Page 133 of Nikolay

“Tomorrow is the Black Harvest Moon festival.”

I frowned. “The what?”

That got me a genuinely delighted stare, as if I had admitted I had never seen the ocean. “You’ve never heard of it?”

“No.”

“Well, that settles it. You have to stay.”

I laughed despite myself. “That was not an explanation.”

“Fine.” She set her mug down and folded her hands around one knee, settling in as though about to tell a ghost story to children who might embarrass her by asking intelligent questions. “It only happens every fifty years. A second harvest moon coinciding with a total lunar eclipse. Old old tradition. Most packs don’t bother anymore, or they do some watered-down version with bad food and worse music and call it heritage.”

The room felt a little quieter while she spoke, though maybe that was only my own attention sharpening.

“Tomorrow night?” I asked.

She nodded. “Tomorrow night.”

There was something almost reverent in the brightness of her voice now. Not solemn exactly. More like genuine affection for a thing larger than herself.

“Sage honors all the traditional moon phases,” she said. “Especially because we’re still new compared to some of the old bloodline packs. He takes ritual seriously. History too. It matters to him that the pack knows what it is and where it came from, not just what it’s trying to become.”

I curled my fingers around the mug again and let that settle.

A second harvest moon. Total eclipse. Fifty years.

The phrase itself sounded old enough to have teeth.

“What do y’all do for it?” I asked.

Sloan brightened immediately, back on lighter footing. “Dress up. Eat too much. Drink too much. There’s a formal procession, a blessing, music, dancing, all the dramatic moonlit nonsense wolves pretend they’re too modern for until you hand them an excuse to be ceremonial.”

“That sounds suspiciously fun.”

“It is fun.” She leaned toward me. “And gorgeous. The whole house gets done up. Everyone wears formal clothes. It’s old-world in the best way, and half the people act like they’ve stepped out of another century, which in this pack is honestly not far from true.”

That image came too easily: dark suits, candlelight, old rites under a blackened moon. For one moment, something in me stirred with curiosity strong enough to push aside the rest.

Then practical sense returned.

“I’d planned to head home after dinner,” I said.

Sloan’s face fell only a little. “Think about it first.”

I hesitated.

The truth was, going home had been my plan. Get through the visit. Be polite. Leave with my pride intact and my nerves only moderately frayed. That had been before breakfast, before the ride, before the cabin, before whatever odd emotional fog kept settling around things I should have felt more sharply than I did.

I looked down at the phone in my hand. The battery bar glowed its warning at me.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“That’s all I’m asking.” Sloan stood with the easy grace of somebody who had never once doubted her own welcome in a room. “I’m going to let you text whoever needs texting before that thing dies dramatically in your hands.”

She drifted out, leaving me with the cocoa, the plants, the early fall light, and a silence gentle enough not to feel like abandonment.

I let out a breath and opened a message to Bronc.