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CONNOR

The morning light filtered through the blinds like it did every damn day—soft, golden, indifferent. I blinked awake to the same ceiling I’d stared at for a year. Same bed. Same silence on the other side.

Ash was already up. I could hear the low clinking of cutlery and the hum of the kettle boiling in the kitchen. Predictable, just like everything else.

I dragged myself out of bed, muscles aching in the dull, familiar way. Not from training. Not from any real effort. Just from… existing.

We kept moving. That was our solution.

I padded down the hall barefoot. The smell of strong coffee hit first—Ash liked it borderline burnt. There he was at the counter, already dressed in his gym gear, dark curls still damp from the shower, his mouth drawn in that tight line it had settled into since Claire.

He slid a mug toward me without looking up. “Oats are in the pot.”

“Cheers,” I muttered, taking the coffee. No “good morning”. We’d stopped doing that. No need to state the obvious—we were both still breathing.

I poured my bowl of oats, topped it with half a banana, and leaned against the counter while we ate in silence. The radio was on low in the background, playing an upbeat song that felt obscene against the heavy silence between us.

Ash finally broke it. “Need to reorder protein powder.”

“I’ll sort it this afternoon,” I said. “We’re out of resistance bands, too.”

He nodded, staring into his bowl like it might offer him purpose.

Running the gym was all that tethered us to any kind of routine, movement, or goals—even if they weren’t ours anymore.

After Claire, everything that used to feel vibrant had dulled.

The weight racks, the floor mats, the clients laughing or grunting through sets—it all blurred into one long stretch of distraction.

But distractions were better than standing still.

We headed out around 5:45. The sky was still a heavy blue, frost still clinging to the grass.

We couldn’t see any other pack houses from here, but there’d be people up and about. Our place sat farther out, a bit more privacy—something Claire had wanted. Now it just felt too quiet.

Ash drove. I watched the woods blur past, bare trees and scattered evergreens reminding me how deep into winter we were. It used to matter. Now, I barely noticed the seasons changing.

When we got to the gym, we unlocked the doors and fell into the usual rhythm. The first class of the day was for early risers—shifters from other parts of the territory, mostly. Ash led the warmup while I checked clients in and restocked the towels.

We worked like clockwork. Spoke when necessary. Motivated when required and smiled when expected.

Fake it long enough, and maybe it’d start to feel real again.

I caught Ash standing by the punching bag between classes, gloves still on, his shoulders rising and falling in short bursts. He’d been going hard, sweat darkening the back of his shirt.

“You good?” I asked, tossing him a towel.

He caught it. Wiped his face. Nodded.

I didn’t push. Neither of us liked being cornered by our grief.

It crept in when we least expected it, like when we walked past the kids’ training class Claire used to run, or when someone asked about her without knowing.

Her name sat like a splinter under our skin. Small. Sharp. Impossible to ignore.

By midday, the gym had cleared out. I took care of the admin, ordered the powder and bands, and then wandered out to the back storage. Sometimes, I just needed the quiet—the hum of the fridge units, the smell of rubber mats and pine cleaner.

I leaned against the wall and let my eyes close for a second.

There was no closure when you lost a mate. No healing that stuck. Just adaptation. A slow forgetting—not of the person, but of who you were with them.

Ash and I used to laugh more. Claire had this way of drawing joy out of both of us, even when life was heavy. Her absence had sucked the light out of our world like a black hole. And we hadn’t figured out how to live around it.

Maybe we didn’t want to.

By four, we were packing up. Ash didn’t say much on the drive home. Neither did I. Words didn’t help. Sometimes, they only scraped the wounds raw again.

At home, he kicked off his shoes and went straight for the shower. I stood in the kitchen, watching the kettle boil again, wondering if I had it in me to care about dinner.

Eventually, I grilled some chicken, threw together a salad from the fridge, and we ate without ceremony. It was another quiet meal. Another day survived.

Ash stretched and looked toward the door as the sun dipped below the treeline.

“Run?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

We stepped out into the cool dusk. Shifting together had become another part of the routine—less about need and more about memory—muscle memory, mateship, movement that didn’t require speech.

I shifted first, the familiar pull of fur and claws a comfort by now. Ash followed, and we loped into the woods side by side. The wind rushed past, and I didn't feel empty for a few precious moments.

Not full, but not hollow either.

We ran for a while. No direction. No plan. Just running. Until the light faded and the woods whispered that it was time to return.

Back at the cabin, we shifted and dressed in silence. Ash stood in the living room doorway for a long moment, staring at the framed photo on the wall. Claire, smiling, sun-drenched, held both of us in that effortless way she had.

“She’d hate this,” he said quietly.

I didn’t pretend not to know what he meant. “Yeah.”

“She’d tell us to stop sulking and do something.”

“Probably call us idiots.”

He gave a weak huff. Not quite a laugh. “Yeah.”

We stayed like that for a minute. Two men in a house that still smelled like someone we’d lost. Going through the motions, keeping the lights on, and waiting for something to shift.

Neither of us said it, but I think we both felt it—this couldn’t go on forever. Something had to give.

We just didn’t know it would arrive in the form of a woman with soft eyes and a scent that would gut us both.

Not yet.

But soon.