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“She set your jacket on fire.” Maelin didn’t touch his glass. “Good for her.”
His wolf found this assessment accurate. Drayce told his wolf the jacket wasn’t the point. His wolf replied that it was a matter of perspective.
The quiet that followed was genuinely the moment everything in the session had been leading up to. Pike closed the notebook and placed it on the armrest with intention, almost like he was setting his tools down after a debate — a silent gesture that spoke volumes without a single word.
Drayce looked at the fire for a moment.
“She’s my mate,” he said to the fire.
Like pulling a splinter, the words came out flat and final, and the room accepted them as something everyone already knew, waiting for the man at the center to catch up.
Nobody showed any surprise. They waited a moment before anyone spoke, as was the norm among men who trusted each other without needing to demonstrate it.
His wolf — pacing since the boardwalk fire — stopped. Went still. Not combat-still. Not the locked-in version. A different one entirely, the one that meant the thing it had been waiting for had finally arrived. Drayce hadn’t understood, until this moment, how much energy the waiting had cost him. The quiet it left behind was noticeable.
Pike exhaled. Not a sigh — a breath heavy with weight. His timeline was confirmed. He picked up his glass and looked at Drayce, certain. “I had a week and a half. You’re three days over.”
“I’m not running your timeline.”
“I know. That’s why I made it conservative.”
Maelin, whose glass had not moved for the past several minutes, finally raised it and drank.
Tor glanced at Drayce across the room, then at his glass, and back at Drayce before saying, “Alpha-witch pairing.”
“Yes.”
“Rare.”
“Yes.”
“Amplification effect.”
“Yes.”
Tor absorbed this, fell silent, sorted through the implications, and was apparently satisfied he’d identified the relevant ones, so he went back to his glass and said nothing further. This was Tor completing a calculation.
“All right.” Pike looked like he was about to roll up his sleeves. “Advice.”
“No.”
“You said the words. We’re in it now.”
Drayce looked at the fire.
Pike leaned forward. “You need to invite her somewhere. Not for training. Not a debrief walk.” He raised a hand. “I’ve seen your debrief reports. Eleven minutes long. No scenic routes. Invite her somewhere you want to be.”
“She’s been to the boardwalk.”
“You took her to the quiet end and called it a debrief. That’s what a man does when he can’t bring himself to ask properly.”
His wolf agreed so thoroughly that it was nearly embarrassing. Drayce told his wolf that its input was neither requested nor welcome. His wolf contributed anyway.
“You could also,” Pike continued, consulting notes he didn’t need, “tell her you like her.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“Why not?”
