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The room laughed.

For one terrible second, every laugh from the past year crashed over me. My shoulders tightened. My foot shifted backward, already searching for an exit.

Carolina slipped her hand into mine.

The laughter changed. Or maybe I did. This wasn’t the sharp delight people took in watching me fall. Dean was grinning. Mack lifted his beer. Even Lucy gave me a thumbs-up from the bar.

They were laughing with me.

I stepped toward the edge of the stage. “In my defense, the costume shop was out of emotionally damaged aristocrats.”

The cheer shook dust from the rafters.

Dean crowned Mack the winner, mostly because no one wanted to argue with a bear shifter carrying a basket of alcohol, or with the blonde human laughing hard enough to threaten his dignity. Mack accepted a plastic tiara and immediately placed it on Carolina’s head.

“You two disappear,” he murmured. “I’ll watch the door.”

I looked at him. “Why?”

“Because I spent a year assuming you deserved what happened. I was wrong.” His gaze moved to Carolina. “And because some mothers need to learn that daughters aren’t property.”

Audrey slipped her hand into Mack’s. The teasing left her expression.

“He means it,” she said. “And for what it’s worth, mate bonds don’t erase choice. Mack chose me every day while I was busy insisting my very obvious bear-shifter problem was merely an employment complication.”

The honesty landed harder than any joke. I nodded once because anything more would have embarrassed us both.

Carolina squeezed Mack’s arm. “Thank you.”

“Don’t make it weird, Your Majesty.”

He vanished into the crowd, red cape snapping behind him.

Dean dimmed the floating candles. The jukebox abandoned novelty songs for something slow and smoky. Around us, monsters paired off beneath the cobwebs.

Carolina turned toward me, the ridiculous plastic tiara crooked above her silver mask.

“Dance with me,” she said.

“What?”

“Dance. With me.” She held out her hand. “Before I lose my nerve.”

I took her hand. Her fingers were warm, alive, perfect.

The song was slow, something jazz and smoky and old. I led her to the center of the floor, my heart doing that impossible stuttering thing it only did around her. Other couples moved around us, but I barely saw them. I only saw Carolina.

I put my hand on her waist. She put hers on my shoulder. We swayed, barely moving, barely breathing.

“This is dangerous,” I whispered.

“I know.”

“Someone could see.”

“I know.”

“Your mother...”