patterns and look back over the years at what the planet should be doing. 

Not only are we behind schedule, but it's also hard to convince the clouds to move in a way that makes sense. They rebel, escaping back into unnecessary flood zones and anchoring there like lost sheep. I am but a shepherd for lazy vapor, and I often feel like giving up on most days. The inspiration of our first indications of green spurred me forward, a new obsession, chasing the green of life. 

We bring in farmers, older families almost snuffed out from our existence, and plants from the vast overgrowth of forgotten states. Jobless civilians begin to plant, grow, and tend to these fragile new crops. Hope blooms as life begins to flourish once more; jobs spring up like tender sprouts, and the news starts to paint a picture of hope. 

There is something very satisfying about doing what I was made to do.

 I pray that that can be enough.

With the need for support comes plenty of practice for Tyler, which aids in my hope to make him as versatile as I am. While Solomonari tend to specialize, I have mastered the element and the ability to conjure, but why I was capable of that had never been explored.

I dream that I could pass on my knowledge to him; teach him, and make him better than I am. Left with nothing but time, I immerse myself in research as I devote myself to him and his training, in addition to my duties as a 'miracle worker.'

Each morning starts the same: we rise as early as possible, often before the sun comes up. Every day, I spend less and less time looking at that side of the bed, where I would covet warmth and comfort. I don't reach for him anymore, but I also sleep restlessly, tossing and turning most nights and waking up more exhausted than the night before.

Each small victory spurs me to push, to climb, to try harder to reach some sort of satisfaction. Success is the ultimate drug; doing what a solomonari is meant to do feels good, but only for a moment. 

It's as if I'm attempting to cleanse my burnt and weary soul.

As David Malcom makes speeches and assures the people that we are doing everything we can and that we will win this, I find that I'm at my most content when I'm out of the limelight.

With each press release, my popularity grows, and people begin to turn away from the 'Great Bitch' as my companions call her. I see less and less of her face on the prompters around the city, and her speeches are no longer broadcast on the loudspeakers throughout the town. 

Change has finally begun to take hold; if only the planet and this hodgepodge family would follow suit.

Change must find me as well. 

Tonic waits in the wings, desperate to be noticed, but nearing him in such a way is too painful and leads to horribly awkward conversations that hurt us both. He can't possibly understand, and I'm not fit to explain to him why I'm so broken.

Sex is the last thing on my mind; it almost frightens me to think about it in a way. My body rejects everything to do with intimacy, shying away from touch, and the thought of even pleasuring myself begins to repulse me. 

As much as I love what I'm doing, who I've become is a stranger. My libido has locked itself away with 'Nic', no longer wishing to entertain my company. I'd betrayed myself, it would seem, and my body refused to bend anymore. Something had to give, and the piece of myself that I'd finally reclaimed had fallen behind one of those closed doors.

Every attempt I made to get comfortable, to forget that I'd left Verando behind, was thwarted by Helen. 

Unchecked and uncontrollable, Helen complicated things at every turn. It was a constant reminder that the wolf could destroy as much as it could give, and that my warlord was trapped in a metal box because I was dragging my feet. 

Her unpredictable nature had us scheduling our work around a timeline that allowed Tyler to take her to the parking garage and let the creature run. 

The white beast was as feral as that wild creature I rode through the plains of Romanian farmlands. It wanted nothing to do with us; it had no interest in our cause. Unchecked, without a leader or a family, the creature was alone and miserable, which wreaked havoc on meek Helen. 

Confronting the reality of Helen was the only way to break my newly formed oasis, to remind me of what I had given up, so I avoided her. Cowardly, I couldn't stand to face her, let alone listen to her screams of agony.

Despite Reid's attempts, his wolf was too afraid to go near her. I would often look at Tyler's face, distraught, and see it mirror my own, for I, too, had dealt with the rage of such a powerful beast. But Tyler's fears were not for his own life as mine were. Tyler only cared about Helen and her dwindling lifeforce, and for that, I couldn't help but harbor the beginnings of resentment.

 How dare he play the game so much better than I did? 

Oftentimes, I would find him just holding her, as tightly as he could, as if he was trying to keep her together as her body shook and overheated. So small, so frail, the wolf was rejecting our vile human food and our cramped lifestyle and, it would seem, rejecting her. A limb that we couldn't cut off, a part that Tonya couldn't continue to repair. 

She ripped out IV lines, she broke out of straps, she fought through sedation. Helen's wolf was desperate to get away from us, but there was no place for her outside these walls.

A distant self remembers being told this could happen; an untrained lycan was a danger to itself.

As weeks turned to months, Marcello's prediction floated farther and farther from my mind.

 Despite Helen dying before me, things were going well, and I wanted to stay on the course. 

What were three months in the span of a lifetime?

 Six months even? 

When I saw her gaunt body and the dark circles under her eyes, the slick skin coated in sweat, I became physically ill all over again. 

Unable to cope, I left for short stints to visit exterior compounds with Marcello and Reid.

 Each tour reminded me of how badly I was needed in New York City, as Tyler alone could not maintain it. We chased the clouds, and I cursed the sky, selfishly hoarding the weather in a tiny place. We work on mitigating flooding, dispersing water to arid regions, and redirecting channels. 

I devise plans for dams, rivers, and lakes, as well as ways to distribute water where it is desperately needed. When all else fails, when I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere, the sequence changes, and it's as if I'm starting all over again. 

There's a desperate need for a team and structure, but I lack the time to do it all or someone I can trust.

The weight of our situation threatens to crush me, and when that happens, the only comfort I can find is in the drink, as I did when I was King. Each time I returned from a trip to the outer cities, I found more disorder and bandages to cover up the gaping wounds in our infrastructure. 

I become increasingly, painfully aware that we are hardly even maintaining, let alone fixing anything, and we are getting farther and farther away from our goal, even in our so-called success. I feel the world is a Rubik's cube; I have one side finished, and I'm too possessive to damage it to fix the other sides. 

My selfish hoarding of this beautiful, brightly colored side will be my downfall, and yet I covet it, a piece of the puzzle completed by my hand. 

What if I can't put it back? 

What if I mess it up, and that beautiful side is lost forever in a maze of many other colors? 

Colors that would swallow it up with all their problems and ailments. 

Where I'm surrounded by a family that I've always wanted, I'm so bitterly alone.

___________________________________________________________

I hang up my coat as I enter the familiar space, grimacing at the distant screaming in the background, which reminds me why I left in the first place. Going to the cabinet, I grab a bottle of wine and pour myself a glass. 

"You're three days late." Rhea greets me, her eyes are darkened underneath.

I clutch my glass, taking a long swallow from the bitter liquid. 

"Got hung up at the border. They're working on a new dam, and I wanted to-" I can't lie to her. 

I wanted to stay away from this place as long as I could. 

Was I hoping Helen would die? Maybe I was hoping she'd be someone else's problem by now, that she would get loose and Mr.Malcom would take her back to the correctional facility. 

But with Tyler overseeing her, she wouldn't get far. 

"How is she?"

Rhea shakes her head, crumpling into a barstool and running her hands through her hair. "In agony, Nicolas. She... she can't go on like this. It's cruel, it's not fair. We need to have a conversation with them both about what we are going to do. That wolf, I don't know what happened when V-" She stops as I tense and shakes her head in frustration. 

"Verando's wolf triggered something in her, and we can't control it. This isn't 19th-century Romania; this is the middle of New York City. We aren't equipped to deal with this." 

I don't know why she's telling me this as if I want to keep the girl—shutting my eyes, stopping the train of thought. In the midst of all this, the wolf had lost her family. Gary refused to see her; Tonya had thrown herself into her research. 

The wolf was crying, screaming, begging for companionship. Perhaps that's why I couldn't stomach her, I felt the same.

"Have you tried drugging her again?"

"Yes. She burns through it in hours. We can't let her live her life drugged. When are they returning Verando and Marisol to us? We need an Alpha, Nicolas." She asked me the question everyone had been too afraid to mention. I had become the unhinged one, the one people avoided and whispered about. "It's been months."

"It's only been three-" I think back, counting. "Six." I sigh, curling one arm around myself as I take another drink. 

They'd been avoiding this topic, for it made me drink more than usual. I knew it was becoming a vice; I'd become sad, and I'd drink myself into a stupor until Marcello could drag me out of the house again or I could escape. There was rarely a moment in this hell where I didn't find myself mildly intoxicated within these walls.

She pulls out her tablet and sets it on the table. "There's a big storm system coming in, a hurricane. If it hits the city, with all the rain we've been getting, we will flood, and the lower regions will not survive. We need it to get redirected this way-" She touches below us with her finger. "There's a drought going on in this region. If they could capture this hurricane, perhaps we could gather enough moisture for them to form their clouds, and we could reconnect these two systems. It seems like the dry patches are causing the breaks in the cloud patterns." 

I watch the diagram she proposes, the point of the conversation forgotten. 

"Rhea, that's an excellent idea," I tell her, hoping to perk her up. 

Yet, she isn't smiling. "It's bizarre that a hurricane is trying to hit us at this time of year..." She points out. 

I shrug, indifferent. "Nothing is predictable now." I swallow the rest of my glass and pour myself another. "Tyler and I can redirect it. It'll be a big job, but the payoff will be incredible. We need to get to the coast and use the wind." This is doable and might be the break we've been looking for. "See? The Earth wants our help; this isn't all for not."

"Or it wants to wipe you off the face of this planet. This thing is building strength... You need to call David and tell him this is the next miracle you wish to perform. This could get us our friends back." 

Call David. 

Does she not know that I talk to David regularly? 

Does she not watch the news? 

I suppose not many of us do. I only watch it long enough to see David speak most of the time. Tapping my glass nervously with my ring,  I watch the ground, curling in on myself. She deflates as she takes me in, slowly standing. 

"Let me guess. You've been talking to David this whole time, haven't you?"

 I run a hand through the ends of my ponytail, leaning back against the countertop, unwilling to acknowledge her disappointment.

There's nothing for her to say to me; nothing to do to convince or chastise me because she's said it all before. With a sarcastic snort, she flicks off her tablet and rests her hands on it; in the chilling silence, I hear Helen scream again and shut my eyes. 

"Well." She puts on her best faux smile. "Call David and tell him what you wish, then. I think I will go home for a while as I can't take this anymore. This hurricane will be here in a few days, and I hope you know what you're doing, Nicolas, for all of our sakes. If that thing touches down here, there won't be a New York City left to defend, and if that lycan breaks loose... I don't have to tell you what will happen to Helen."

Watching her leave, downing the rest of my glass, my gaze falls on the empty bottle with a wave of disappointment. 

As I pull out my phone, I grab a bottle of whiskey and pour some into a glass, dialing the number. 

"Hey... Did you see this hurricane?.... We need to talk about business."