Page 78 of Nikolay

Thank you felt too small.

Anything bigger felt dangerous.

So I stayed there with both hands on the parcel and no idea at all what kind of words a woman used when a man handed her a relic and, with it, some new and tender evidence that she had been seen.

The shower helped in the blunt, unsentimental way hot water sometimes did when feelings had gotten too big for the room they were in. Steam filled the bathroom until the mirror clouded over and my hair went damp at the roots, and I stood under the spray with both palms braced on the tile, letting the heat beat some of the rawness out of me.

It did not fix anything.

It just made everything briefly bearable.

I toweled off, dragged on underwear and a bra, then pulled on the clothes I had already laid out for the run.

Soft joggers. An oversized Henley worn thin at the collar. Boots I could kick off fast at a tree line without having to wrestle laces in the dark. Nothing precious. Nothing fitted. The kind of outfit that existed for one purpose only—to get me to the edge of the woods and then hit the ground in a little pile while my wolf took over the rest.

When I stepped back into the bathroom, the mirror had only half-cleared. My reflection looked blurred around the edges for a second, all damp hair and bare face and the kind of clothing no woman wore unless she planned on ceasing to be fully human for a while.

I leaned my hands on the counter and tried to think through what I actually knew.

Iron Valor runs back home, had their own rhythm. Bronc always gave some version of a unity speech before a run—not long, because he wasn’t the kind of alpha who believed leadership required hearing himself talk, but enough to settle the pack into itself. A reminder that we ran as one. That the old, the young, the wounded, the restless, the mated, the unmated, the ones who’d had a hard week and the ones living through the best season of their lives all belonged to the same body tonight. Then somebody would let out a whoop because wolves were still wolves no matter how solemn the moment started, and the whole thing would tip into laughter and stripping off clothes and the easy chaos of people becoming what they were.

Back home, nakedness at a run had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with truth. You shifted because bodies changed shape, because fur replaced skin, because boots and denim didn’t survive the process. That was all. Kids yipped and chased ankles before they shifted. Elders took their time. Families ran together. Cousins nipped each other’s heels. Mates brushed flank to flank. The canyon land opened under moonlight, and the whole pack poured through it like something old and holy and alive.

I missed that so much I could feel it like hunger.

Ironwood, though, was another matter.

I didn’t know their rituals. Didn’t know if they gathered first for food or formalities, if Sage spoke before they ran, if the whole pack shifted in one wild collective rush or in smaller measured groups. I didn’t know if they treated guests like honored company or like variables under observation. I didn’t know whether the women ran beside the men as matter-of-factly as we did back home or whether all that polished heritage nonsense Sloan had half-mocked came with rules nobody had thought to mention to the Texas stray.

The not-knowing sat in my chest with a small, steady pressure.

Beside it sat the memory of Sage Lynch.

His table. His voice. The brief warmth of his leg against mine in the VIP section while conversation moved easy around us. His attention had not been unwelcome. That was the truth. He was handsome enough to make a woman foolish if she wasn’t careful and polished enough to make foolishness feel like a reasonable civic activity. He had looked at me plainly. Invited me openly. Offered me wolf company and a place to run when my own skin had been starting to feel too tight.

That mattered.

But it was not the same.

Not even close.

I caught my own eyes in the mirror then, saw where that line of thought was trying to lead, and shut it down before it got any uglier.

“Don’t be presumptuous, Maddie,” I said out loud.

The woman in the mirror looked damp and tired and a little too serious for somebody talking to herself in an oversized Henley, but she did at least seem capable of taking instruction.

My phone lay on the dresser where I’d left it.

I picked it up.

For one second, I considered waiting until tomorrow. For one more second I considered writing something light and safe and absolutely worthless. Then I opened our message thread and typed:

The gift is beautiful.

I stared at that.

Too bare.