When the wolves started laughing, I broke.
It wasn’t a cruel sound. No, it was worse. It wasamused. As if the whole thing—me standing there like an idiot in my bare feet and borrowed confidence—was some inside joke I didn’t get.
I turned and ran.
The fog dragged at my legs like it wanted to keep me. Everything tightened—my chest, my throat, my grip on reality. It didn’t matter where I ran to. I just needed to not be there anymore.
A clearing opened around me. At the center, a koi pond shimmered like a mirror. Still. Too still. The surface didn’t ripple, not even when I dropped to my knees beside it, gasping for air like it had been stolen from me.
I leaned forward and looked into the water, expecting to see myself looking sweaty, panicked, and pathetic.
Instead, I saw Roman and Seraphina in the pond’s reflection, naked and twined together. His mouth was on hers, her hands fisted in his hair. It wasn’t a still image—it moved. Real and vivid and wrong. His back flexed. She dug her nails in.
My stomach lurched.
The version of me in the dream didn’t look away. She watched and let herself hurt.
I wasn’t like Seraphina. I wasn’t ethereal or magical. I didn’t laugh like bells or glow under moonlight. I didn’t have the kind of energy that made men want to fight for me. I wasn’t her.
And I wasn’t enough.
In the distance, I heard my name. The fog stirred.
“Mags.”
A beat later. “Mags, wake up.”
A hand on my shoulder, real and grounding. The dream fractured like ice under pressure, cracks racing across it until everything collapsed.
Gasping for breath, I sat up, drenched in sweat. My T-shirt clung to my back, and my sheets were a twisted mess around me. My lungs strained, like I hadn’t breathed properly since I fell asleep.
Roman was crouched beside my bed, his hand still on my arm, his brows drawn tight. “You were moaning, and not in the sexy way.”
I was too disoriented and raw to come up with a joke. My insides were hollowed out, and I felt extremely exposed.
He didn’t push.
“Come on,” he said, standing slowly. “Let’s bake something. It always helps.”
His hair was mussed with sleep, and his heavy-lidded eyes were locked on me with that steady kind of care he didn’t even seem aware he offered.
He wasn’t Seraphina. Or Eric. Or anyone I’d ever tried to be enough for.
He was Roman. Solid, present Roman.
“It’s midnight,” I croaked.
He shrugged. “There’s no wrong time for cookies.”
A beat passed, then I nodded. “Okay.”
Roman extended his hand, and I took it without hesitating.
Roman arrangedthe ingredients across the counter: flour, sugar, chocolate chips, eggs, butter. Measuring spoons and cups lined up with military precision, like they were part of a ritual.
The whole scene looked less like a baking project and more like a strategic war documentary—using kitchen tools instead of blueprints to coordinate maneuvers. Not a single grain of sugar was out of place.
I let the warm fragrance of butter and vanilla wrap around me like a hug I desperately needed.
