Page 141 of Nikolay

The word came out rougher than I intended.

Sage’s thumb moved once against my back, soothing and possessive in the same motion. “Maddie—”

“No.” I pressed my fingers harder at my temple. “That’s not right.”

My thoughts kept trying to slide apart on me. Their words entered too easily and seemed to hang around after they should have been dismissed, not because I believed them but because they were being driven into me somehow, tamped down through the fog with deliberate hands.

The Goddess can be wrong.

Nature matters.

It is not wrong to want what is natural.

I shook my head as if that could clear it. “You don’t get to decide that for someone else.”

“We decide many things for the health of a pack,” Moriah said.

“And for the health of a soul,” added one of the elders softly.

I looked at them and felt an almost sick disbelief rise in me. They sounded so reasonable. That was the obscenity of it. Not snarling prejudice. Not open hatred. Concern. Tradition. Structure.

“I know what I want,” I said.

Did I sound certain? I couldn’t tell.

Because even as I said it, the fog pressed harder. My legs felt distant from me. My heartbeat had become too loud. The fairy lights overhead seemed to pulse in slow golden breaths. Somewhere beyond the circle, laughter rose from the rest of the festival with a brightness so normal it made what was happening here feel briefly impossible.

Sage stepped closer. Close enough that his chest almost touched mine. Close enough that everyone else in the circle dropped back into a kind of listening stillness.

His face was inches from mine. Beautiful, composed, intent.

“Just think, Maddie,” he said. He was walking me away from the festival.

His voice had changed. It was still soft, still careful, but the softness now carried purpose like a blade wrapped in velvet.

“You could change fate.”

I stared at him.

He stopped. “You could have a mate who would love you exactly for who you are.” His gaze dropped to my mouth and rose again. “One who would never be ashamed of your nature but be proud to call you mate.”

My hands curled at my sides.

“Someone like me,” he finished.

A chill moved through all the warmth in my body, thin and electric.

It took effort to make my tongue work properly. “You are not my mate.”

For the first time that evening, something in his expression hardened fully enough for me to see it. Not for anyone else, maybe. For me.

“I could be,” he said.

“No.”

“I know what is best, Madelyn.”

The way he said my name—without asking, without uncertainty, with the confidence of a man stepping into a place he believed should already have been his—made nausea curl low in my stomach.