Page 70 of Nikolay

I pushed back from the desk so abruptly the chair rolled half a foot and struck the carpet stop behind me.

The screens continued their mute surveillance. The stage remained empty. The parcel and the boy shorts sat side by side beneath the lamplight I had forgotten to turn on, illuminated instead by monitor glow and city bleed through the glass, looking like evidence in a case against my self-command.

I stood, snatched neither object, and moved toward the door.

By the time my hand hit the latch, my mind had ceased circling emotion and returned to the only discipline that had ever reliably saved me from drowning in it: inquiry.

Ironwood had taken a membership two months ago. Sloan had interviewed for staff. Maddie had been drawn into their orbit with suspicious ease. Whether this was coincidence, opportunism, or something more deliberate, I intended to know.

Bohdan’s administrative suite still bled light into the corridor, a narrow golden seam under a half-closed door, and I knew before I touched it that I was not interrupting leisure but work—the real kind, the kind my brother hid beneath charm the way other men hid weapons.

I knocked once against the frame and pushed the door wider.

His jacket hung over the back of a nearby chair. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the forearms. Without the tailored armor and social smile, he looked younger and more dangerous both, leaner somehow, as if charm had flesh on it and work removed the extra layer.

He glanced up, took one look at me in the doorway, and lifted both brows.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Questions about a big bad wolf?”

I closed the door behind me. “Do try not to exhaust yourself with originality.”

“Impossible. It is my principal virtue.”

I crossed the room and dropped into the chair opposite his desk. The leather was cool; the posture too low to be entirely comfortable. Deliberate, no doubt. Bohdan liked slight advantages built into furniture and conversation alike.

He leaned back an inch and studied my face. “That bad?”

I could have answered with dignity. Instead, because I was tired, and he was my brother, I said, “Worse.”

A short sound escaped him through his nose—not quite laughter, but close. Then he turned one monitor toward himself, fingers already moving over the keys.

“Very well. Let us see how civilized our wolf friends truly are. Start at the beginning.”

“The beginning,” I said, “is that the Ironwood pack does not need Obsidian.”

“No,” he agreed. “They do not.”

“They have money enough to build private indulgences anywhere they like. Their politics make them disinclined toward mixed company. Yet Sage took a membership two months ago, and tonight he returned with pack members specifically to Maddie’s section.”

Bohdan’s expression altered little, but his hands kept moving with quicker precision now. “Requested seating?”

“I would stake a considerable sum on it.”

“I can check the note trail.”

“You may also check why his younger sister suddenly wished to become an employee in a supernatural den her pack’s philosophy should find morally and culturally distasteful.”

That earned me a glance over the screen. “Sloan.”

“Yes.”

He opened the staff database, entered a code, and brought up her file. Her photograph appeared first: dark hair, alert eyes, a face that managed frankness without friendliness. Beneath it, intake documents, interview notes, background verification.

Bohdan skimmed once, then settled in.

“All right,” he said. “Officially stated reason for employment change: she wanted autonomy from pack oversight, expanded exposure to species beyond wolves, and experience operating in a neutral-ground environment with a broad supernatural client base.” His mouth twitched faintly. “Which, translated from interview language, means she was bored in the compound and wanted to see the world without technically rebelling.”

I said, “Did you believe her?”