Felix

I managed to fall into a fitful sleep, one I wasn't sure would be possible without Everett's scent wrapped around me. Once the blankets warmed up, I could almost trick myself into believing he was here with me.

Even when I woke up, the wallowing continued for an embarrassingly long time. I couldn't stop thinking that this wasn't how my mating was supposed to go. Usually, mates met with both of them awake. They wouldn't hesitate to accept each other – in fact, most couples sealed the bond the same day they met, or maybe the next day. They would move in together immediately, sometimes going back and forth between their packs until they figured out how to merge their lives. They didn't separate, not like this.

Everett should be mine by now. He should be mine and he should be here, or I should have gone with him. But how could I abandon my students? I didn't know how I got to the hospital, but logic told me that they had defeated the last wolf, the one who so nearly took me out, and they had gotten me help. I owed them my life, so even if I was willing to leave their training in the hands of another, I couldn't.

I reached for my phone and checked it. It was almost noon and I had missed a text from Everett hours ago telling me he arrived in Delta. Knowing he got there safely should have made me feel better, but instead it reinforced the knowledge that he was gone.

I wasn't this man. I wasn't the person who fell apart because things didn't go their way. In the past, I'd scraped myself up and gotten on with things. I wasn't able to fall apart like this when my parents died since Mel and Magnus needed me. Now, I was alone. No one was relying on me to get up and keep going on like I wasn't missing a vital piece of myself.

I gritted my teeth and left the bed, reminding myself that if I lay in these blankets for too long, they would start to smell more like me than like Everett. I wanted his scent to last as long as possible. I left the guest bedroom and wandered down the hallway, feeling like a ghost in my own home. I refused to shower the smell of him off of me. I didn't want to sit in the living room, where we had been so happy just yesterday. I couldn't bear to look at the dining room, where my plate of uneaten food still sat on the table and where his plate had already been put away in the dishwasher, gone like he was.

My house was a shrine to Everett's leaving and I wanted no part of it.

Finally finding a sense of purpose, I went back down the hall to my bedroom, where I quickly changed into jeans and a t-shirt before grabbing my keys and heading out of my house. I pulled my phone from my pocket and called Molly, knowing that she usually took her lunch break around now. Molly was my ride or die, and had been my best friend since we were small.

"Felix! Why did I have to hear from my father that you were awake?"

I winced. "Sorry, Molly. Things have been crazy and I wasn't thinking."

"You mean you weren't thinking about me," she corrected. I opened my mouth to protest her harsh but accurate assessment, but she kept going. "It's okay. I know you found your mate and it's okay that he's taking up all of your attention for now."

I sighed in relief. "What are you doing now? Can we meet up?"

"Oh, can I meet him? Hold on, let me check my calendar."

"Sorry, Molly, he had to go back to his pack for now. I'm alone."

The sound of Molly typing in the background stopped immediately. The silence made me itch. "Meet me at my office? I'll drive us to the diner. I don't have to be back until two."

"Sounds good." I hung up and got into my car. Molly worked in our main administrative building, which was an easy running distance from my house, but I wasn't convinced I would want to come back home after lunch. Better to have a car, just in case.

She was waiting outside for me when I arrived, leaning against her car. "I said I would drive!" she said when I pulled up next to her and rolled down the window.

"Just get in," I replied. She rolled her eyes and obliged.

"So, where's the mate?" she asked. One of the things I liked best about Molly was that she didn't dance around sensitive issues. That definitely could be a negative, but mostly it was a relief.

"Delta pack. He works in finance and they're having a crisis. It sounds like he's really important there." I was definitely bragging, but bragging about my mate made me feel a little better about his absence.

"Bagged a smart one, did you?" Molly asked. I glanced at her and saw her eyes twinkling.

"I did," I said, feeling oddly proud.

"Tell me more about him," Molly said, and I did, all the way to the diner.

--

After I dropped Molly off at her office, my mood plummeted back to the same low I was at in the morning. I didn't want to go home, but I didn't want to be around anyone else who wasn't Everett right now either. I left my car in my driveway, stripped, and tore through the woods in my wolf form, hoping some exercise would help me get my mind straight.

It didn't work. My feet took me back to my favorite cliffside, where Everett had nuzzled against me, accepting me – at least when we were in our wolf forms.

I spun around and sprinted back home, where I deep-cleaned my bathroom and then my kitchen, just for something to do. I went out for groceries, since I had promised to make eggplant parmesan and didn't want to let Magnus down. I went home and cooked, feeling like a machine set on auto-pilot.

Was this what the rest of my life would feel like if Everett refused to give us a chance? How long would it take before the frail bond between us snapped? When it did, would it break me further or set me free? Dark thoughts ate at me until I was relieved when a knock sounded on my front door. I didn't want company, but being alone was worse.

I opened the door and found that it was Magnus. My heart sank when I remembered why he knocked now instead of just walking in. "Hey, come in."

Magnus stepped inside and hung his jacket on the coatrack. He turned to face me and his broad smile faltered. "What's wrong?" he demanded, looking afraid.

I shook my head. It was suddenly hard to speak.

Magnus lifted his nose to the air and sniffed. "He's gone," he said, a look of desolation overtaking him.

My chest felt tight. "An emergency came up at work. He had to go."

Magnus hugged me tightly. "I'm so sorry. But he'll be back, right?"

"Right," I said, but the lack of conviction in my tone was obvious.

Mel knocked on the door a couple of minutes later. When Magnus told her why Everett was missing, she frowned and opened her mouth, then shut it again. After a pause, she said, "Are you okay?"

I shrugged.

"Are you sure there was a work thing?" she asked hesitantly.

"He wasn't lying," I told her, needing to believe it was true. I had no reason to doubt Everett and I didn't want to think about what would happen to my mental state if I started now.

"I'm with Felix on this," Magnus cut in. "Everett has played it straight with us from the start. I can't see a reason he'd make something up now. If he needed space or whatever, he would have jut said so."

That made me feel a bit better. Mel never trusted anyone outside of me and Magnus, so I wasn't surprised she was skeptical now. "Let's just eat, okay?" I asked.

I headed into the kitchen with Mel and Magnus following. Behind me, Mel whispered, "I get what you did there; Everett has definitely been playing things straight," and snickered. I heard a soft whack, which told me Magnus had probably punched her arm, but he couldn't seem to help chuckling. I shook my head but didn't bother to fight off a smile. Having my siblings over was so much better than being alone.

We loaded up our plates in silence. Magnus broke the silence with a rapturous moan when he took his first bite, making me smile. "You sound like a dying cow," Mel said.

"Oh? And how much experience do you have with dying cows, Mel?"

"Shut up."

Their sniping washed over me soothingly. Others had complained to me about it in the past, especially when they were still growing up and I was doing my best to raise them. Adults would visit, checking in on us, and would pull me aside to say that I needed to keep the family together. They thought Mel and Magnus' fighting would tear us apart. They were wrong. The bond between them ran deep – they wouldn't still live together in their twenties if they really disliked each other. They just honestly enjoyed bickering, and I honestly enjoyed watching them.

I kept checking my phone throughout our meal even though I had taken my phone off vibrate for the first time in a decade and turned the volume all the way up. I was worried about missing Everett's call. It was almost six. He had to be getting home soon, right?

But six passed, then seven. Mel and Magnus were relaxed on the couch watching old episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" at eight and I still hadn't heard from him. At nine they switched to watching news bloopers on YouTube. At ten they were both drooping with exhaustion and I finally sent them home. As much as I liked having other people in the house with me, it wasn't practical. We all had to get up early for work in the morning.

At ten thirty I was snuggled into the blanket that smelled like Everett, trying to sleep after having given up all hope of him calling, when my phone rang.

I sat up and scrambled for my phone. It got lost in the blankets and I dug through them until the small glass brick was in my hand and I could see Everett's name lighting up the display along with a picture I had stolen of him.

"Hello?" I answered, sounding breathless.

"Hi. Sorry it's so late," he said. The tension that had gripped me all day loosened and I sagged against the headboard.

"It's okay. Late night?" How long had he waited to call me?

Everett groaned. "Yeah. I think this is my life now. I just got home fifteen minutes ago."

I blinked in shock. The text he sent me this morning saying he'd arrived had been before eight and I knew he went straight to work. "You worked for over fourteen hours?" I asked, horrified.

Everett groaned again, louder this time. "Don't do that math. I don't want to think about it."

I was silent for a minute, debating what to say. Everett took over. "It's a mess, Felix. I have barely any capital left to work with, which is going to make it hard to get out of this. I'm looking into whether we can take on a short-term loan, something to get us started, but that brings a whole new set of problems to the table."

"I'm sorry. I wish I could help you." Had I ever felt so helpless?

"Me too. But enough about that. I want to think about something else, something better. How was your day?"

I didn't know if my day had been all that much better than his. At least he had probably been too busy working to miss me. "I had lunch with a friend, then got a lot of cleaning done. Magnus and Mel came by for dinner and just left like an hour ago."

"Okay, so I know what you did, but how was it?" Everett asked.

It was bad, but I didn't want to say so. Instead, I told him, "I missed you like crazy."

"I missed you too," Everett replied without any hesitation.

An idea occurred to me and I sat up straighter in excitement. How had I not thought of this before? "What if I visited you this weekend?" I asked. I knew Everett would still have to work, but we could at least have a little time together.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Everett said, and my exhilaration shattered.

"It's okay. I understand," I said. "You set the boundaries. It's okay if you want to wait before bringing me around."

"What? No, I don't think you do understand. Felix, it's not that I want to hide you. I promise, it's not that. I just hate to think of you sitting alone in my apartment all day. I'm only going to be home and awake for maybe an hour total each day."

At least it would be an hour spent with him, I thought, but I could see his point. "If this goes on too long, I'll come up anyway," I said. I wasn't sure whether it was a threat or a promise, and it didn't matter as long as it worked.

"Hopefully it won't come to that," Everett said on a long yawn.

"You're tired," I said. "You should get some sleep."

"So should you," he answered, yawning again. "You're going back to work tomorrow."

I sighed. "Yeah. It will be good to stay busy. I guess I'll let you go, then."

I waited for Everett's response, but none came. I could still hear him breathing on the other end, so I knew the connection hadn't dropped. "Everett?" I asked. No answer. "Everett?"

He must have fallen asleep, I realized. He really was exhausted. How long did he think he could keep up these hours?

Though I was tempted to keep the line open just to feel more connected to him, I didn't want to burn through all of the battery on our phones. I hung up, burrowed further into the blanket, and tried to sleep.