Knox finds me on the porch.
He leans against the railing and hands me a beer. I take it. We stand in the cold, the party muffled behind the door, breath fogging between us. Twenty years of this—him and me in comfortable silence, the language we built when I couldn't speak and he stopped expecting me to.
"How you doing?"
I flex my knuckles. "Fine."
He nods. Takes a pull of his beer and looks out at the tree line.
"She's stronger than you gave her credit for."
Another nod. He's not wrong. I gave her every reason to stay gone and she came back anyway.
"Don't do it again."
Not a request but a presidential order, the voice he uses in Church when the gavel comes down and the decision is final.
I meet his eyes. "I won't."
His jaw works. The mask cracks—a hairline fracture, pride and relief surfacing for half a second before he pulls it back. He clears his throat.
"You deserve this, brother. You always did."
He goes back inside. The door shuts behind him and I stand on the porch with his words settling into the places I've kept hollow since before I patched in.
The countdown starts messy. Someone's phone clock runs ten seconds ahead of the television and Finn counts down from thirty while Jess tells him it's only ten and he ignores her.
I'm at the edge of the room, my shoulders against the wall, the noise washing over me while the midnight numbers fall through the speakers and the club erupts in shouting and clinking glasses and kisses.
Nina walks straight to me.
Through the crowd, past the brothers, past the table of champagne flutes and the knot of people hugging by the fire pit. She walks to me with purpose in her stride and puts both hands on either side of my face and tilts my head down because she can't reach my mouth without help.
"Happy New Year, Gar."
She kisses me in front of the entire club.
Finn whistles. Knox raises his glass. I kiss her back, my hands spanning her waist, and I lift her off the ground because it's the only way to reach her mouth without folding in half. Her boots dangle a foot off the floor while Finn whistles from somewhere behind us. Her fingers trace the base of my right horn and the purr rolls out of me loud enough that every brother in the room hears it. I used to flinch at the sound—the involuntary leak, the one thing my body did without permission, the noise the pit handlers mocked because it proved the animal in the ring could still feel. I don't flinch now. Her lips curve against mine.
I set her down. Nobody says a word.
Across the room, the midnight pairs have settled—Finn dipping Jess so low her boots leave the ground, Knox pulling Sarah close with Reeve asleep between them.
Holly stands behind the bar pouring champagne. Rex stands across the room, not looking at her.
When the clock struck midnight, neither of them moved. I caught it because I catch everything from the periphery—Rex's champagne glass in his fist, his knuckles going white, Holly's gaze locked on his face across twenty feet of crowded room. Then a man I don't recognise—human, tan, built like a tourist who spends his winters somewhere warm—leaned against the bar with an easy grin and said something that made Holly laugh.
Rex's glass cracked in his hand.
He set the pieces on the nearest table. Champagne bled across the wood and nobody noticed. He turned and walked out the back door without a word.
Holly's laughter vanished. Her eyes tracked him to the door, and what surfaced underneath looked like a woman who'd spent months waiting for a man to fight for her and just watched him leave instead.
The tourist said something else. Holly smiled and poured his drink, and the mask went back on.
Not my business. But I know what it looks like when a man walks away from the thing he wants because he's convinced himself he doesn't deserve it.
The cabin is warm when we get back.
