I stood in the common room at five in the morning and waited.
The coffee was brewing. Tank's machine — the one he'd rebuilt from scrap metal and spite — gurgling in the corner like a third lung. I'd set out six mugs. Not five. Six. Because I was done pretending I wasn't part of this.
Wolf came first.
He'd been sleeping in the garage since Ch25 — since I'd found him under his bike with a wrench and three days of silence. His curls were a disaster. His cut was unzipped. He stopped in the doorway when he saw the mugs.
"That many?"
"Sit."
He sat. Pulled a chair to the corner like he wasn't sure he belonged at the table. His eyes followed me — the way they'd followed me since the meadow, since the parking lot, since the first time he'd grinned and I'd grinned back.
Jax arrived next. He'd
