Elara did not knock at your door. She sent the door a look and it unlearned its purpose.
Your apartment smelled like rain and lemon polish and the edge of lightning a day early. She stepped inside, leaving the hallway's chill at her shoulders, and took in the small proofs of your life—cup on counter, book face-down, a cardigan apologizing to a chair.
"You're early," you said, because you needed the sentence to land somewhere ordinary.
"I prefer early," Elara said. "Less… interference."
You didn't ask with what. You already knew the answer would be you.
She didn't sit. She looked the way a pianist does at an instrument just before testing whether it's in tune.
"How are you sleeping?" she asked.
"You tell me," you said.
"You people seem to know when my heart stubs its toe."
That almost won you a smile.
"Vivid dreams are typical."
"Typical of what." Your voice comes out cold and slightly annoyed
She tipped her head.
"Of being tethered to an Alpha."
You let your breath out carefully.
"You use that word like it's… the weather."
"It is," she said. "You don't control it. You endure it. Or you learn when to bring an umbrella."
"Is that what you're here for?" you asked. "To sell me a coat."
"No" her reply is soft and almost side ways
"To see how much rain you can take."
Your laugh was small and unkind to yourself. "What happens when I can't?"
Elara's attention softened by a degree. "Then we carry you," she said. "Quietly."
She turned slightly, as if listening for something in the drywall. You realized she could hear your neighbor's heartbeat three apartments over. Because…. you could, too, if you tried.
"How do I make it stop," you asked, and hated the plea in it.
"You don't." She considered, then added, "But you can choose what you do when it arrives."
"So I just… don't run to him."
It came out like a dare and a prayer.
"You must not." Elara's voice was velvet over barbed wire.
"Not yet. You'll make a war of it."
You opened your mouth to say I'm not a general, and heard, to your horror, a quiet chorus of footfalls outside the building, counted without meaning to. Three moving together. Two pausing. One breath held longer than the rest.
Your skin chilled. "They're out there."
Elara's eyes flicked to the window.
"Not ours," she said. Then, softer,
"Not right now."
You swallowed. Your tongue tasted metallic
Elara stepped closer, close enough that her scent made a map—cedar, cold air, a promise she won't put in writing.
"Listen to me. Your body is going to tell you stories. Some are true. Some are tricks the tether plays to get what it thinks it wants. Learn the difference."
"How."
"By failing." No apology. "But fail small."
"And if I don't," you said.
Her gaze did not waver. "Then he will come," she said. "And everything you are trying not to be will happen at once."
You stared at each other until the quiet turned into an agreement neither of you liked.
At the door, she paused. "Lexa."
"Yes."
"If the thread lights under your skin, do not chase it."
You could have said Which thread. You didn't. "Okay," you lied.
When she was gone, the room remembered to breathe. You sat on the edge of your couch and counted heartbeats that weren't yours and tried to make them stop sounding like grammar.
You didn't run to him.
But when sleep came, it came holding his name in its teeth.