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“Did it help?”

“Not really?” I sighed “No, that’s probably not true. It will probably help eventually, but we don’t know enough for any of it to be useful. Right now, there’s nothing that will get me anywhere.”

“He was murdered, though?”

I nodded.

“Val, I’m so sorry.”

“I’d—I’d rather that than suicide,” I admitted.

Taavi’s fingers continued to smooth over my hair. “Why?” The question wasn’t judgmental. “Then it would at least have been his choice.”

I saw his point. But—“That would mean that he didn’t love Elliot enough to stay,” I whispered.

“That’s not how depression works, Val,” he replied, and this time there was a hint of judgment in his voice. He wasn’t wrong. I knew that, logically speaking. But it just… itfeltdifferent to me. Suicidefeltworse.

I was pretty sure Elliot agreed with me, even if Taavi didn’t, given how Elliot had reacted to the cops’ suggestion that Gregory had committed suicide.

Not that it mattered. It was what it was. Gregory Crane had been murdered by three assholes who had probably done it because he was a shifter. He didn’t know them and he couldn’t identify them.

And then it occurred to me that Taavi must have said what he said for a reason. I pulled back far enough to look up at his fine features, sadness settled into their lines in a way that pulled at my heartstrings.

“Taavi?”

He brushed a thumb across my cheek, catching a drying tear. He knew what I was asking. “A guy I dated for a few years had depression. Neither one of us knew how to deal with it.” His thumb ran over my cheek, even though there were no more tears to brush away. “He didn’t self-harm when I knew him, but he had the scars from it.”

“I—” I wasn’t sure what someone was supposed to say to that.

“We broke up for other reasons,” he told me, his voice gentle as always. “He decided he wanted a life that wasn’t complicated by being with a shifter.”

“Complicated?” As far as I was concerned, having Taavi in my life wasn’t even a little bit complicated.

He shrugged, but I could tell that something was bothering him because his beautiful mismatched eyes wouldn’t meet mine. “I used to shift more,” he said, as though that should explain everything.

I leaned back, sliding my hands to his hips and pulling him in between my knees. His hands came to rest on my head. I studied him, trying to read the emotions in the faint furrow of his brow, the set of his narrow jaw and cheekbones, the sharpness of his nose. I knew his doggy face almost as well as his human one, and I could see how the bones and muscles would shift, see the hidden shape of the canine in his human features.

His eyes studied mine in return, one dark and sharp, the other, milky eye mimicking its partner, even though to that eye I was little more than a pale blur in shadow. I was amazed he could see well enough to navigate a room, much less drive, but I’d never seen any hint that he had any problems moving through the world.

“Why don’t you shift anymore?” I asked him.

I saw the flex of muscle in his jaw, the tension at his temples, and the way his gaze dropped down and to the left.

“Taavi?” My fingers tightened on his hips, the rough fabric and stitching of his jeans pressed into my skin. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear his answer, but it seemed important.

“I just—I don’t want to.”

“Okay.” It felt like more than that. “Did you used to want to more?”

He sighed, his hands sliding off my head, the tips of his fingers coming to rest on my shoulders. “I—loved shifting. The way the world felt different. Smelled different. A change in perspective.”

“And you don’t want that change anymore?”

“I—” He bit his lower lip, the white of his just slightly too-sharp teeth contrasting to the dusky copper of his lips.

I took his wrists and pulled his hands until I could press a kiss to the back of each set of knuckles. “Taavi.”

I watched him swallow. “You have enough—”