Chapter 45: SOMETHING LIKE GRIEF

Georgia

It was just a dance. Except every wolf in the room knew it wasn’t.

Darcy pulled me toward the dance floor as the band shifted into something slower, his hand settling warm and steady at the small of my back. The floor around us had cleared into scattered couples swaying beneath the string lights, and he positioned us with easy, practiced grace, angling us to face a specific direction I didn’t immediately think to question.

I caught it a moment later. We were facing Puck.

Not accidentally. Something too deliberate lived in the small adjustment he’d made, the kind of precision that came from rehearsal, from a hundred versions of this moment played out in his head until it looked effortless. I wondered how long he’d planned this single angle, this single humiliation, dressed up as romance. But the observation slipped past me almost as quickly as it arrived, dissolved by a tiredness that had settled deep into my bones. I let myself want the easy thing, the warmth of his hand, the simple pleasure of being held by someone who wasn’t tangled up in confusing warnings and half-explained silences. For once, I wanted to stop reading meaning into every glance, every gesture, every careful word. I wanted, just for a few minutes, to be a girl at a party instead of a puzzle everyone kept trying to solve.

*Just let this be simple,* I thought. *Just once.*

Then something shifted in the room.

I felt it before I understood it, a held breath rippling outward from certain clusters of the crowd. A few couples near us went stiff mid-dance, their attention drifting toward where Darcy and I moved together, expressions tight and careful in a way that had nothing to do with the music. Whispers passed between them, quiet enough that I couldn’t catch the words, loud enough that I knew they were about me. The air itself seemed to thicken, pressing against my skin like the moment before a storm breaks, and beneath the chandeliers, even the light seemed to dim by some fraction too small to name but too real to dismiss.

I caught sight of Mandi near the refreshment table, and my stomach dropped at the panic written plainly across her face. She watched us with wide eyes, one hand pressed against her mouth, then moved, weaving quickly through the crowd toward the edge of the dance floor, abandoning any pretense of composure. Guests turned to look as she passed, murmuring, but she didn’t seem to notice or care, and that alone told me how bad this must be. My pulse picked up before she’d even reached me, some animal part of my brain already bracing for bad news.

"Georgia." Mandi caught my arm the second she was close enough, panic bleeding into every syllable.

"What’s wrong?" I asked, breathless, my eyes searching hers for some clue as to what had frightened her so badly.

"You need to stop dancing. Right now," she said, low and fierce, her eyes darting briefly toward Darcy, sharp and wary, before returning to me. Something desperate lived there, something I’d never seen from her before, not even in the strange, silent weeks since I’d learned what had been done to her voice. Her fingers trembled faintly against my arm, as though the effort of forcing even those few words free had cost her something physical.

"It’s just a dance, Mandi."

"It’s not - " She stopped herself, her throat working like she was swallowing the words back down, as though some invisible hand had reached in to stop them at the source. Her eyes glistened, bright with frustration and something closer to fear. "Please. Just trust me."

"I’m fine," I said, firm, though my stomach twisted with the lie of it, my own voice sounding thin and unconvincing even to me.

Darcy’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly at my back. "She’s in good hands, Mandi. No need to worry," he said, smooth and warm on the surface, something sharper underneath, a blade wrapped in silk.

Mandi’s jaw tightened, fury and helplessness warring behind her eyes. For a second I thought she’d push further, that whatever bound her tongue might snap under the pressure of her fear for me. Instead she stepped back, hands curling into fists at her sides, watching us with an expression that looked less like jealousy than fear, raw and naked and impossible to mistake. The sight of it lodged uncomfortably in my chest, a splinter I didn’t have time to examine, though I knew it would fester later, in the quiet hours when I couldn’t avoid it. I wanted to call after her, to promise I’d be careful, but the words caught somewhere behind my teeth, useless against the current already pulling me forward.

"Sorry about that," Darcy said lightly, drawing my attention back to him as though nothing of consequence had passed between us. "She worries too much."

"She’s my friend," I said, sharper than I meant, some protective instinct rising hot and fast in my chest.

"Of course she is." He smiled and guided me smoothly back into the rhythm of the dance, as though Mandi’s fear were nothing more than a passing breeze, a minor inconvenience already forgotten. The ease of it unsettled me more than anything he could have said aloud.

I let it go, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do with it, and focused instead on the music, on the simple ease of moving with someone who made it effortless. It should have felt like relief. Instead, it felt like holding my breath, like waiting for a blow I couldn’t see coming, my body humming with a wariness I couldn’t quite name or dismiss.

That was when I glanced over Darcy’s shoulder and found Puck.

He stood exactly where he’d been most of the night, still and unmoving, a fixed point against the swirl of color and light, an island untouched by the currents of the party around him. But something was different. For one brief, unguarded second, before he caught himself and smoothed his expression back into something flatter and more controlled, I saw something in his face that wasn’t jealousy at all.

It looked like grief. Deep, quiet, exhausted grief, the kind that settled into someone’s features when they’d already accepted a loss, when hope had been worn away by too many disappointments to count. His shoulders sat too rigid, his jaw locked tight, his hands motionless at his sides, as though he were forcing himself not to move, not to cross the room and do something he knew he shouldn’t. For a heartbeat, he looked less like a boy watching a girl dance with someone else, and more like someone watching a door close that he knew he’d never be allowed to open again.

Then it was gone, and I was left staring at his composed, unreadable face, wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing, and hating myself a little for wishing I hadn’t.