Page 106 of White Wolf

“He cried like a woman,” Feliks said into his porridge.

Ivan elbowed him so hard Katya thought he might go tumbling off the bench, but the big man laughed: no hard feelings.

“It hurt!” he protested.

“More than getting shot?”

Ivan drew himself upright, expression turning indignant. But his mouth twitched. “Yes.”

Feliks made a dismissive sound and turned to Katya. “You talked to Nik yet this morning?”

She felt her face heat. “No. Why would I?”

Feliks rolled his eyes. “Alright. I thought you might know when we’re leaving.”

Because they assumed she was traveling with them.

She set her spoon down. “Oh. No, I have no idea.”

Ivan wasn’t as dumb as he looked. His eyes narrowed. “You’re not coming with us, are you?”

She shrugged, and it was an effort not to keep doing it. “I don’t know.”

Feliks started to look cagey. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “You aren’t thinking of saying anything to anybody, are you?” It wasn’t quite a threat. Notquite.

“No,” she said, firmly. “Absolutely not.”

He didn’t relax much.

“She’s in the army,” Ivan said, like Feliks was being stupid, shoveling porridge into his mouth. “She wants to shoot Nazis, not go chasing ghosts with us.”

“No, that’s not it. I–” She stopped herself. That was exactly the excuse she would have given a few weeks ago, but now, she found that wasn’t the first protest that came to mind. In fact, it wasn’t even in the top five.

For the first time since her family died, she found that she was scared. Of several things: the idea of magic, of monsters, of a deadstarets. Of the handsomeness of Nikita’s face, and the way the sight of it opened up a vulnerable place in her heart that she thought she’d welded shut when everything went up in flames. She was scared because she felt unsure, and girlish, and because she was questioning her commitment to the cause.

She loved her country, was a patriot through and through – but maybe there was another way to save the Motherland. A better one.

That’swhy she was scared. She was shaking with it, suddenly, pressing her hands flat to the table to keep them still.

“Oh,” Feliks said, and he must have been able to read the indecision in her. “Oh. Um. Well.” He attempted a smile. “It might be helpful to have a sharpshooter along. If you want to come, I mean.”

“Don’t let us pressure you,” Ivan said, unaccountably cheerful. He made a motion toward her bowl. “Are you going to finish that?”

~*~

Nikita spent a good twenty minutes looking for his people – he thought of all of them that way, fondly, rolling his eyes, like an exasperated parent almost – and finally found them down in the basement labs, that rabbit warren of windowless concrete hallways, caged lights, the beeping of strange machines, and the chemical tang of experimentation.

He heard their voices – Ivan, loudest and most-recognizable of all – and glanced down toward the closed door of the massive operating theater where Monsieur Philippe had driven a knife through Sasha’s heart and turned him into a wolfman. He shuddered, skin going suddenly cold, and he turned instead toward one of the smaller labs, one that didn’t hold such violent memories.

They were inside, all of them, even Katya, who slouched with one shoulder resting against a cabinet face, arms crossed, her loveliness set off by the drab green shirt and trousers she wore. She was so clean, her skin ivory and smooth, brows and lashes and hair shiny-dark under the lights, her lips pink like she’d been chewing at them. She’d been beautiful in the outdoors, windburned and smudged with dirt; but seeing her fresh and put-together, standing with Kolya,belongingthere, with them all, hit him right in the gut.

He wanted her. Badly. How the hell had he waited so long to touch her?

Kolya sent him a smug look that said he knew what he was thinking, and Nikita shook the stupor off and stepped into the room.

Sasha sat on the edge of a table, long legs dangling, arm extended and sleeve pushed up as Dr. Ingraham drew a vial of blood. The wolves crowded on the opposite side of the table, glaring at the doctor, who shifted under their scrutiny and darted them a nervous glance.

“They won’t attack you,” Sasha said, tone mild. “Not unless I want them to.”

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