Page 36 of Nikolay

The woman beside me looked between us. “Well, hell.”

“You know my brother?” I asked.

The alpha leaned back slightly, one arm stretching across the top of the bench behind the people nearest him in a gesture so relaxed it only emphasized how much space he could command without effort.

“I know of him,” he said. “Hard not to.”

A few soft sounds of agreement moved around the table.

“He’s got a reputation,” the bearded man added.

I snorted. “That feels ominous.”

“It’s respectful,” the scar-mouthed one said.

“Mostly,” Sloan muttered.

That earned her a look from her brother that was so dry I laughed again despite myself.

There it was then. Sage. No formal announcement needed. It fit him too naturally to require introduction.

He looked back at me. “Bronc built something solid. People notice that. People with sense respect it.”

Warmth touched my chest so abruptly it almost hurt.

Not because I needed praise by association. I didn’t. But because hearing somebody speak my brother’s name with honest respect in a room, this far from home made something in me straighten. The world got so damn big sometimes that a girl forgot the reach of the things she came from.

“Well,” I said, with a little shrug I hoped passed for casual, “he’d probably tell you I’m his worst PR risk.”

“I doubt that,” Sage said.

The answer came easy and unhurried, and because of that it landed harder than flattery would have.

One of the women leaned in, grin sharpening. “So if we ask for pack stories, are we getting the official version or the sister version?”

“The sister version costs extra.”

“Worth it,” the bearded man said immediately.

The table laughed, and just like that the pause broke open into warmth again, not thinner for the recognition but fuller somehow. They had me placed now. Not just as a random upset wolf Sloan had dragged upstairs, but as somebody connected to a name they knew. Instead of making the space feel more formal, it did the opposite. The welcome settled deeper.

Sage lifted his glass slightly toward me. “Any sister of Bronc Baucaum’s is welcome at my table.”

No ceremony. No speech. Just a sentence laid down like solid ground.

I met his eyes and believed him.

“Thank you,” I said, and heard the roughness in my own voice too late to hide it.

He inclined his head once, accepting the gratitude without making a thing of it.

At some point, without fanfare, Sage shifted on the curved bench.

His leg pressed lightly against mine.

It was nothing. Barely there. The ordinary contact of a crowded booth and people sitting close. Warm through fabric. Solid. Real.

And not the same.