Page 55 of Nikolay

The conversation afterward did not regain the bright velocity of baseball, but neither did it collapse under the weight of what had been said. Instead, it went quieter, smaller, almost domestic in its shape.

Maddie cradled her cup in both hands. I sat opposite her with my own, the silver service gleaming softly between us, the room no longer feeling quite so formal, or quite so hostile to hope.

We were still talking when the last light left the windows entirely, and for the first time since this catastrophe of fate had begun, the quiet between us did not feel like punishment.

That night Obsidian lay beneath my office window like a velvet argument nobody ever won—purple light, black leather, crystal, skin, and vice held under rules strict enough to pass for civilization. I should have been looking over reports. Instead, I saw the Ironwood wolves the moment they were seated, and knew at once they had not been placed there by accident.

They were not in the upper lounge.

That was the first clue.

The second was where they had settled: not at one of the neutral crescents near the stage, not in the shadowed corners preferred by cautious packs or old vampires guarding privacy, but squarely on the main floor in Maddie’s section. Four of them tonight, with Sage at the center again in dark tailoring and composed attention. They sat like people perfectly capable of affording greater exclusivity and deliberately declining it.

Requested her, I thought.

No other explanation satisfied. Obsidian’s floor was arranged for flow, not sentiment. Unless a patron asked otherwise, tables rotated by reservation status, species needs, and staff availability. Ironwood had chosen to be where Maddie would come to them again and again under the discipline of her job.

From above, I watched her work.

If jealousy had not already stripped me of vanity, that sight might have done it.

She gave their table no more attention than any other. No fluttering. No hesitation. No special brightness. She moved through the room with a tray balanced against one palm and a small order pad tucked at the back of her apron, her body reading the floor the way good generals read battlefields—by rhythm, by pressure points, by human and supernatural moods before those moods fully declared themselves.

She was exceptional at this.

The realization ought not to have felt new. I had seen her on the floor for weeks. But there was a difference between noticing competence and understanding it. Tonight I understood. She did not merely serve tables. She managed atmosphere. People relaxed around her. Waited better when she spoke to them. Became less difficult, less vain, less eager to test boundaries. Even Ironwood, who had arrived wound tight with purpose, remained outwardly courteous beneath her hand.

The recognition tightened something in my chest with equal parts admiration and self-reproach.

I left the office before I could spend another ten minutes pretending surveillance counted as action.

Bohdan was on the second-floor lounge, naturally, where he held court the way other men held knives—with charm obvious enough to distract from the edge. He stood at the bar in a tailored midnight suit, amber eyes amused at something a vampire patron had just said. When he saw me approach, one brow rose.

“Brother,” he said. “You look industrious. Should I be concerned?”

“I need you on the floor.”

“Do you now?” His gaze skimmed my face once, too perceptive to miss the answer in it. “How delightful.”

“This is not delightful.”

“For me, perhaps.”

Still, he set down his glass and came with me. That, more than the joke, was how Kozlov men loved when the hour required it: no fuss, no dramatics, simply movement.

We descended together.

On the main floor, we made rounds with the ease of men who belonged to the architecture. Bohdan excelled at this part of Obsidian—those clipped pleasantries, the elegant half-smiles, the brief touch to a patron’s shoulder that conveyed welcome and warning in equal measure. I could do it well enough when needed. Tonight I did it because the pretense was useful. We stopped at three tables before Ironwood’s, exchanged brief courtesies, accepted gratitude no one truly meant, and turned at last toward the wolves.

Maddie was at another table then, pen moving over her pad, her attention apparently nowhere near us.

Good. Or perhaps not good. Merely preferable.

Sage looked up as Bohdan and I approached. He did not rise immediately, which I would have marked as insolence in a lesser man. With an alpha, it registered as calculation. After one beat, he stood. So did the others.

“Alpha Lynch,” Bohdan said with his usual polished ease. “Welcome back to Obsidian.”

Sage inclined his head. “Prince Bodhan.”