Page 93 of Nikolay

It felt good.

That was the dangerous part.

Sage turned his head then, and I found him already looking at me. Not at the joke. At me laughing at the joke. Something in his expression shifted, satisfaction too controlled to call smugness, but there all the same.

His leg brushed mine under the table.

Once.

A casual thing, maybe. The sort of accidental contact that happened when chairs were close and bodies moved naturally around a meal.

Then it happened again.

This time slower.

Not a press. Just the line of his thigh against the outside of my leg for a brief, deliberate second before easing away.

I did not move.

I should probably be ashamed of how quickly I decided not to.

A question from Tristen brought the room’s energy around in a way that taught me more about Ironwood than any speech could have. He had left his post by then and taken a place two seats down, plate mostly finished, beer untouched in front of him. He asked Sage something about rotation coverage on the north boundary and a supply issue tied to one of the outbuildings. The details themselves didn’t matter much to me. The response did.

The whole table leaned without leaning.

Nobody shushed. Nobody formalized the moment. But attention gathered.

Sage answered without raising his voice. Calm. Precise. No chest beating. No alpha theatrics. He asked one clarifying question, listened to the answer, made a quick decision, and folded two other people into it by name and responsibility so smoothly it sounded less like ordering and more like placing stones exactly where a wall needed them.

That did something inconvenient inside my chest.

Not the bond-pull I felt with Nikolay. Nothing like that deep, soul-level wrongness and rightness tied together until I could barely tell one from the other. This was different. Easier. Warmer. My wolf responding to competence, to structure, to a male around whom others naturally arranged themselves. Bronc had that too, and every pack-raised part of me had been shaped by it. Safety in leadership was an old language. My body still spoke it fluently.

Sage finished answering. Tristen nodded once. Done.

No performance. Just order restored.

I lifted my wineglass and drank before that response in me could grow teeth.

Nikolay flickered through my mind, anyway.

Not the infuriating version of him. Not the cruel one. The one in the foyer with lemon on his thumb and that impossible softness in his voice when he told me to be safe. The one who had wrapped a first edition in cream linen and tied the world’s most suspicious pink bow around it with hands better suited to violence than ribbons.

I took another swallow of wine and pushed the thought down.

Not because I wanted to forget him.

Because I couldn’t do anything useful with him here.

By the time plates had been cleared and fresh glasses poured, the room had shifted into a deeper ease. The kind that came after good food when wolves had enough heat in their bellies to stop guarding themselves so hard. Laughter rose in pockets. Fire cracked behind us. The watchers at the walls no longer looked merely assigned there. They looked settled.

Then Sage pushed his chair back and stood.

The effect on the room was immediate.

Not silence. Nothing so dramatic. But attention sharpened as if a current had passed through everybody at once. Wolves straightened.

Sage set one hand lightly on the back of his chair and looked around the room.