"In three words I can sum up everything I know about life,

it goes on."

-Robert Frost

"Oliver, you are being dramatic. I went straight there and came straight back. It wasn't like I had choice, I was held back by a client and had to improvise. What did you expect me to do? Just leave her in pain?" I coat the tips of my fingers with soap, scrubbing vigorously at my nails as my gut wrenches.

He's right. I broke our rules, stayed out past late and left them all worried sick. But to admit that would be to dismiss the fact that I needed to break the rules, that saving one life was worth it.

I hazard a glance towards my husband, assessing his usually bright emerald green that are darkened into a shade of sternness. He unfolds his tight arms and lets out a frustrated sigh, running his fingers through his clipped brown hair.

"Mae, you know the rules. You can't just vanish like that and not tell anyone, who knows what could've happened?" His voice is strained as he pleads, causing guilt to crash over me like a tidal wave. "And none of us would've known. We need to stick together, play as a team. I know you meant well but to come home and find you gone... it's not a risk I'm comfortable with you taking."

I run my hand underneath the cloudy water of the faucet and turn to face him, my heart hammering in my chest. A fight brews beneath my skin, itching to break out and wear his words down but one look at the broken crevices of his face convinces me otherwise.

My icy fingers rest gently onto his warm skin, but he doesn't flinch from my cold touch. Instead, his face breaks even further and he just grabs my body, crashing it into his own in a firm embrace.

He grips me as if I would crumble into dust should he remove the pressure. Oliver's body shakes as he exhales deeply, and I lean into the heat of him as he cradles me to his chest.

"I was so scared," he admits, the words a whisper on the wind. "When you weren't here... I waited two hours."

Enough time for me to be stone cold, thrown in a ditch somewhere or tied up as an example to the others of what happens when a human breaks curfew.

I pull back, staring up at his concern as my brows knit together. He was scared, despite the fact that he'd shown me nothing but pure frustration the moment I stepped through the door. Any anger he had was a front for the fear that crippled him, that crippled us all.

He thought that I had been killed, or worse, taken.

"I'm sorry," I admit, my defeat a bitter pill to swallow. I shouldn't have to be sorry, I went out to help an injured human near dusk. These rules that suffocate all of us are insufferable, made worse by their necessity and the cruel creatures that enforce them.

The calloused skin of his palm brushes against my cheek. "I know, just please, promise me Mae that you won't do it again. Stick to the sectors, let the patients come to you. The wolves that patrol around here are far less likely to cause us any trouble."

Because they were all mated. New wolves, the ones young enough to be an issue were all in the higher sectors or sent to train in the national guard. The streets of these lower sectors were roamed by older pack officials, ones that stuck to their rotations and intervened only when necessary.

"I'm nearly twenty-five," I tell him, but his expression only hardens.

"It's not worth the risk," he repeats, firm once more. He turned twenty-six three months ago but I was still of age to be taken and paired to one of them. "Think of Avery."

I tore my gaze away from as ice filled my veins, shaking the memory from the deep dark place in my mind I shoved it into. I was there the night she was dragged away into the darkness as tall monster sunk his canines straight into her flesh. I'll never forget the blood, or that the last thing I ever heard from her lips was a scream of terror and agony before her lifeless eyes rolled to the back of her head.

It was almost four years ago and I never heard from her again. Part of me thought she might be dead, that maybe that beast nicked an artery that night ended her life for good. But it was an unlikely outcome.

Unless she found a way out, to escape her captor, then she would still be with him. The monsters of the night are human in appearance, they walk like us, talk like us, smile and frown in ways that show no indication of the creature lurking beneath. But they all have an animal waiting to tear from their skin and destroy as it sees fit.

"Hardly anyone from the lower sectors is mated, the last three markings have all been humans who travel to work in the higher districts. And the oldest of the three was nineteen." There was certainty that at twenty-five, your chances of being mated were so low it wasn't worth worrying about.

Whatever goddess they claimed to guide their life didn't allow one of her loyal subjects to go so long without one. Because it was sacred to them. For wolves, you found one mate in your life, and they were your destined partner, your most compatible match in every way and it was all ordained by a force greater than we could possibly know.

"Maeve," Oliver said, sighing deeply before staring at me with eyes that could shatter my soul. Eyes were how the wolves knew, for sure, that they'd found their soulmate. There was no scientific or biological sense that my medical training could use to determine the truth of it but staring into Oliver's eyes... it did make me think that it could be possible.

"I won't go out after dark. Not without telling you or one of the boys first. I promise." I rest my fingers over the six o'clock shadow covering his sharp jawline. "I love you Ollie, and I understand your concern. I won't leave the sectors until I'm of age and I'll stick to the rules. You have my word."

Instead of responding he just pulls my face to his and bring his soft lips over my own, his lingering fear evident in the fervour of his kiss. He bites down on my lower lip gently and goes to deepen the kiss before we are cut off by a loud cough.

"Great to know you are alive and well." Both of us whip around to find Carter stood, his shaggy blond curls resting over annoyed eyes. "She's here Noah!"

Noah bounces around the corner, his worried expression softening entirely when he see's me. "Gee Maeve, we were worried sick. We just spent the last hour roaming the sector."

"I'm sorry guys, I was just held up with work. It won't happen again," I tell them, and their brother tightens his hold on me a little, as if assuring himself of the truth lying in my words.

Noah and Carter are only a few years younger than us, Carter just twenty and Noah nineteen. They were young but built for their age and it had to be that way. Their strength allowed them to survive long shifts in the town mill, lugging wood from the forest around and living on to see another day.

It wasn't a choice where they worked, no one had a choice in that. But Oliver made sure that everything they did, from dawn til dusk, was centred around getting strong. What little food we had was as protein rich as we could afford to make it and there wasn't a morning that they didn't all stretch before heading to hell.

The winter months were still harder, but Oliver didn't let any of us starve. He'd hunt game for hours, or trade in the underground markets to ensure that we kept going. It was all that mattered to him, to any of us.

Their strength meant safety. Safety from other humans at least—against a monster the odds were stacked too high against any of us.

"What happened to make you late?" Carter asks, moving to get himself a cup of water.

My ribs tighten around my chest, and I suck in a harsh breath. "They needed my help with a young girl, but..." I try not to let my pain show too much. "It's likely terminal. She won't survive in the lower section, the other medics are doing all they can to get her moved up to live in the middle district but so many kids have already been taken in to the human families there. And I don't even think the pack medicine will help."

"Shit," Noah curses, his tight muscles slumping with the defeat of it. It's hardly news around here but it's never an easy pill to swallow. "How old?"

I cast my gaze to the old wooden floor of the kitchen. "Seven."

"Did your tonic help?" Oliver asks gently, resting his warm palm on my back and I nod. "If you need me to go get more herbs write me a list and I can go early in the morning."

I want to scoff at the thought, at the horridness of the situation. I don't need leaves and flowers, I need medicine. That girl needs medicine.

Without my knowledge of herbal remedies and my almost complete medical training from before, I'd be useless. My skill has allowed me to make some profit of my trade, barter usually—and not at a high price. All of my clientele are usually on the brink of death or unable to support themselves so what little I offer comes at a low cost.

"I can go to the markets tomorrow," Carter offers. "I'll check the traps and maybe we can trade some game for what you need." If it was even available in the dark alleys of the sector.

It's a futile plan but I still nod my head, forcing a small smile onto my face. "Thanks, that'd be great."

"I do have something else we might be able to trade," Noah announces, a grin slowly gracing his soft features. He darts out of the kitchen for a second and returns with a bag, pulling out a box with the faded lettering of scrabble on it.

Oliver reaches past me, taking it in his hands with a smile. "Where'd you get this?" he asks, flipping it over as if to check its real.

"It was underneath a pipe near one of the old drainage systems. It's somehow all intact. I don't know how much we'd get for it but I figure we could all get our assess handed to us by Mae like old times."

They were just teens the last time we all huddled around a board in the living room of my apartment. Back when we all lived in the city, and everything seemed to sparkle.

"Looser makes dinner!" Carter announces, grabbing the box from his brothers hand before darting to the small living area which doubles as Noah's room.

I move to follow them, but the rough hands of my husband intertwine with mine, pulling me to face him. That soft, mushy look covers the hard lines of his face and I nearly melt at the sight alone. He smiles broadly, pulling me closer until we are in the same position we were moments ago.

"I love you, Mae," he mummers into the top of my head, pulling back to place a light kiss on my forehead. "Please don't ever forget how much you mean to me."

Don't ever place any less value on my own life than he would, is what he inadvertently means. Because to him, I am the entire world, the stars and the universe all in one—he made that incredibly clear the day we married and has reminded me ever since.

What I did today freaked him out, because without me, he is nothing and without him... without him my universe collapses.

My head naturally tilts, and I lean up to plant my lips over his, pulling back only to smile. "I love you more."