*Five Years Later*

Even as a husk, as a shell of the man he’d once been, Finley Byrne still followed the path that had been set for him, though not exactly as he had before. 

It was 5:50 in the morning when his alarm went off, and Finn opened unwilling eyes to the dreary world that awaited him. He winced at the faint dawning light that met him, spearing through his temples with a thunderous ache as his sleep-deprived body protested the dawn’s unwelcome embrace. He threw a sore, throbbing arm over his eyes, blocking the sunlight’s burnish touch with a whimpering sigh as his beard scraped over-sensitive flesh in a skin-crawling, discomforting array he couldn’t find enough will to truly care about. 

And just as he had for the past one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-eight days, Finn awoke with a throbbing in his skull from eyes that rejected the light around them, and with nausea slickening his mouth in a sour tinge, bitter where it spread. 

He let himself sit there for exactly three minutes and twenty six seconds, as he always had, for he knew any longer and he’d never be able to convince himself out of the cool, silent embrace of his bed at all. 

Another sigh escaped him as he forced himself upright, fighting to ignore the weak, unsteady throbbing of his arms beneath him, their joints floundering under his no-longer-substantial weight. His advancement across the black sheets was a slow, painful one as his famished muscles screamed with every inch crossed. By the time he sat at the end of his bed, feet pillowed on the plush carpeting, he was shaking with the force of the throbbing lacing his very bones, the agony bracketing his every breath. It was a feat to lean forward and allow his arms to fall to his thighs, hands dangling between his knees as his too-long hair fell forward to brush across his chest with a static-throb. The tangled, split ends brushed the ribs that peeked through his skin, the weight he’d lost so painfully obvious with every bone bared. 

It had been a slow and painful death to lose his mate, and one that killed every part of the alpha until there was very little of him left to greet the world. It had crept through every fiber of his being, destroying everything from his appetite to his ability to sleep until he was truly just a shell of a man-- an utter husk of a being that stared back at him with dead eyes every single time he had the misfortune of crossing paths with a reflective surface. 

There was a word for the type of damnation Finley Byrne had been doomed to, a string of lettering fashioned specifically to entitle him pitiful. Star-crossed those around Finn named him-- a lover damned by the stars, forever ill-fated for misfortune as he remained, a faithful partner scorned. 

But it was not a titling Finn found himself fond of. Rather, he felt, with every passing day scratched from the calendar in glaring red markings, as if he were the butt of some cruel, cosmic joke. Felt as though, somewhere in the vast universe above him, some nameless deity was finding immense enjoyment in his suffering. 

For suffering, for anguish, were quite simply the doomed path he had been forced upon as a fated mate abandoned. There was no alternate route he could have ventured down, wandering about recklessly, indiscriminately, in the hopes of something better. He was a ship passing in the night, destined to have burnt furiously and brightly, to scar his existence on the backs of his lover’s eyes with the force of his conflagration. He felt as though he had been predestined, his fate stitched in red thread meant to burn, for shattering-- that he was planned to smolder, to crumble with the force of a supernova, birthing universes with the might of his heartbreak. 

Because Finley Byrne had met his mate, though brief their time together, and his very being had been rewritten by his presence. The meeting of soulmates was meant to be revolutionary, two heartbeats twined, synced to the same melody forevermore. But Finn had been left behind, half of that melody remaining alone, left to play off-beat with music sheets that bore only half the notes of what should have been a grand symphony. 

Fate had intended a partner for Finn, a mate to be bound to forevermore, and it was with the heft of that fate that his absence completely and utterly destroyed Finn. 

Rather than a mate, than an eternal partner at his side, Finn found himself with naught but silence and a massive, empty house to keep him company. A cacophonous, aching nothingness that mocked his loneliness with their presence. For Finn was completely and utterly alone. There was no one at his side to catch him when he stumbled, no one he could lean on or turn to to help heave some of the weight piled upon his shoulders. Even his family had drawn from him after those first, impossibly damning weeks after his mate had disappeared. When he had… 

Finn cursed under his breath and leaned forward to brace his elbows on his knees, plunging his hands into the overly-long, messy spill of blond locks that curtained his face. As his sister’s words echoed in his mind in a damning, agonzing circuit. 

But don't come to me if you regret this, Finley. I mean it. I won't fix this for you. I won't get you out of this one.

And Finn hadn’t tried, hadn’t been able to brave the disappointment in his sister’s honeyed gaze at the broken shell he’d become, despite how hard she had tried to see him. He couldn’t let himself see she was right, couldn’t possibly bear the I told you so on her motherly lips. 

So he was alone, left to flounder under the weight of a fate unfulfilled. 

His phone alarm blared with noisy abandon, startling the alpha with a painful jolt that rose a muffled curse to his lips anew. Finn sighed, scrubbing his worn fingers over the rough mess of his beard as he fought with his body, endeavoring it to stand and continue on as they always had. Reminding them both they had a role to play, a duty to uphold. 

It was 6:15 when he finally convinced himself from the edge of his bed, lumbering toward the double doors that led to his massive bathroom, fashioned of white marble and black metal as it had always been, but no longer as meticulously upheld as it once was. He avoided the gaze of his reflection in the mirror as he grabbed his toothbrush before walking to the shower, and waltzing into the tile enclosure. 

He shucked off the low-slung sleep shorts he wore, tossing them from the shower with one hand as he turned the shower on with the other. He hissed through his teeth at the arctic spray that assaulted his skin, but didn’t have the energy to acknowledge it as he squeezed toothpaste onto the bristles of his toothbrush, and shoved it into his mouth with one hand. 

For the less steps he had to force himself through, the more likely he was to actually succeed in existing. He had failed at that more days than he was proud to admit, after all. 

And at 6:22, precisely on his new schedule, Finn reached a mental hand toward the silent bond slumbering in his soul, the divine link between himself and his missing mate, and shoved it down as deep as it would go. 

Burying its, and it turn his, presence within himself so profoundly he could only hope that one day its reticent weight would find a way to stop shredding his heart apart with each passing day. 

“Did you ever work with Dr. Byrne you know…before?” Callie, one of the new pediatric ED nurses, whispered to her training nurse, Christine, in a stage whisper. Her green gaze sent Finn furtive glances where he sat at the nurse’s station charting, pretending as if her emerald irises didn’t lance through his chest with every conspiratorial look. They were far too reminiscent of another pair of eyes he couldn’t dare to remember, lest he fall to irreparable shards on the filthy linoleum floor at his feet. “I heard from Amanda that he used to be so bright and sweet. It’s hard to imagine.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Christine replied distractedly as she scrolled through 215’s file. “He’s completely different now. Used to be a lot more like his cousin. I mean he’s still nice, but he’s nowhere near as gentle and open as he was. He’s so subdued, and the poor guy looks like he’s miserable twenty-four-seven.” Finn could practically feel the eyes that burned into the back of his neck, but he kept on charting as if he couldn’t hear their gossiping. “He’s like a shell of the sweet, bright man he once was. I can’t even remember the last time the poor man smiled. And he has such a lovely smile.”

Christine released a dreamy sort of sigh that had a prickle of uncomfortable unease fluttering against Finn’s skin, his stomach nearly churning with nausea at the idea of anyone else so much as desiring him. 

Anyone who wasn’t…him.