Page 48 of Nikolay

She was quiet for a few more steps. Then, with the unnerving directness wolves sometimes preferred over all human forms of varnish, she asked, “Is it Nikolay?”

My head turned so fast I probably looked ridiculous.

Sloan kept walking.

I stared at her profile. “Jesus.”

Her brows lifted. “It’s kinda obvious.”

I schooled my face by sheer force of offended dignity and looked forward again. “I didn’t say yes.”

“No,” she said mildly. “You just reacted like I put my hand in a live socket.”

I muttered a curse under my breath.

The corner of her mouth moved. She had me and knew it.

“I only asked because it fits,” she said after a moment, her tone gentler now. “The timing. The way you looked earlier. The way he’s looked at you on the floor when he thinks nobody’s noticing.”

That pulled my attention back to her again. “He’s looked at me?”

Sloan made a low sound that was almost a laugh. “Honey. Half the staff have eyes.”

I wanted to be offended by that. Instead, what I felt was something uglier and softer at once, because if other people had seen whatever this thing was between us, then I had not imagined all of it. Only maybe the part that meant anything’s survivable.

I folded my arms loosely over my middle. “Well. Good for the staff.”

Sloan’s gaze stayed ahead, giving me the dignity of not watching me too hard while I stood there internally flaying.

Then she said, carefully now, “Can I give you an opinion you didn’t ask for?”

“Considering we’re already halfway there, sure.”

“Interspecies relationships tend to be harder than they’re worth.”

I stopped walking.

The words were not cruel. That was what made them hit cleaner. No smugness. No superiority. Just a statement offered by somebody who thought maybe she was saving me pain.

Sloan went two steps farther before she realized I had halted. She turned back, expression open and a little wary, like she knew she’d stepped onto loaded ground.

The fluorescent light above us flickered once and steadied. Flat light whitewashed everything thin.

I faced her fully.

“My alpha’s closest circle includes a wolf mated to a witch-angel hybrid,” I said.

Sloan said nothing.

I went on, voice measured, because if I let too much feeling into it, I’d sound defensive, and I did not want to be defensive. I wanted to be clear.

“Lucia Kozlov is a princess whose father owns this club. You know that. She mated Doc Lowrey, Iron Valor’s physician. He died. She brought him back with her blood, and now he’s the first wolf-vampire hybrid in over a hundred years.” My chin lifted a fraction. “So, no, I don’t put much stock in people saying worlds can’t bend toward each other. I’ve seen them do it.”

Sloan listened without interrupting, which earned her points immediately.

I took one breath and gave her the thing at the center of it: the belief I had not questioned even when everything else in me felt skinned raw.

“The Goddess doesn’t make mistakes.”