Chapter 10
The temperature dropped to thirty-two degrees, and the Wolves threw a cookout anyway.
Wendy stood on the compound's back lot, wrapped in a borrowed leather jacket that smelled like motor oil and someone else's cigarettes, watching grown men grill burgers in weather that should have sent everyone inside. Breath fogged in the air. Frost crunched underfoot. And nobody seemed to care.
"They're insane," she said to no one in particular.
"They're Wolves." Claire appeared beside her, holding two beers. She pressed one into Wendy's frozen fingers. "Cold doesn't bother them. It's a pride thing."
"Pride is going to give them hypothermia."
"Probably." Claire clinked her bottle against Wendy's. "But they'll look tough doing it."
The lot had transformed since Wendy first arrived.
String lights hung between poles, casting warm pools of light across the concrete.
A fire pit blazed at the center, ringed by brothers who treated the flames like a gathering point rather than a heat source.
Grills smoked at the far end, tended by Stockyard and a prospect who looked terrified of doing something wrong.
Music thumped from speakers someone had dragged outside. Beer flowed freely. Laughter echoed off the compound walls—rough, loud, the sound of men who'd earned their relaxation through violence and loyalty.
Wendy should have felt out of place. A bookstore owner in a den of wolves, soft where everything else was hard.
Instead, she felt something dangerously close to belonging.
"There's your man," Claire said, nodding toward the fire pit.
Blizzard stood at the edge of the flames, completely still, watching the fire with the same flat expression he wore for everything. He wasn't wearing a jacket. Wasn't wearing anything heavier than a flannel shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows despite the freezing air.
Everyone else huddled close to the flames. Blizzard stood apart, comfortable in conditions that made other men shiver.
"Does he ever get cold?" Wendy asked.
"Never seen it." Claire's voice held something like respect. "Blizzard runs at a different temperature than the rest of us. Always has."
Wendy finished her beer and set the empty bottle on a nearby table. "I should bring him food. Make sure he eats something besides silence and stoicism."
Claire laughed. "Good luck with that."
The grill line was controlled chaos.
Stockyard wielded tongs like weapons, flipping burgers and barking orders at the terrified prospect. Brothers jostled for position, grabbing plates and piling them high with meat and bread and whatever else came within reach.
Wendy waited her turn, watching the organized disorder with something like amusement. These men killed people. Ran criminal enterprises. Controlled territory through violence and fear.
And they turned into overgrown children at the sight of free food.
"Two burgers," she told Stockyard when she reached the front. "One for me, one for the ice sculpture by the fire."
He snorted. "Blizzard eating? That'll be the day."
"He eats. I've seen it."
"Yeah?" Stockyard loaded her plate with an extra burger, then added a pile of chips. "Must be something special about you, then. Man usually survives on coffee and spite."
She carried the plate across the lot, navigating around clusters of brothers and old ladies, until she reached the fire pit. Blizzard didn't turn when she approached, but she saw his shoulders shift—acknowledgment without movement.
"You're going to freeze," she said, stopping beside him.
"No."
"It's thirty-two degrees."
"I know."
"And you're standing out here in a flannel shirt."
"I know that too."
Three feet away, Stockyard snorted beer through his nose.
"Jesus Christ," he wheezed, wiping his face. "She's giving him shit about the cold. Nobody gives Blizzard shit about the cold."
"Nobody else is stupid enough to try," Razor called from somewhere behind them.
Wendy ignored the commentary and held out the plate. "Eat something. You're making me cold just looking at you."
Blizzard finally turned, those gray eyes meeting hers with an intensity that made her breath catch. He took the plate without comment, then nodded toward the bench beside the fire.
"Sit."
Not a request. Not a suggestion. A command, delivered in that flat voice that somehow made everything sound inevitable.
Wendy sat.
They ate in silence while the party roared around them.
Wendy worked through her burger, watching the firelight play across Blizzard's face. He ate methodically, without apparent pleasure, fueling his body rather than enjoying a meal. But he finished everything she'd brought him, which felt like a victory.
"You don't feel it at all?" she asked eventually. "The cold?"
"I feel it." He set his empty plate aside. "Just doesn't bother me."
"That's not normal."
"No." Something flickered in his expression—not quite humor, but close. "It's not."
She wanted to ask more. Wanted to understand how a man could stand in freezing temperatures without a jacket and call it comfortable. But something told her the answer wasn't simple, and tonight wasn't the night for complicated stories.
Instead, she leaned against his shoulder.
He went still—that complete, frozen stillness she was learning to recognize. Then, slowly, his arm came around her back.
Not pulling her close. Not possessive or demanding. Just... there. A weight against her spine that said I've got you without words.
They sat like that while the fire crackled and the party continued and the November cold pressed against everything except the warmth between them.
The commotion started around nine.
"What the fuck—"
Wendy turned toward the voice and felt her heart stop.
Hemingway had escaped the clubhouse.
Her seventeen-pound orange nightmare was trotting across the frozen lot like he owned it, tail high, completely unconcerned by the dozens of leather-clad bikers surrounding him. Brothers parted as he passed, watching the cat with expressions ranging from amusement to genuine alarm.
"Is that the demon?" someone asked.
"That's the demon," Lakeshore confirmed.
Hemingway ignored them all. He walked directly to the picnic bench where Fang sat alone, jumped onto the seat, and climbed into the Sergeant at Arms' lap like it was a throne built specifically for him.
Then he curled up and started purring.
The entire lot went silent.
Fang—the man brothers whispered about, the enforcer who made problems disappear, the Wolf with butcher's hands and a face carved from concrete—sat frozen with an orange cat in his lap and an expression of complete bewilderment.
"Don't move," Wendy called, fighting back laughter. "He'll bite you if you disturb him."
"I'm not moving." Fang's voice came out strangled. "I'm not breathing. I'm not doing anything until this animal decides I'm done being furniture."
Stockyard lost it first. Then Razor. Then half the brothers in the lot, howling with laughter while their most terrifying enforcer sat rigid as a statue under a purring cat.
Even Alpha cracked a smile. "Never thought I'd see it. Fang, brought low by a housecat."
"This isn't funny," Fang growled.
"It's extremely funny," Blizzard said, his voice carrying that deadpan flatness that somehow made everything funnier.
Wendy leaned into him, shaking with suppressed laughter. "I should rescue him."
"Let him suffer." Blizzard's arm tightened around her. "It's good for his reputation."
The party wound down around eleven.
Brothers drifted inside, seeking warmth and whiskey and whatever else happened behind closed doors. The fire burned low. The music faded to background noise.
Wendy found herself on the common room couch, Hemingway curled on her feet (finally released from Fang's lap after a solid hour of captivity), a paperback open on her chest. The warmth of the clubhouse wrapped around her like a blanket. Exhaustion pulled at her eyelids.
She'd just read the same paragraph three times.
One more page, she told herself. Then bed.
Her eyes drifted closed. The book slipped in her hands. Hemingway's purring faded to a distant hum.
She slept.
She woke to gray morning light and the smell of leather.
Blizzard's jacket was draped over her, heavy and warm, tucked around her shoulders like someone had taken care to make sure she was covered. Her book lay closed on the coffee table, a scrap of paper marking her place.
A bookmark she hadn't put there.
Wendy sat up slowly, dislodging Hemingway, who protested with a grumpy meow. The compound was quiet around her—early morning stillness, the calm before whatever chaos the day would bring.
She picked up the book and opened it to the marked page.
The scrap of paper was torn from something else—a receipt, maybe, or a piece of notebook paper. But someone had written on it in neat, precise handwriting:
Page 125. You fell asleep at the good part.
Wendy stared at the note for a long moment.
Then she pulled Blizzard's jacket tighter around her shoulders, breathing in the smell of leather and cold and something that was uniquely him.
The man who read in the dark. Who didn't feel the cold. Who'd covered her with his jacket and bookmarked her place while she slept.
She was in so much trouble.