Elara's POV
"It's over, Elara. We know he's here. The warehouse. The… what we saw." Detective Marek searched for his words, his professional composure cracking for a moment.
"It's over. Help me end this before more people will be taken out of this world forcefully." His voice was flat, devoid of its earlier taunting. This was a man stating a simple, grim fact. The hunter had become an undertaker.
From the bedroom, I felt Lucian's tension like a physical force, a current that tightened the air in the apartment. His voice, soft but clear, whispered in my mind, a skill I was still getting to adapt, a secret thread that now holds us together.
'Let him take me, Elara. It's the only way to bring this to an end. It's the only way you will live. They will never stop. This is the only peace I can offer you.'
"No," I breathed aloud, my heart aching with a ferocity that stole my breath. I wasn't just saying it to Marek. I was saying it to Lucian. I was saying it to the world. To everything.
"He's a killer!" Marek insisted, his voice hardening as he misread my whisper as defiance aimed at him.
He took a step forward, his hand resting on the butt of his gun. "You saw it! That thing is not human! It's an abomination!"
"He's more man than monster," I thundered, my voice trembling but firm. I straightened my shoulders, blocking the doorway, making myself a shield.
"You only saw the monster because you were in search of it. I see the man fighting it. I see the man who came back to himself for me."
"Love can't change whatever he is," Marek said, a flicker of what almost looked like pity in his cold eyes. It was the most human expression I had ever seen on his face, and it was terrifying.
"Then maybe it can change what he does," I fired back, the words feeling like a fundamental truth I had just come to realize.
"And that's okay for me. It has to be enough for you. He didn't hurt anyone last night. He fought it. He battled it. He conquered. All because of me."
Marek studied me for a long, silent moment. He saw the resolve in my eyes, the transformation from the timid girl he'd first intimidated to a woman standing her ground, defending the man she loved against the entire world.
He sighed, a sound of weary frustration and perhaps a shred of respect.
"You have one hour. To say goodbye. Or to do whatever you want. Then I'm coming in. With or without your permission."
When the door clicked shut, Lucian emerged from the shadows of the hallway. He was dressed, his expression grave, the hope from the riverbank gone, replaced by a fatalistic calm that broke my heart all over again.
"You should have let him take me," he said, his voice hollow. He stood by the window, looking down at the street where Marek's unmarked car was parked.
"It was the only logical choice. The only way this ends without you getting hurt."
"I don't care about logic," I said, walking to him and turning him to face me. I looked directly into his silver eyes, which were now fierce, full of a devastating pain and clear.
"I care about you. I made my choice on that riverbank. I'm not letting you sacrifice yourself because it's 'logical'. Your life is not a variable in an equation."
"Elara…" His voice was a plea.
"No," I cut him off, my hands gripping his, holding him tight.
"I believe in the man you are. Not the monster you fear. I believe in the man who fights, who loves, who came back to me. That's the man I'm staying with. That's the man I'm fighting for."
He looked at me, and the last of the ice in his gaze melted completely, replaced by an awe-struck and a vulnerable warmth that took my breath away. It was the look from my nightmare, the look of a man truly seen, and truly loved, for the first time.
He pulled me close into his arms, holding me as if I were the only solid thing in a shifting world, burying his face in my hair. The choice was made. There would be no surrender. We would face the dawn together, whatever it brought.
A week later, the city was quieter than its usual way. The headlines had moved on to celebrity political scandals gossip. The hunters were all gone; a department-wide review of 'unorthodox tactics' had been announced, and Detective Marek had been reassigned.
The official report cited a gang-related incident at the warehouse and the subsequent disappearance of a person of interest. It was a neat, tidy lie, and the city, in its relentless forward momentum, swallowed it whole.
I stood on the bridge where our story had initially begun, the water below now calm, carrying the reflected, broken lights of a city that had already forgotten the monsters in its midst.
In my coat pocket, my fingers closed around the cold, hard shape of the silver bullet Marek had pressed into my hand before he and his team withdrew.
"Just in case he turns on you," he'd said, his eyes telling me he expected to find me dead next.
I never told him how it all came to end. That Lucian didn't let the beast win, neither did he run.
After our standoff with Marek, he made a different choice. He used his knowledge of the city's underbelly and his own formidable power to systematically bring down Marek's operation, exposing their illegal tactics and diverting their resources, not with violence, but with cunning.
He became a ghost, protecting the city from the shadows, ensuring the hunt would end for good. He walked into that particular storm on his own terms. And when it was over, he walked away, not from me, but from the war.
When dawn came after his final act, the river carried no one, only a profound and lasting quiet.
I took the bullet from my pocket. The metal caught the weak morning light, a cold, hard promise of a different, tragic ending we had narrowly avoided. It was a symbol of fear, of the world that wanted to simplify him into a monster to be destroyed.
"For what it's worth," I whispered to the wind, my words carried away towards the sleeping city, "I would have chosen you over again. At all times."
I opened my hand and let it drop. The silver flashed once, a final, defiant glint, before vanishing into the dark, indifferent current, taking the last of the fear and the old world with it.
I stayed there on the bridge until the sun blessed the sky to warm up the city. I was lost in the memory of his touch.
The city now was safe. We were all safe. My heart was filled with a calm peace, so fragile I thought it might break.
I trekked back home, my steps feeling so sure and strong. I wasn't the timid girl from the office anymore. I was the woman a wolf had loved.
The walk to my apartment was filled with a whole different feeling. This was the life I had come to choose now. I inserted my key in the lock, the sound so soft in the quiet morning. But when I pushed the door open, the air felt very wrong.
It didn't appear to be the same empty smell like I'd left it. It smelled of rain and gun oil.
My heart started pounding heavily in my chest.
Detective Marek was sitting comfortably in my chair in the dark. He wasn't on his police coat. His badge was gone. He wasn't holding any of his service weapons.
He was holding the only silver framed photo I had of my mom and dad in his hand.
He raised his head, looking at me as I stepped. His eyes weren't cold and official as usual. They were burning with a very strange, personal fire.
"Elara," he called, his voice so gentle. He dropped the chair carefully as he stood. "We need to talk about something…..about your mother. Her death."
He paused, letting the words hang right in the air like a threat as I stood in the midst of confusion and sorrow.
"And the night she died, he began. The police report was a fatal lie. It wasn't an accident."
He drew himself forward, his eyes locking onto mine, his next words breaking me almost into pieces.
"It was a wolf."