Page 178 of Maksym

Liam “Bronc” Baucaum. Alpha of Iron Valor. The name had lived in files, testimony, strategy notes, discussions of pack politics and influence. Seeing him hold Maddie made the title feel suddenly insufficient. Alpha, yes. President, yes. Former soldier, likely. But in that moment, he was simply the man whose arms she trusted enough to fall apart inside.

The blonde woman touched Maddie’s hair. Bronc bent his head toward his sister, speaking too low for me to hear.

I looked away before the intimacy became something I took without permission.

Maksym reached my side a second later.

He did not touch me at first. In that hallway, with witnesses, guards, hostile counsel, and curious supernatural eyes in every polished reflection, even touch had political weight. He kept a slight distance from me, close enough that I felt the cool discipline of him, far enough that no one could call it management.

Then he leaned down, his mouth near my ear.

“You were magnificent in there.”

His voice was low. Measured. No flourish. No softness offered for public consumption. The restraint in it made the praise land harder than any declaration could have.

Something inside me, clenched since the first witness took the stand, loosened by one dangerous degree.

I looked straight ahead because looking at him might have been unwise.

“Cross-examination is easier when the truth spell does some of the impeachment for you,” I said.

His mouth moved almost imperceptibly. “Do not diminish what you did.”

That was the kind of sentence a woman could carry too long if she were not careful.

Lucia appeared at my other side as if carved from the hallway’s own shadow and given cheekbones. Her posture remained military-straight, watchful even at rest. Her eyes moved once down the corridor, once over the guards, once toward Lucian’s distant position near the main chamber doors, and then back to me.

“You look like hell,” she said.

Maksym’s eyes cut to her. She ignored him and produced a small flask from inside her tailored jacket.

It was gold. Of course, it was gold. The Kozlov family seemed constitutionally incapable of owning an ugly emergency supply.

“Blood wine,” Lucia said, pressing it into my hands. “Drink.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are standing. That is not the same thing.”

I took the flask.

The metal was cool against my palm. When I unscrewed the cap, the scent rose—dark fruit, iron, warmth, something old and fortified. My body answered before my pride could object.

I drank.

The first swallow moved through me like heat poured into a cold room. Not intoxication. Restoration. My vision sharpened at the edges. The tremor in my fingers eased.

Lucia watched with a brief, sharp smile.

Then she pointed down the hall toward a recessed doorway marked with an understated symbol I interpreted, with some relief, as the ladies’ room.

“Splash water on your face,” she said. “Come back and finish this. I’ll be here and Remy’s coming.”

There was no question in it. No fuss. No maternal hovering. Somehow, that made it kinder.

Maksym stood beside her, eyes tracking the hallway while he waited, every line of him controlled. He watched guards, counsel, doors, shadows. Lucia watched the same things from a different angle, dark curls pinned back, hands relaxed and ready.

I capped the flask and handed it back.