Chapter 2 He Works Downstairs Now (A Personal Tragedy)

I found out on a Tuesday.

I came downstairs for my morning coffee — Groundwork, the café on the ground floor of my building, which I had come to regard as one of the genuine pleasures of my new life — and I was halfway through the door when Ozzie materialised at my elbow from nowhere and said, in a voice designed not to alarm me: "So. Funny story."

"That sentence has never preceded a funny story."

"Subjective. Anyway—"

I looked past him.

Behind the counter, wearing a Groundwork apron, dark gold hair tucked back, moving with the slightly too-focused energy of someone who is very deliberately not looking at the door:

Casen Wolfe.

I stood in the doorway for exactly four seconds. I counted them.

Then I turned around and went back upstairs.

"Zoya—" Ozzie was right behind me.

"I need five minutes."

"Sure, absolutely—"

"Alone."

"Right, yes—"

"Ozzie."

He went back to his apartment, which is across the hall from mine. I heard his door close. Then, after approximately thirty seconds, I heard it open again and he slid a croissant under my door. I don't know why he had a croissant in his pocket. I've stopped asking.

Here is the thing about Casen Wolfe working at the coffee shop downstairs:

I could go somewhere else. Caldenveil has approximately forty coffee shops within a ten-minute walk. I had options.

But Groundwork was mine first. I'd been going every morning for three weeks. I'd watched the weekend regulars develop into familiar faces. The barista, Petra, had learned my order by day four. I had a corner table with a window and good light and I was not giving that up because Casen Wolfe had decided to follow me to the human world and get a job in my coffee shop.

I went back down on Wednesday. Ordered from Petra, who was working the other end of the counter. Did not look at Casen except once, by accident, when he glanced up at the same moment I forgot to be disciplined about it.

His expression went very still.

I looked away.

I drank my coffee. I read my book. I was a person living her life.

Delara, upstairs, had watched all of this through the tea house window, because the tea house looks directly down into Groundwork's seating area — a fact I did not register until she set my afternoon tea down and said, without preamble: "Your wolf knows he's there."

"My wolf is not relevant to this conversation."

"Your wolf is always relevant. That's what having a wolf means." She sat across from me, the thing she does when she has something to say. "He abdicated."

"Yes."

"An Alpha who abandons his title for a she-wolf he rejected at their bonding ceremony."

"Don't."

"I'm not romanticising it. I'm noting it as information."

I wrapped both hands around my mug. "He hurt me in front of everyone I know. The fact that he's here doesn't fix that."

"No," Delara agreed. "It doesn't." A pause. "But it's information about who he is now. What you do with information is up to you."

She went back to the counter.

My wolf pressed gently against my ribs.

I know, I told her. I know. But knowing isn't the same as forgiving.

He spoke to me for the first time on Friday.

I'd come in early — earlier than usual, before Petra's shift, which meant Casen was on the counter alone. I almost turned around. I didn't.

I walked up. I gave my order. I looked at the menu board above his head while I did it.

He made my coffee. He set it on the counter. He said, quietly: "I know I don't have the right to ask you to listen to me."

"Correct."

"I'm not asking. I just—" A pause. "I wanted to say that. That I know."

I picked up my coffee.

"Good," I said.

I went to my corner table. My hands were steady. My wolf was making a sound I hadn't heard from her since before the rejection — something between a question and an answer.

I opened my journal.

Wednesday: unexpected clear patches. Wolf sighted, apparently alert. Cause: unknown. Outlook: complicated.