Page 67 of Nikolay

I felt it like a pocket of weather.

One of the women had topped off her own glass from a bottle standing open on the lacquered table and, the second she saw me, lifted it toward me with a grin. “You drinking after this, Texas?”

“Not till I’m clocked out.”

“Tragic,” She angled the bottle. “Offer stands.”

“Bless you for your faith in me.”

Sage signed the receipt with a pen that probably cost as much as my boots and handed the device back to me. “We’ll see you tomorrow night.”

The words should have sounded presumptuous. They didn’t.

“Yeah,” I said. “You will.”

His gaze held mine one brief second, dark and thoughtful, then softened into something easier as one of his pack mates cut in to ask whether Texas stars really looked different or if that was just a thing people said in country songs.

“Baby,” I said, tucking the handheld under my arm, “Texas does not need songs to brag. The stars do that fine on their own.”

That bought me another little burst of laughter and one muttered damn right from the woman with the wine.

Then work pulled me away again.

When my shift finally ended, it ended the way all long shifts did—with my body realizing all at once that it belonged to gravity and my face aching faintly from the labor of expression. I clocked out in the back office, untied my apron, stuffed it into my locker, and traded my boots for soft flats. The hot-pink boy shorts still sat clean and sensible under my skirt, which felt like the least interesting thing about my underwear situation by a wide damn margin.

I was heading for the employee exit when Sloan fell into step beside me.

She had changed out of her floor blacks into dark jeans and a fitted sweater, but she still carried that same alert wolf energy, all sharp awareness and easy physical certainty. Our shoes made quiet sounds on the concrete as we moved through the dim service corridor, past the stacked crates and supply doors and all the backstage bones of Obsidian.

“So,” she said. “You’re coming.”

Word traveled fast among wolves. Shocking.

“I’m coming,” I said.

Her grin flashed quick and pleased. “Good.”

We walked a few more steps in companionable quiet before she added, “You’ll like it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Her voice warmed on the subject in a way people only managed when talking about some place they had chosen and would choose again. “The runs are real runs. Not performative pack-bonding nonsense. Not everybody trying to impress the alpha. Just moonlight, open ground, wolves in their skins the way they’re meant to be.”

That landed low in me.

I said nothing, so she kept going.

“We do community well,” she said. “That was the first thing that got me. Not obligation. Not politics. Just... community. Food after. Fire if the weather’s decent. People checking on each other because they want to, not because somebody assigned the task.” She shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. “Wolves need other wolves. Same way lungs need air.”

I looked at her.

The corridor lights silvered the edge of her profile and made the truth in it plain.

“That’s what this is,” I said. “For me, I mean. Not switching packs. Not replacing Iron Valor.”

Sloan glanced over. “I know.”

Relief moved through me so simply it almost hurt.