Page 156 of Nikolay

Just his fingers sliding through mine in the dark under linen and silver and crystal while the room carried on above us.

I turned my hand and held on.

His thumb stroked once across my knuckles.

The gesture nearly undid me more thoroughly than the kiss in the clearing had. Because this was not rescue. Not blood. Not adrenaline. This was after. This was presence. A man staying.

At one point Wrecker leaned back in his chair, glanced toward Nikolay and then toward me, and said, “Well, on the upside, if we start killin’ every rich bastard in Pennsylvania with purity issues, at least we’ve all got a hobby now.”

Gunner inhaled wine at exactly the wrong moment and coughed so hard Big Papa had to clap him once between the shoulder blades.

Even Kazimir’s mouth shifted.

I laughed into my napkin.

The sound that came out of me felt rusty and miraculous.

It was not all easy, though. It could not have been.

Eventually Bronc set down his glass.

The room did not fall silent at once, but it thinned. People sensed things. Especially people like these. Conversation receded by little tributaries until the current of the room had narrowed enough that his voice could move through it without rising.

He looked at Nikolay.

Not at me. Not first. At the man beside me.

I felt the weight of that look from where I sat. Older brother. Alpha. Man who had come to a gate and then through the woods to get his sister off a stone.

“Nikolay,” he said.

Nikolay met his gaze without flinching. “Bronc.”

No title. No posturing. Just names.

Bronc folded his hands once on the tablecloth. “I’m not much for speeches.”

A few mouths twitched around the room. True enough.

“But I’m gonna say what needs sayin’.” His blue eyes did not leave Nikolay’s face. “Maddie’s my sister before she’s anything else. She’s kind in ways people mistake for easy, and she’s stronger than most of ‘em deserve. Anybody tied to her is tied to me, to my pack, and to every damn person who loves her. That’s not a threat. It’s a fact.”

The room held very still.

“I know you came for her tonight,” Bronc went on. “I know what you did in that clearing. I won’t forget it.” His jaw set briefly. “I also won’t forget she got hurt while you were still deciding what she was worth to you.”

Pain flickered across Nikolay’s face. Small. Real.

Good, some protective little corner of me thought. Let it.

“I have no defense for that,” Nikolay said.

Bronc gave one short nod. “Didn’t think you would.”

Under the table, Nikolay’s hand tightened around mine once before easing.

Then he answered more fully, his voice even and low, and carrying the measured sincerity I had come to understand was harder won from him than anyone here might guess.

“What I owe her cannot be repaid in a single rescue or a single vow made over dinner,” he said. “You are correct to judge me for my delay. Correct to question me. I judged her by standards that should have shamed me, and I wounded her with it.” He turned his head slightly then, enough to include me without leaving Bronc. “Madelyn is worth more than every rigid idea I ever inherited. More than my pride. More than the false comfort of purity and old expectation. She is my mate, and if she allows it, I will spend the rest of my life proving worthy of that truth.”