Page 117 of Nikolay

The heat soaked into my fingers. I took a sip.

Oh.

I looked at the coffee, then at him. “Don’t tell me, you brew your own coffee too?”

The corner of his mouth moved. “Alright then, I won’t tell you.”

That brought an involuntary smile out of me before I could help it.

A plate landed before me, stacked with pancakes and bacon, butter already dissolving itself down the golden sides in glossy streams. Beside it, a basket of biscuits sat close enough to claim without reaching. Someone passed a dish of berry preserves. Someone else slid a little crock of honey my way because “you look like a honey girl, no offense if that’s profiling.”

“It absolutely is,” I said, taking it anyway.

The first bite of biscuit nearly made me close my eyes.

It was tender in the middle, browned just enough on top, and carried that perfect balance of salt and butter that made a person consider bad decisions. I swallowed and looked down at it with real respect.

“These are close to my mother’s,” I said.

The words changed the attention nearest me by half a degree. Not more intense. More interested. A compliment that specific carried weight where I came from, and apparently here too.

Sage glanced at me. “That seems like a high standard.”

“Impossibly high,” I was serious. “I don’t tease about biscuits.”

“Then we will alert the kitchen that they have ascended.”

A laugh ran down my side of the table. I shook my head and reached for another piece of biscuit before good sense returned.

It should have been easy after that. In plenty of ways, it was. The food was spectacular. The coffee was even better. The company was kind. But fifteen people before I was fully awake was still fifteen people, and I was enough wolf to enjoy communal heat while still being enough myself to feel the edges of it pressing in after a while. Voices layered. Plates moved. Somebody on the opposite end told a story with their whole body. Two conversations braided just behind my right shoulder. Laughter rose and bumped the chandelier.

I felt my social battery draining in real time.

The contradiction made me want to laugh at myself. I could handle a nightclub full of predators if somebody paid me and the lighting was low. Put me at a breakfast table with affectionate wolves and endless coffee, and suddenly my soul started looking for a back door.

I kept my face pleasant and concentrated on syrup.

Sage noticed anyway.

Of course he did.

He leaned slightly toward me under the cover of somebody else asking for more bacon, his voice dropping low enough not to carry past my shoulder.

“Would you like to take the horses out after breakfast?”

The question landed with such unexpected precision I turned to look at him fully.

Not because the offer was strange. Because it was exactly right.

Space. Motion. One other person instead of fifteen. Woods instead of chatter. Enough companionship to keep the morning from feeling awkwardly avoidant, enough solitude to let me breathe.

It was odd. I had intended to tell him I was leaving after breakfast. Something in my chest compelled me to stay.

“Yes,” I said before caution could overcomplicate it. “I’d like that.”

His gaze held mine for one brief beat. Satisfaction touched his mouth, though whether it came from reading me correctly or simply getting what he wanted, I could not have said.

“Good,” he said.