The room has shifted since we went in. Fewer patrons. The Iron Claw wolves near the entrance have thinned to two. Delia is behind the bar again, talking to someone I can’t see.
Then I can.
He’s sitting at the bar with his back to us. Broad shoulders, dark hair, a build I recognize before I recognize anything else.Weight centered on the stool, hands loose. Fighter’s posture. I know that posture because I used to see it across the ring.
He turns.
Nico.
The face hasn’t changed. Strong jaw, dark eyes, the kind of handsome that’s been in fights and came out better for it. He looks the same as the last time I saw him, which was a hotel room in Buckhead three years ago, when I was still human, and he was just a man who could take a hit and give one back. One night. He’d wanted more. I didn’t. I had Simone to take care of and fights to win, and that was the whole of it.
He wasn’t just a man. I know that now. The low-level heat that wolf shifters carry hits me from across the room. I’ve learned to identify it since Erik and Kael. Nico fought in the underground circuit alongside humans, took their money, fought their fights, and never once let on that he was something else entirely.
A wolf. I slept with a wolf. Great. Add it to the list of things nobody told me.
His eyes find me. They move down once, slow, and back up. The look lasts for a second too long. Two seconds. Three. He takes me in like a man who already knows the shape of what he’s looking at.
Then his gaze shifts to Maximus.
The look changes. He straightens on the stool. His hands settle on the bar.
“Celeste.” His voice is the same. Low, a little rough. “Been a while.”
“Nico.”
“You look different.”
“I am different.”
One corner of his mouth lifts. He doesn’t look at Maximus again, but his body is angled away from me now.
“Good to see you,” he says. Nothing else.
“You too.”
I keep walking. Maximus’s hand is at the small of my back. His fingers haven’t moved, haven’t tightened, haven’t changed pressure by a fraction. Everything about him is exactly the same as before this brief conversation.
Except the shadows that flicker once at his fingertips and disappear.
We step through the laundromat door and into the night. Kyle has the car waiting.
I get in first. Maximus follows.
Silence.
Kyle pulls away from the curb. The city slides past the windows. I wait. He doesn’t speak. His hands are in his lap, one resting over the other, perfectly still. He’s looking straight ahead.
The compound is quiet when we get back. Kyle drops us at the front entrance and pulls away without a word. I follow Maximus through the main hall, the east corridor, past the closed doors.
His eyes stay forward.
He unlocks our door. Holds it open. I walk past him. The room is dark and I don’t reach for the lights.
The door clicks shut.
I take off my jacket. Drape it over the chair. The city comes through the window in thin bars. He’s behind me, not moving, not speaking.
I turn around.
