Page 131 of Nikolay

“You look like you’ve been on a horse half the day and in your head the other half,” she said cheerfully. “Come on.”

She led me into a room I had not seen before, tucked off the corridor behind a pair of half-open French doors. Sunroom, I realized at once, though early fall had muted the usual meaning of the word. Afternoon light pooled across the floor in pale sheets, softened by the glass and the season until it seemed more thoughtful than bright.

The air here smelled different, too. Less kitchen, more leaves and warmed fabric, and the faint mineral scent old windows sometimes carried when the sun touched them.

“Oh,” I said before I could help it.

Sloan beamed, as though she had personally invented the room. “Right?”

She dropped onto the wide settee and patted the cushion beside her. I sat, and the cushions gave way under me, cradling my body in a firm cloud.

“Well, this room is quite a surprise,” I said.

“That’s because you’ve mostly seen the public parts of the house. This is where people come when they don’t want everybody all over them.”

“That may be the best sales pitch I’ve ever heard.”

“I know my audience.”

I laughed and leaned back a little. Through the windows, the early fall grounds spread pale and still beyond the glass. Branches with leaves starting to turn scratched faintly at the sky.

Within minutes—genuinely within minutes, as if the walls themselves had alerted the kitchen—someone appeared with a tray bearing two oversized mugs and set them on the low table before disappearing again with silent competence.

I stared.

Sloan reached for hers with no sign that this bordered on sorcery. “What?”

I picked up my mug and looked into it. Rich hot cocoa. Tiny marshmallows floating on top.

I looked back at her. “What is it with the food around here?”

She laughed so hard she nearly sloshed the drink over the rim. “We’re wolves, silly. Our metabolism runs hot. There’s always something to eat.”

“That sounds made up.”

“It sounds accurate.” She blew on her cocoa and took a sip. “You burn enough energy shifting, healing, running, fighting, existing in a constant state of dramatic emotion—food becomes a logistical necessity.”

“That might be the most wolf explanation of anything I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s true.” She settled deeper into the cushions. “Nobody in this house is ever more than fifteen feet from carbs.”

I thought of home. Her description was accurate. But our carbs manifested in chicken-fried steaks, fried potatoes, and all the baked goods Aspen could churn out.

I raised the mug and took a drink.

The taste was the same. Or near enough to make my pulse kick once.

Heat slid down my throat and spread outward again with that same impossible efficiency, as though warmth had fingers and knew exactly where I was most hollow. My shoulders loosened. The ache in my thighs from the ride eased another degree. Even my thoughts seemed to lose some of their hard, sharp corners and drift into a slower arrangement.

That made two cups in one day.

Maybe these wolves just knew how to make cocoa properly.

Maybe I was overtired, underfed, and susceptible to hospitality.

Maybe the odd, low sense of well-being unfurling through me was exactly what it felt like to be included instead of tolerated.

I did not know. I only knew it spread through my chest and down my limbs and reached my wolf in a way I did not have language for. Not excitement. Not lust. Not safety exactly either. Something adjacent to belonging, perhaps.