(Winter's POV)
She nodded, returning her attention to the food on her plate—the meat had gone cold, she realized, though her appetite had fled anyway. But her eyes kept glancing upward, tracking Kat across the table with the peripheral awareness of a warrior who knew that stillness could hide bleeding. Her friend seemed to be recovering, shoulders settling back into their usual predatory alignment, but something remained fractured beneath the surface. A tremor in Kat's hands when she reached for her cup, the way her gaze kept drifting to the middle distance, seeing something that wasn't the dining hall around them.
She remembered something serious, Frost observed, the Lycan's voice unusually gentle, almost cautious. Something connected to what she shared with us. The rejection. The choic
