Chapter 17 Kit #2
The weight of it all crashed back down. The panic attack had distracted me temporarily, but now reality reasserted itself with crushing clarity. I was leaving Killigrew Street. Leaving this life, these people. Leaving him.
The tears started before I could stop them. Hot, humiliating tears that blurred my vision and made my throat close up all over again.
“I’m so sorry.” The words came out in a broken whisper. “Felix, I’m so fucking sorry. I know it doesn’t change anything, I know it doesn’t make it better, but I need you to know how sorry I am.”
Felix went very still. “Kit—”
“I never meant to scare you. I never meant for you to find out like that, or at all, or…” I wiped my nose on my sleeve like a child. “I’m supposed to protect you. That’s what mates do, we protect our other half, and instead I turned into the thing you needed protecting from.”
“Kit, breathe.”
But I couldn’t stop. The words poured out like poison I’d been holding in for too long. “It became this sick obsession, this ritual, and I’m so fucking ashamed—”
“Kit.” Felix’s voice was sharper now, cutting through my spiral. “Listen… can you explain a little more about the stalking? I think… I think it might help us move forward.”
Forward. As if there could be a forward for us after this.
I nodded anyway, scrubbing at my face. If he wanted details, he deserved them. All of it.
“It hasn’t been the whole time,” I said quietly. “The whole time we’ve known each other, I mean. It… it um, escalated in the last few months.”
“When did it start?”
The memory was crystal clear, burned into my brain like a brand.
“You left work one evening. Four months ago now. At the bottom of the staircase, you turned and gave me a wave goodbye—you’d never done that before.
Small thing, barely anything, but…” I swallowed hard.
“I’d been working in the basement that day, listening to the sounds from your lair.
Typing, sighing, your chair creaking. For hours.
Every sound had started to feel like a heartbeat I was synced with.
When your typing stopped, my shoulders would tighten until it started again. ”
Felix’s expression was unreadable. Likely I was revealing far too much, but I couldn’t stop.
“So when you left, I got this sudden panic about you being gone. About you being out of sight. This sudden anxiety that something might happen and I wouldn’t be there.”
An incessant plague of mental images of Felix’s dead body, sprawled across concrete. Of me scooping him off the floor, powerless to save him. Just like with Cara, after that final Greywatch mission.
“So I followed you. Only for a few streets. That time, anyway…” The admission hung horribly heavy in the air.
“Over the months, this urge to keep you safe became… this overwhelming compulsion. Like if I didn’t follow you home, that would be the time you needed me.
That would be the time something happened to you. ”
Felix let out a short laugh.
I stared at him. “What?”
“Just thinking of Rory. You know when he says everything’s ‘a wolf thing?’ Explains away all his weird behaviour that way.”
A bitter smile tugged at my lips. “Right. Yeah. It’s a wolf thing, I guess. Except I’m not sure that excuses this.”
His smile died. “It doesn’t,” he agreed. Then he said, “But the SEVENTEEN gig? How did you even get a ticket?”
I grimaced. “Emptying my bank account, that’s how.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about how miserable you looked at the thought of having to go.
Your heart would pound faster when you spoke about it, like you were really scared.
” The decision to buy a ticket had been a moment of madness. A bit like this entire thing, really.
Felix looked away, his fingers fidgeting with the hem of his coat.
“I’m sorry again about pulling you away from that guy,” I said quietly. “At the concert.”
Felix shrugged, still not meeting my eyes. “It’s fine. Anyway…” He took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders like he was preparing for battle. “I came to tell you that you can’t quit Killigrew Street. I won’t let you. I told Priya I would quit instead.”
“No!” The word exploded from me with such force that Felix jumped. “Absolutely not. Felix, no. You can’t—”
“But I actually quite like working there,” he interrupted, his voice gaining strength.
“It’s ten times more interesting than any other job I could get.
I’m doing… important work. I like it. Even though you’re all completely bonkers.
” He paused, biting his lip. “Even though my colleague turned out to be a wolf who stalked me home. For months.”
I grimaced. Was that a joke, or…
“So we’re simply going to have to get on with it,” Felix continued, finally looking at me properly.
“Because Killigrew Street can’t function without you.
It wouldn’t be fair to everyone if you left.
You’d devastate them.” His voice softened.
“Me… me included, actually. And I promise I can cope with you there… as long as the stalking stops.”
Relief flooded through me so suddenly I felt dizzy. Like I’d been drowning for days and someone had just thrown me a lifeline. My hands started shaking again, but this time from overwhelming gratitude rather than panic.
“Are you sure?” I searched his face desperately. “Are you absolutely sure? Because I was dead serious. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable in any way.”
“I’m sure.”
I very slowly climbed to my feet, leaning against the wall for support. I cleared my throat, trying to process this unexpected reprieve. “I think you should keep learning self-defence. With someone else, obviously.”
Felix considered this for a moment. “You can keep going with it,” he finally said quietly, looking away again. “If you want.”
I stared at him. “Really?”
“Yes.” His cheeks had gone pink. “You’re, um… a good teacher. But I want one thing in return.”
I cocked my head, waiting.
“I want my hoodie back. It’s my favourite.”
My face burned with shame as I crossed the room to the kitchen counter. I hadn’t allowed myself to put it back in my bedroom where it had lived. Where I could bury my face in it and pretend, just for a moment, that Felix was mine.
I picked it up, the soft fabric still carrying the faintest trace of that scent that drove my wolf wild, and I held it out to him. Our fingers brushed as he took it, the brief contact sending a jolt up my arm. Felix jerked his hand back quickly.
Something crackled in the air between us. Like we were balanced on the edge of something that could either save us or destroy what little trust we’d managed to rebuild.
“I promise I can make this not weird, Felix,” I told him. “I promise I can behave completely normally.”
Like I’m not completely obsessed with you.
Like you’re not the last thing I think about at night, and the first thing I think about when I wake up.
Like my wolf doesn’t howl your name every time you walk away.
Like I don’t memorise every expression that crosses your face.
Like the thought of losing you doesn’t make me want to tear the world apart.
Like I’m not completely and utterly in—
“I believe you,” Felix said. “Or at least, I believe you’ll try.” He gave me a lopsided smile that made my heart lurch.
God, how had I got so lucky?
It was unfathomable.
But one thing was clear, absolute: I would spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of that smile.