15. Chapter 15 #3
That should not have looked as formal as it did in front of a fire after a wolf run with half his shirt still clinging damp at the collar, but somehow it did. The old-fashioned courtesy of it might have felt theatrical from another man. From him, it landed with unnerving ease.
I took it.
“Goodnight, y’all,” I said to the room.
A chorus answered me—goodnights, sleep well, don’t let Sloan steal your shoes, come eat breakfast if you wake human and hungry. I smiled at all of it, more touched than I had expected to be by people I’d known for such a short time.
Then Sage guided me toward the wide staircase.
The house had quieted considerably by then.
Firelight and low lamps did most of the work now, leaving the upper hallways in a softer gold than the rooms below.
My bags had been taken to my room I supposed.
Our steps on the stairs seemed louder than they should have.
Or maybe I only noticed them because conversation and heat and company had fallen behind us, leaving a strange little pocket of privacy in their wake.
I was tired enough that the banister looked momentarily inviting as a place to curl up and die, but not so tired I stopped being aware of the man at my side.
Sage did not crowd me on the climb. He let me set the pace. Still, his nearness was there. Warm. Male. Intent in some quiet way I could feel without looking.
“You fit beautifully with them,” he said as we reached the landing.
“With your pack?”
He looked at me. “Yes.”
I should have said something flippant. Instead, I only answered, “It felt good.”
“I know.”
There was no arrogance in the words. That made them hit harder.
My room sat at the end of the hall in a guest wing that probably cost more to maintain annually than most Texas families made in five years.
Sage opened the door for me before I reached for the handle.
The room beyond had already been turned down for the night—lamps lowered, curtains drawn, the bed opened wide with folded blankets at the foot.
“Thank you,” I said, stepping inside.
I had barely turned back toward him when he followed me in and closed the door behind himself.
Not hard. Just enough to make the latch click.
Something in me came alert at once.
I opened my mouth—maybe to say goodnight again, maybe to ask if he needed something—and never got the chance.
He crossed the room in two strides and had me with my back against the wall before my thoughts caught up, one hand braced beside my head, his body close enough to change the temperature of the air.
My hands went flat against his chest.
Not pulling him in.
Not shoving him away.
Stopping.
His shirt was still warm from the run. Beneath it his body felt hard and alive and too near.
He bent his head until his nose brushed the shell of my ear. The movement sent a chill all the way down my spine that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with nerves recognizing danger in whatever form it wore.
“I know how much you crave being among wolves,” he said, voice low against my skin. “You needed that tonight.”
I swallowed. “I did.”
He inhaled slowly, as if he liked the scent of me after the run. “You have been too long among vampires.”
The sentence tightened something in me.
“I’ve been fine.”
“Have you?” His breath touched the side of my neck. “A wolf like you, penned up in a house of predators not your own. Eating at their table. Breathing their air. Making yourself comfortable in something fundamentally unnatural.”
The word landed badly.
Unnatural.
My fingers pressed more firmly into his chest.
“The Kozlovs have been kind to me,” I said. “Better than kind, actually. They’ve treated me like family.”
He lifted his head just enough to study my face.
“Family,” he repeated, and there was something careful in the way he said it. “Is that what you believe that is?”
I felt irritation start to edge through the fog of wine and fatigue.
“I know what they’ve been to me,” I said. “And before this goes any further, there’s something you need to know.”
He stilled.
I took one breath and decided honesty would hurt less now than later.
“I’ve felt a mate pull to Nikolay Kozlov.”
Everything in him went quiet.
Not still the way a relaxed man grew still. Still the way an animal did when something important had just changed in the landscape.
His jaw tightened once.
Then he pulled back enough to look at me fully.
“So it’s true,” he said.
A little cold dread moved through my stomach. “You’d heard that?”
“A rumor.” His gaze did not leave mine. “And I had also heard Nikolay Kozlov holds you in nothing but contempt.”
The words struck because they landed too near old wounds.
Sage saw it. Of course he did.
“Why,” he asked softly, “would you carry a candle for a beast who so clearly hates the idea of being with a lowly wolf when he is a prince?”
My jaw went tight.
He did not stop.