Page 127 of Fate, Interrupted

“So they…” I stop. “They just live there.”

“If you’re asking if they’re fully integrated, the answer is no. But humans respect pack territory and hierarchy. And the wolves don’t hide from the human community. They decided surviving meant working together instead of disappearing. It’s not unlike how Elias has run Coulter Cleaners, except we have to stay vigilant to keep our facilities in human territory.”

I look at him across the table. Three hundred miles from everything I’ve spent three years building, in the warm light of a roadside bar, and all I can think about is a town where he doesn’t have to measure every step. Where the fifty-seven aren’t invisible. No apologies. No explanations.

“I’m still thinking about the bookshop,” I say.

“I’ll pass that along to the Council,” he says.

I laugh and lean back in the booth, and the room feels warmer than it did an hour ago—the bar, the conversation, the gorgeous man across from me who has described a world I didn’t know I was looking for and made it sound entirely possible.

“What about you?” I ask. “What are you planning to do there? I didn’t even ask you. You had plans in Coulter Cleaners.”

“That was still being worked out,” he says.

“And now?”

He looks at me directly. “Now I figure it out myself.”

Love, pride, and a fierce empathy for him tighten my chest.

“Good,” I say, with an adamant shake of my head.

For a few minutes longer we stay there, talking about the town ahead of us, what it might look like, what we might find, whether the diner does a good lunch or just breakfast, because we’re both breakfast people, and that is a critical question.

The bar is back to its usual noise and chatter, the earlier interruption absorbed and forgotten, and the evening has passed through its worst moment and come out the other side still intact.

By the time we stand to leave, I feel lighter than I have in weeks.

The waitress comes by one more time and says something that makes me laugh with my head tipped back, and I promise her we’ll be back, and I mean it. It’s the kind of thing I’ve been saying more of lately: small future promises and small certainties, with the confidence of someone who has stopped hedging every commitment against the possibility of everything going wrong.

I feel Silas’s attention on me before I look at him.

Not heavy. Just there. Steady.

“Ready?” he says, stepping up beside me.

“I think so,” I say, and I slip my arm through his as we turn toward the door.

Chapter thirty-five

Norah

The air outside is cooler than when we went in, a light mist having moved over the lot while we were eating, softening the edges of everything: the parked cars, the tree line beyond the gravel, the glow from the bar’s windows.

Sound carries differently in mist. Closer. Muted.

I draw in a slow breath beside him. “It smells like rain.”

“Might be,” he says.

I watch him without making it obvious. The change is immediate when we step outside, his attention moving outward, scanning the lot, sniffing the air, tracking distances and angles. Things I can’t see and probably wouldn’t notice even if I could. He doesn’t consciously decide to scan the lot. The instinct takes over the moment we’re outside.

I nudge him with my elbow. “You’re doing that thing again.”

He glances at me. “What thing?”

“The scanning,” I say. “You look like you’re calculating odds.”