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That, more than anything else in the house, undid her.

Resting her elbow on her knee, with Millie leaning into her, she let herself feel — just for a moment — before shutting it down.

“Snap out of it, Felicity. You don’t do emotions.”

She pushed to her feet and tackled the mess the dogs had left on the kitchen floor.

Animal welfare arrived ten minutes later, far too chipper for the day she was having. The pugs were wrangled into cages, food and beds collected, their yapping fading as the van doors shut.

Silence followed, heavy and suffocating.

She dragged a hand down her face and glanced at her uniform. Dog hair clung everywhere. Sleeves, pants, vest.

“Fantastic,” she muttered, brushing at it with little success.

She did a final walkthrough of the house, locking it up tight, pocketing the keys. Locked up. Sealed off.

Just the way she needed to be.

*

That night, sleep didn’t come easy. When it did, it wasn’t kind.

She was back in the little clapboard house, but it wasn’t the same. The walls felt closer, the air thicker, pressing in on her lungs. The hallway stretched too long, shadows pooling where they shouldn’t.

The dogs were barking.

Not frantic this time.

Worse.

Thin. Desperate.

She followed the sound, her boots heavy, like the floor was trying to hold her in place. The bedroom door stood open.

Empty.

Galina was gone.

But the barking didn’t stop.

It echoed from somewhere else now.

She turned — and the house shifted. The walls peeled away, the hallway folding into rows of metal cages. Cold. Clinical.

A shelter.

The pugs were there.

Millie. Maisie. Maggie.

Pressed together into the corner of a too-small kennel, their eyes too big, too bright. They barked when they saw her — hopeful, frantic, clawing at the metal.

“I can’t,” she said, the words sticking in her throat.

The barking changed.

Whining now.