10. Chapter 10 #3
Twice from men built like authority and danger, and still they could not have sounded less alike if the Goddess herself had tuned them. From Sage, it held concern without pressure. Warmth. The simple courtesy of a man who had noticed something and chosen to ask rather than corner.
I shifted the tray higher on my hip. “Long night.”
His mouth moved slightly, acknowledging the dodge for what it was. “So it is.”
I could have left it there. Probably should have. But something about him made honesty easier to portion out in clean little slices.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just had to step away for a minute.”
“All right.”
He accepted the answer without making me prove it. I appreciated that enough to feel it in my throat.
Then he glanced toward the curve of the booth where his pack lounged in easy conversation and looked back at me.
“Have you made up your mind about the run?”
There it was.
No manipulation. No coyness. Just the question laid out in front of me where I could take it or leave it.
I hesitated one second.
Not because I didn’t know. Because I knew too fast.
My wolf had been penned too long. That was the plain truth of it.
Weeks in this city. Weeks in a vampire estate.
Weeks of smelling stone and old wood and ancient blood and the iron tang of fate and the sharp little humiliations of wanting what did not know how to welcome me yet.
I had shifted, sure, but not the way wolves were meant to.
To move together under a real moon with distance enough to stretch into.
My body missed open ground. My lungs missed cold night tearing through them at full speed.
Something under my skin had gone lean and restless with the lack.
“I’m coming,” I said.
The answer landed between us with the clean weight of a decision finally spoken aloud.
And, Lord, the look that crossed his face.
He did not grin. He was too polished for that. But satisfaction warmed his expression in a way that came dangerously close to pleasure, and for one quick second it seemed less like he had invited a stray wolf to a pack run and more like he had just gotten exactly what he’d hoped for.
I filed that away without poking it too hard.
“Good,” he said.
Simple word. Too pleased.
I lifted one brow. “You sound real confident I won’t be a burden.”
His gaze held mine. “You do not strike me as the burden type.”
That should not have pleased me.
It did anyway.
“Well,” I said, because professionalism was hanging by a thread and sarcasm was one of the better ways I knew to reinforce it, “I’ll try not to embarrass your rich-people wolves with my Texas manners.”
One of the women at the table heard that and called over, “Too late. We already like you.”
I laughed despite myself.
Sage stepped back enough to clear my path. “We’ll send details through Sloan.”
“Appreciate it.”
Then I went on with my shift before anybody, most of all me, could decide that exchange meant more than it had to.
The rest of the night passed in the ordinary choreography of Obsidian’s late hours, which was to say nothing about it was ordinary at all except that I knew how to do it. Tabs closed. New tabs opened.
And through all of it, I worked.
There was grace in that. Not beauty, exactly. Something sturdier. Repetition had its own mercy. Clear the glasses. Check the table numbers. Ring the order. Smile where needed. Withhold it where not. Keep moving.
I did not see Nikolay again.
That was not quite true. I did not see him closely again.
Once, from the far side of the room, I caught the line of his shoulders disappearing near the stairs.
Once more I thought I felt his attention brush me from somewhere above, but when I looked there was only purple light and polished railings and my own nerves trying to turn the whole building into a message.
Whether he was gone or merely out of sight, I could not tell.
Which was probably for the best.
A girl could only survive so many corridor crimes in one evening.
When I circled back to Ironwood’s table with the handheld to close out their tab, the warmth there hit me before the words did.
I felt it like a pocket of weather.
One of the women had topped off her own glass from a bottle standing open on the lacquered table and, the second she saw me, lifted it toward me with a grin. “You drinking after this, Texas?”
“Not till I’m clocked out.”
“Tragic,” She angled the bottle. “Offer stands.”
“Bless you for your faith in me.”
Sage signed the receipt with a pen that probably cost as much as my boots and handed the device back to me. “We’ll see you tomorrow night.”
The words should have sounded presumptuous. They didn’t.
“Yeah,” I said. “You will.”
His gaze held mine one brief second, dark and thoughtful, then softened into something easier as one of his pack mates cut in to ask whether Texas stars really looked different or if that was just a thing people said in country songs.
“Baby,” I said, tucking the handheld under my arm, “Texas does not need songs to brag. The stars do that fine on their own.”
That bought me another little burst of laughter and one muttered damn right from the woman with the wine.
Then work pulled me away again.
When my shift finally ended, it ended the way all long shifts did—with my body realizing all at once that it belonged to gravity and my face aching faintly from the labor of expression.
I clocked out in the back office, untied my apron, stuffed it into my locker, and traded my boots for soft flats.
The hot-pink boy shorts still sat clean and sensible under my skirt, which felt like the least interesting thing about my underwear situation by a wide damn margin.
I was heading for the employee exit when Sloan fell into step beside me.
She had changed out of her floor blacks into dark jeans and a fitted sweater, but she still carried that same alert wolf energy, all sharp awareness and easy physical certainty.
Our shoes made quiet sounds on the concrete as we moved through the dim service corridor, past the stacked crates and supply doors and all the backstage bones of Obsidian.
“So,” she said. “You’re coming.”
Word traveled fast among wolves. Shocking.
“I’m coming,” I said.
Her grin flashed quick and pleased. “Good.”
We walked a few more steps in companionable quiet before she added, “You’ll like it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Her voice warmed on the subject in a way people only managed when talking about some place they had chosen and would choose again.
“The runs are real runs. Not performative pack-bonding nonsense. Not everybody trying to impress the alpha. Just moonlight, open ground, wolves in their skins the way they’re meant to be. ”
That landed low in me.
I said nothing, so she kept going.
“We do community well,” she said. “That was the first thing that got me. Not obligation. Not politics. Just... community. Food after. Fire if the weather’s decent.
People checking on each other because they want to, not because somebody assigned the task.
” She shoved her hands into her jacket pockets.
“Wolves need other wolves. Same way lungs need air.”
I looked at her.
The corridor lights silvered the edge of her profile and made the truth in it plain.
“That’s what this is,” I said. “For me, I mean. Not switching packs. Not replacing Iron Valor.”
Sloan glanced over. “I know.”
Relief moved through me so simply it almost hurt.
“I’m not looking for another alpha,” I said.
“You don’t have to explain that to me.”
“I know. I just—” I huffed a breath. “Bronc’s my alpha. Always will be.”
Sloan nodded once. “And you can still need somewhere to run.”
There it was. No challenge to my loyalty. No hidden agenda in the words that I could hear. Just permission to want a thing my body had already been asking for.
“Tomorrow night,” she said. “I’ll text you the details.”
“Okay.”
Then she shoved the door open, and the Philadelphia night met us.
I stepped outside and breathed.
Behind me, Obsidian kept its secrets.
Somewhere inside that black-glass pleasure house, a vampire prince still carried my black lace panties in his suit pocket like a man who had lost the plot and intended to stay lost. Ahead of me, a night away, a wolf run sat on my calendar like a promise my wolf had already begun to lean toward.
For the first time all evening, those two facts did not feel like they were tearing me clean in half.
Just pulling.
And maybe, for tonight, that was survivable.