Her door was painted red, the shiny, sticky red of the old altars. There were so many layers of paint that the wood didn't feel solid when he knocked.

Ivan stepped back a respectful distance and waited.

The landing was well lit, with windows on either side of the hall. Instead of brightening the old apartment building, the light seemed to dwell on its lesser points: the grime in the carpet, the cracks in the wall, the chips in the paint. At least the windows ventilated the worst of the tobacco smoke.

Ivan checked the numbers on the side of the door: 312. Sure enough. And he could hear a record scratching a garbled choral piece inside, so the lady was definitely home.

He knocked again, more insistently.

"For the love of heaven," a woman grumbled from within.

The gramophone's needle scratched a sudden end to the choir, and Ivan heard tired footsteps stumbling to the door.

Her scent grew stronger as she approached, pressing over the smell of smoke and paint. Ivan braced himself. The door swung open to a dim apartment and a woman in a yellow dress.

"What now?" she asked, her voice sour with a squint as she covered her eyes to the light on the landing. "Better be damned good. Naps don't come to me every day."

Ivan blinked at her. All dark skin and floaty curls tied under a scarf. She was the stout sort of short, with curves that dipped into the tie of her rumpled apron. And that scent: she smelt of flowers and soil and life.

He took a deep breath of her and stepped back. He'd been around unmated potentials before; the first breath was always the worst.

She finally lowered her hand to scowl at him. Big eyes, big lips, soft nose. Those eyes widened in surprise at his height, his build, his navy uniform.

"Oh, hell no," she said, her voice hardening. One hand landed on her hip and the other tightened over the edge of the door. "Oh, no, no, no. You need to go right back to wherever you came from. Right back."

"Miss Finn."

"Does your supervisor know you're here? Your, your alpha or whatever. Because you shouldn't be here."

"Miss Finn, I'm here about—"

"Was the last one not threat enough? I tased him so hard, he foamed at the mouth. And I have papers saying I can. So you best be off before I get my gun."

Ivan felt a thread of anger tighten his jaw. It had been a long, long time since someone interrupted him. "Those papers are why I am here, Miss. If you would just let me—"

She held up a hand, her brows high. "I am under no obligation to talk to you, sir. So if you would excuse—" She tried to shut the door, but Ivan sped a hand to that sticky paint, holding it in place.

"I need to talk to you, Miss Finn." His voice was lower than he'd have liked it.

Those pretty eyes looked up at him and flickered with a brief moment of fear.

Her look sharpened, and her scent thickened in rage. "I won't have it," she said, her voice strained as she shoved her shoulder into the door. "No, I swear, I won't..." she grunted, pushing harder, "Damn. It's like pushing against—" she shoved her hip against the thick wood of the door, once, twice, "the very gates—" another shove, "of hell!" The door didn't so much as shimmy.

"I am not here to harm you, Miss." He coated his words in patience. "Not here to mark you or take you to be anyone's mate. I'm here to protect you. There's a foreign pack in town and they're sniffing around for potentials. They're known for just taking the women they want—"

The door swung open, the gust of it catching in her skirt. "Oh, and your lot don't do that, do they?" she said, so loud he flinched.

A door down the hall creaked open.

Miss Finn and Ivan turned to the interruption: a tall, greasy-haired man across the hall. In undershirt and suspenders, he held a lathered toothbrush in hand and an expression of nosey boredom.

"Mr. Martinez," Miss Finn said, her smile sounding forced.

Mr. Martinez's eyes strayed over Ivan, a lone wolf soldier standing in a run-down apartment building on the down-trodden side of the river. Ivan nodded his head in a brusque greeting, not removing his hand from Miss Finn's sticky door.

Martinez frowned. "I'm not helping you move no dead body again, Miss Lianne." A blob of frothed toothpaste slid from the toothbrush to the floor, landing in a splat to punctuate his sentiment. "Just about threw out my back last time. What with the stairs."

Ivan raised a brow, and Miss Finn cringed.

"He wasn't dead. He was unconscious," she clarified, throwing her neighbor a barbed look. "Tased. Like I said. And, Martinez, love, you won't have to help me none." Her eyes cut back down Ivan. "If this good wolf here would leave me the hell alone!" She tried to shut the door again, but Ivan put his foot in the jam. It slammed on his boot and he winced.

Martinez seemed unfazed and leaned against his door to finish brushing his teeth. An audience. So much for discretion.

"Miss Finn." Ivan heard the fatigue in his own voice. He pulled a letter from his back pocket. "This is from Alpha himself. It permits my being here and explains its importance."

She pressed her lips together and stared at the offered letter, sealed with a beautiful howling wolf stamped deep in white wax on blue paper. Technically, Ivan had written it, but Alpha had taken the time to seal it, so officially it was Alpha's document.

Tempted, she reached out, but he flicked his wrist away. "Best to read it inside, Miss." He turned a pointed look to Mr Martinez, who had stopped brushing his teeth to hear more clearly. "As I said, we value your safety above all else."

She hesitated, her gaze as wary and close as a razor. Her eyes narrowed at whatever she saw.

"You sure you can take coming in here?" she asked darkly. "Your kind get all weird about my stuff. The smell or whatever. And I'll have no wolf turning on me, no teeth going for my throat or—"

"I can come in, Miss Finn." Ivan made an effort to soften his voice. "I wouldn't have come otherwise."

"Hmph." She eased the door open. "Come in, then. But don't sit down. You won't be staying long."

Privately amused, Ivan nodded seriously and brushed past her into the tight hallway. The movement left his body too close to hers: warm and right there and smelling like a day off work in the sun. He ducked past her and took a deep breath.

Damn.

The rest of the apartment smelt like her too, days of Miss Finn layered between the scents of her meals, her showers, her laundry. And flowers. Everything about the room smelled of big, heavy-petaled flowers.

Ivan blinked. The light in the apartment was a strange under-water green, the sun pressed through green curtains over the balcony door. He was in a living room. It opened to a kitchen on his right and branched to the left into a small bathroom and two bedrooms.

The blue-white of cheap lightbulbs buzzed on. "Don't get too comfortable now," Miss Finn warned.

She withdrew a small taser gun from a bowl of keys by the door. Ivan's brow rose slightly. The taser was ten years old, at the least. One of the electric tongs wasn't tucked into the muzzle as it should be, hanging limply from its wire.

"Don't you doubt this," Miss Finn said, still close to the door. She cranked the dial above the grip up and up until it wouldn't crank anymore. "I've taken down wolves bigger than you with this thing."

Ivan doubted it, but if it made her feel safe; he bowed his head to her.

"Hmm." She sounded suspicious of his submission. "Hand over your letter, then." She held out her hand, ready to fire the taser by her hip. Hoping she wouldn't shoot him by accident, he complied.

She took the folded paper and broke the seal. The light was still too dim to read; the folds of the letter pooled shadows over its ink. "Be a dear, sir, and open the curtains for us, would you?" she crooned the words; pleasant, but demeaning somehow.

He opened the curtains and scanned the street. This side of the river, everything was peeling paint and broken liquor bottles. In the cut of sky above the apartments, factories belched oily smoke, their streaks running like tear tracks over the cityscape. The autumn sun tangled in the pollution and made the sky a sickly green rather than the polished blue of his-side.

Ivan turned around and blinked to take in the apartment with fresh eyes. The sallow sky did little to dampen the brightness of Miss Finn's furnishings, the sun spreading like butter over glossy lilac walls, catching in the divots of a yellow painted floor. Her couch was blue, her chair pink, her counters and cabinets green.

And if the colours weren't enough, there were flowers everywhere; big ones with trumpet crowns bookending the couch, little frilly ones on the wall in the kitchen, sunny full-faced ones on the table by the counter. There were even bottles hung from the ceiling with wire and twine, filled with clusters of purple and green and white. The sun caught in the gold-brown glass and scattered spotty yellow rays over the room like a kiss for finish.

Ivan noticed Miss Finn watching him from the corner of her eye, head angled down toward the letter. That gun was still pointed at his chest.

He pressed his feelings about her decor down deep and shifted on his feet to regain a sense of composure. She still watched him. "Colourful," he commented lightly. She didn't blink. "Beautiful flowers," he tried again.

Her brow quirked up. "My flatmate works for a your-side florist." She looked up to the nearest hanging bouquet. "And lucky for us, your-side folk get all demanding about same-day picks."

Ivan nodded.

Miss Finn tapped the glass of a bottle, a smile tucked in her voice. "Beer bottles are mine though."

Of course they were.

She turned back to the letter.

If he breathed deep, he could smell the flatmate. It was alarming that Miss Finn's scent distracted him—a trained wolf—thoroughly enough to miss something that at first pass. Though he thought the smell of flowers masked Miss Finn's bright scent somewhat; that wasn't an accident, surely.

"So this Pack of Cutting River is really a threat to me?" she said presently, her grip crinkling the edge of the paper.

"I am afraid so, Miss. They are known for taking potentials even after they have a mate. Let alone..."

"A potential mate unattached like me. I get it." She glared at the letter, then tossed it on the couch. "You really should have opened with that. I might have been more hospitable."

"It's best not to flaunt connections to Alpha in this part of town." Few were brazen enough to challenge a wolf outright, not with the human queen favouring their Pack, but talk spread. And Ivan wanted this all handled as quietly and internally as possible.

Miss Finn grit her teeth. "Well, do sit down, then."