Page 111 of Nikolay

That was enough.

I snatched them up and yanked open my bag. Jeans. Thermal top. Underwear. Socks. Bra. My fingers fumbled every clasp and button like they belonged to someone else. I cursed under my breath when I put the shirt on backward, tore it off, fixed it, dragged jeans over legs that still felt half asleep. The room swayed once when I bent to pull on socks, and I braced a hand against the bedpost until it passed.

Get to him.

I did not stop to interrogate that urgency. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe guilt. Maybe some belated courage finally outrunning my pride. I only knew the need to see him had become larger than embarrassment, larger than the memory of every cruel thing between us, larger even than my discomfort over how badly I had let Sage get under my skin last night.

The lock clicked back under my hand. I opened the door slowly.

The hallway beyond lay in soft blue darkness, the kind that came right before true morning but still belonged to night. Lamps had been turned low. The rugs muffled everything. Closed doors lined both sides of the corridor, and from behind them came only the deep, complete quiet of a house full of wolves who had run hard and would sleep late for it. Faint wood smoke clung to the walls. So did last night’s warmth, though it had thinned enough for the old timber air underneath to show through.

I stepped out and closed the door without a sound.

Shoes in one hand, keys in the other, I moved in socked feet down the hall and toward the stairs. Every board I avoided still seemed ready to announce me. I kept expecting a door to open, for Sloan’s voice to drift out, teasing and suspicious, or for some older matriarch to catch me sneaking away and tell me breakfast was in an hour and where exactly did I think I was going. But the house remained asleep around me, or near enough.

On the landing, I paused and listened again.

Nothing.

My own breath. My own pulse. The low, restless drag inside my chest whenever I thought Nikolay’s name.

Downstairs, the great room had gone to embers. The fireplace still held a dim red heart beneath collapsed logs, and the air carried the ghost of wine and sugar and smoke from the night before. A glass had been left on a side table beside a folded blanket, evidence that somebody else had stayed up later than they intended. The sight of it hit me strangely—a domestic trace of pack life, easy and communal and warm.

I almost felt disloyal walking past it.

That thought sharpened something mean in me. Disloyal to whom? To a man who had cornered me against a wall and talked about correction? To a pack that had welcomed me while their alpha looked at me as if he could improve my fate by removing my choices from it?

Whatever softness last night’s run had opened in me did not vanish, but it changed shape. The house was lovely. The people in it had been kind. Neither fact obligated me to stay where my gut was screaming to leave.

I crossed the kitchen, found the side mudroom, and eased the exterior door open.

Cold morning air struck me full in the face.

I sucked in a breath that tasted of wet gravel, pine, and the iron edge of dawn. Fog had settled low over the grounds, not thick enough to hide the main drive entirely but enough to blur its edges and soften the farther buildings into pale smudges. The world looked unmade. Behind me, Ironwood rose vast and dark, its windows mostly blind.

I stepped outside and pulled the door shut carefully behind me.

The gravel lot crunched under my socks until I stopped beside my SUV, swore under my breath, and crouched long enough to jam my shoes properly onto my feet. My hands shook trying to tie the laces. I gave up on neatness, tucked loops into themselves, and stood again.

The unlock beep sounded obscenely loud.

I froze and looked back at the house.

No lights came on.

No one shouted.

I slid into the driver’s seat, shut the door, and sat with both hands on the wheel for one suspended second while my breathing tried to remember a useful rhythm. The interior smelled faintly like old coffee, leather, and the vanilla air freshener I kept forgetting to replace. Ordinary. Mine. Human enough to feel almost foreign after a night saturated in wolf.

The key shook against the ignition before it caught. The engine turned over with a rumble that made my shoulders climb. I winced and backed out slow, not daring to use the headlights yet. The predawn gray gave me just enough to see the curve of the lot, the gate ahead, the dark sweep of trees hemming the drive.

Please don’t let anybody be watching.

I didn’t know who I meant. Sage from a window. Some sentry I had never noticed. My own conscience.

The gate stood open from last night’s traffic in and out. I rolled through it, turned onto the road, and only then clicked the headlights on.

They carved two hard yellow lanes through fog and nothing else.