Page 4 of Nikolay

It was such a meager word for the ruin of it.

Attraction was what I had felt for countesses with practiced smiles and excellent breeding, for duchesses who understood discretion, for women in candlelit salons who could quote dead philosophers while sliding a foot beneath the table to press against my ankle. Attraction was appetite, diversion, arrangement. It could be indulged, denied, replaced. It never climbed into the marrow and declared itself sovereign.

What I felt for Madelyn Baucaum had nothing civilized in it.

The first time I looked at her, truly looked, something old and merciless in me had recognized her before my mind could form protest. Mine, it had said—not as possession exactly, but as fate. As if the world had split down some hidden seam and revealed a design I had not consented to. She looked up, those whiskey eyes widening for the briefest fraction, and I had known from the startled stillness in her that her wolf had recognized it too.

I had spent centuries believing the purity of our bloodline mattered. Believing that the structures handed down to us existed for a reason, that our species remained itself by refusing dilution of body, power, and purpose. Even when I had not lived by those principles with perfect austerity, I had believed in them. I had believed, too, in choice. In strategic compatibility. In alliances that served family and future alike.

Then Lucia had gone and turned a wolf to save his life, binding herself to him in a way the old world would have called impossible or obscene, and I had watched my father bow before it in the end because the bond was older than opinion. Then my father, the King of Kings; stern, and impossible, who had carried grief like a crown of iron for twenty-five years—had fallen into something vast and irrevocable with a being not even of our order, a fallen angel who had staggered into our lives with no history and too much light. The world I had trusted to remain fixed had begun, piece by piece, to shift under my feet.

And now this. A wolf from Texas. Five feet five inches of leather, lace, a stubborn chin, and rough speech that scraped at my refinement until I wanted to shake her and kiss her with equal force. A woman who laughed too easily and looked at me as if my titles and education and old-world polish did not grant me one grain more authority over her than any other man.

I wanted none of it.

I wanted all of it.

Bohdan did not know the half of what he had named. Perhaps he suspected more than he said. He had always been quick at scenting weakness where the family was concerned. But he did not know what it had already cost me to stand near her and keep my face arranged into something neutral. He did not know how often I had heard her voice when she was nowhere near me. How often I had imagined the heat of her blood against my tongue and recoiled from myself afterward.

He watched me with intolerable patience.

I said at last, “You have become fanciful.”

A lie, thin as old silk.

He made a small sound in his throat that might have been amusement. “Have I?”

“Yes.”

“She is lovely.”

My silence grew harder.

“She unsettles you,” he continued. “That, perhaps, I understand. It happens.”

“You understand nothing about it.”

That came out truer than I intended, rougher too. His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, catching the fracture in my tone. I regretted the admission the instant it existed between us.

But I had no wish to recover by confessing more.

I drew a measured breath and forced my voice back under discipline. “Whether I find her appealing or not is irrelevant.”

“Mm.”

“I want her gone.”

“There it is again.” He uncrossed his arms only to set one hand flat on the desk behind him, fingers spread against the surface. “What an extraordinary phrase from a man who prides himself on reason. Gone. Not transferred, not reassigned, not protected from a poor fit. Gone.”

“This is not a debate.”

“No,” he said. “It is not. She stays.”

My restraint shuddered. “You do not decide this alone.”

“In matters of staffing for the club? I very much do.”

“In matters affecting this family—”