By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, I was leaning against the kitchen counter with my own mug, watching the doorway.
Mira appeared in a loose dress, dark blue, the neckline sitting low on her collarbones. No contacts this morning. Herheterochromia was out in the open and the sight of her real face hit me the way it always did.
Her copper roots were growing in, stubbornly bright against the dark dye, and her hair was pulled back in a messy knot that exposed the full line of her throat. I tracked the column of it unconsciously.
Her gaze found the second mug on the counter.
“You prepared this?”
“I heard you coming down.”
She paused. Processing. Then the corner of her mouth twitched. “Right. Super hearing.”
Mira crossed to the counter and wrapped both hands around the mug, bringing it to her lips. The first sip made her shoulders drop a fraction.
Silence settled between us comfortably.
Her kind of quiet was different from most people’s. She didn’t fill empty space with noise the way Percy did, didn’t use quiet as a weapon the way Lucian sometimes could. She just existed in it, thinking, processing, and let me exist beside her without demanding anything.
It was my favorite thing about her. One of many.
She stared at me as she drank and I stared back. I knew instantly that she was working up to a question; I could see it forming behind her eyes.
“What’s the difference between a werewolf and a lycan?”
“Werewolves are a human invention,” I said without beating around the bush. “Cursed. Bound to the full moon. Feral, uncontrollable.” I took a slow sip. “We’re born, not bitten. We shift at will, retain full awareness in both forms. Our wolf is part of us, not a separate entity fighting for control.”
She nodded, absorbing it carefully.
“You can shift anytime?”
“Yes.”
“Can you shift now?”
I met her eyes. The question sat between us, neither casual nor demanding. Genuine curiosity wrapped in the careful bravery of a woman testing how far she could push before the ground gave way.
“Do you want me to?”
Her eyes held my gaze for a long beat. A war played out behind her expression, the warring parts of her brain fighting it out in real time. The part that wanted to see, and the part that wasn’t sure she’d survive the seeing.
“Uh, not for now.” She took another sip. “I’m barely accepting the so-called truth.”
I nodded and didn’t push.
Mira played with the handle of her mug, turning it in slow circles on the counter, and I waited again. She was going to ask me onemore thing. The real question. I could see it in the tension of her jaw, the way she kept starting a sentence behind her closed lips and stopping.
While she was pondering it, my gaze drifted.
I couldn’t help but notice how the dress hung from her shoulders and the neckline had slipped lower on one side, exposing the swell of her chest where the fabric gaped. The morning light from the kitchen window caught the smooth skin above the curve of her breast and I tracked the line of it without meaning to.
My throat tightened while my mouth went dry.
She is fucking beautiful.
Mira was curves, warmth, softness, built for the kind of contact my hands ached to give her. I imagined hooking my finger under that strap, pulling it down, watching the fabric slip...
A hand waved in front of my face.
