CHAPTER 95: YOU ARE PICKING A KID OVER ME?

I dabbed the last smear of frosting from the corner of my mouth and pretended my cheeks weren’t burning under the silver mask. Jesmine’s ’some girl’ still hung in my head like a bell you couldn’t unring.

I quietly slipped away from the sweets table and let the crowd swallow me.

People had begun to cluster near Jesmine and the red-lipped Mira, heads tilted like birds scenting drama.

The last thing I wanted was to be recognized and offered up to their conversation like a garnish.

Where are you? I cast the thought out. Rion, where—

I sighed and shook my head, forgetting that whatever magic let him thread his voice into my mind was a one-way road. He could speak in my mind, but I couldn’t shout back into his. It felt unfair and, if I was honest, a little intimate in a way I hadn’t asked for.

So how was I supposed to tell him where I was?

"I think he’s letting you know he’s arrived," Leika yawned, amused.

"So he doesn’t want me to find him?"

I slipped through the people—past a ring of dancers stamping a reel, past a stall scorching honey on figs, past a trio of musicians arguing cheerfully over tempo.

In the sea of people, I could no longer spot Raye, Diaval or Ares wherever they were.

It didn’t bother me. If this happened a month ago, just when I first arrived here, I wouldn’t have been so careless walking around this people. But in the past weeks, I’ve seen how people lived here. Undercity was far from what the packs aboveground believed them to be.

So I let myself enjoy the street party.

The city was a living thing tonight: music rolling in its stone ribs, laughter threading its halls. Couples pivoted and broke, hands finding hands and then letting go as a new partner spun in.

Children darted at the edges, ribbon tails fluttering, shamelessly cutting through steps and being scooped around like clever little fish.

I’d just rescued a second cupcake when a small figure planted himself firmly in my path.

He couldn’t have been more than five or six, all neat edges and good intentions, dressed in a tiny dark shirt and pants with silver piping that tried very hard to make him look like a captain. He had taken his mask off and tucked it under one arm.

"You are so pretty," he said. "Can we dance?"

I blinked. Then bit down on a smile, because he was very serious and I did not have the heart to laugh at that.

"That’s... very gallant of you."

"Gallant," he repeated gravely, filing it away. His small chin tipped up. "So can we?"

I opened my mouth to say yes because how could I not, when a shadow fell beside us and the air changed.

"I’m sorry, Axe," said a voice so familiar to me I’d pick it up a mile away. "The lady will dance with me."

Rion stood an arm’s length away. He was dressed in black and silver that made the rest of the district look like it was playing at finery.

Black: tailored shirt open at the throat in a V that would have been indecent on any other man and, on him, simply inevitable.

Silver: a belt buckle worked like a wolf’s head, stylized and spare; a thin chain at his wrist, easy to miss unless you were trying not to, and a mask mirrored filigree edged in ink-black enamel that framed his eyes and swept back along his temples in two quiet, predatory curves.

Behind it, his eyes burned their unrepentant red, banked coals in a midnight hearth. His hair, short, dark silver, had yielded to a comb and then rebelled, a few unruly strands daring his brow.

He smiled deviously. "Vivien," he said, low enough that my name curled through me like heat.

"Uncle Alpha!"

I tore my gaze away like it cost me something.

Uncle???

The boy named Axe fixed Rion with a small, indignant frown. "But I found her first."

He put both hands on his little hips. "Please don’t cheat, Uncle Alpha. That’s bad."

The smile on Rion’s face turned into a grin. He crouched, bringing himself to the boy’s height with a smoothness that did unreasonable things to my heartbeat.

"I’m not cheating. I’m correcting." His gaze flicked to me, then back to Axe. "She doesn’t like dancing with little boys. You should dance with girls your age."

The child’s face crumpled into wounded disbelief. Those big eyes swung to me, and he deployed them like a weapon.

"Why you don’t dance with little boys, Aunt Pretty?" he asked, heartbreak nibbling the edges of every word. "Aren’t little boys adorable?"

He leaned closer and whispered, very loudly, "Alpha is sooo tall and big." He shook his head, a tiny old man resigned to the world’s foolishness. "You are thin and smaller. I think it’s safer to dance with someone like me."

I choked on a laugh. Rion’s eyes narrowed the way a winter sky does when deciding whether to snow or storm.

"Your logic is," I managed, straightening the solemn line of my mouth with effort, "impeccable."

"Thank you." Axe brightened, turning the full sun of his smile on me.

"Sure," I said to Axe, and held out my hand. "We can dance."

Silence took a four-step around us. Rion’s lips parted, just slightly, as if I’d taken the floor out from under him and he didn’t quite believe it. For a heartbeat he looked less like the Alpha everyone respected and feared and more like a man caught between surprise and something warmer, something he’d never admit to in public.

I pretended not to see it. The music rose, the crowd shifted to give us space, and Axe, delighted, set his small hand in mine and led me toward the circle.

Rion watched us go, shock still softening his mouth.

"Seriously? You are picking a kid over me?"