For Lee, who knew? The man had seen and done everything. Only the gods knew what horrors lurked in the mind of a man who helped carve a better world out of the bloody soil left by war.
“You think this is a good idea?” Lee’s voice was so low, not even keen shifter ears would hear it over the wind. Viktor, standing less than a foot away, barely caught it.
“I don’t know.” Viktor eyed the circle and its silent, seething occupants with dread. “It’s better than how it used to be, but…”
Lee inclined his head. “There was something cleaner about the old ways.”
“Cleaner, but not necessarily more fair.”
“We’ve never been good about that, have we?”
Viktor ran a hand through his hair, pushing back the golden strands kicked up by the wind. “No, we haven’t.”
The old ways would have seen them fight with no witnesses, no holds barred. There would have been no rules of the circle, no consequences for intervention or discussion of terms. They would have been little more than two animals trying to rip each other’s throats out.
Simpler, certainly, but the people who embraced those ways could never have functioned in an Alliance. Getting shifters to cooperate would never beeasy,but having rules that made bloodshed the last resort at least gave them all something to hold onto. Rules gave them a singular sense of identity.
Trust. It was abouttrust.
If the Alliance was going to work, they had to trust one another to follow the rules, to understand that there would be consequences should they be broken, and that violence would not be nondiscriminatory. They would never be rid of the animal entirely — and wouldn’t want to be even if they could — but they could learn to trust one another and build a better future for everyone in the process.
Lee clapped a heavy hand down on Viktor’s shoulder and rumbled, “I’m really not sure if you did her a kindness or not, Vik.”
“I’m not sure either.” Shaking his head, he stepped back. The need to be with his mate drummed at the back of his mind. Her fear was his own, and now that his life was no longer on the line, he needed to see it gone. “I should be with my mate.”
Lee’s eyes, icy blue, darted toward where Camille stood rigidly with her packmates. He let out a low whistle. “An elf, huh?” He glanced down to where Viktor knew Camille’s bitemark peeked out from under the collar of his shirt. Lee’s full lips kicked up in a smile. “Damn, that’s a deep bite. She must really like you.”
Viktor pressed a hand against the silvery scar and grinned. “Yeah, I’m a lucky sonuvabitch.”
“You are.” Lee nodded toward where she waited. “Get back to her, then, before she marches over here and turns her claws onme.”
Turning on his heel, Viktor threw over his shoulder, “If you think I can stop my mate from doinganything,you’re delusional.”
Lee arched a brow. “Is that an elf thing or a Solbourne thing?”
“Both.”
ChapterThirty-Six
As soon asViktor was within arm’s reach, Camille curled her fingers around his forearm and pulled him closer. “What’s going on?” Bile crawled up the back of her throat. “What’s wrong, Vik?”
Viktor wrapped his free arm around her waist and ran the tip of his nose along her hairline. A low, soothing rumble built in his chest. “Everything is okay.” Pressing his cheek against the side of her head, he met the eyes of his packmates and assembled EVP representatives. “Lana Andreas requested that she take my place in the circle. I accepted.”
If she hadn’t been holding onto him so tightly, Camille was fairly certain her knees would have buckled. Her breath left her on a wheeze as all the sick anxiety and fear bled out in a dizzying rush.
He’s not going to fight. Thank the gods, he’s not going to fight.
Fuck honor. Fuck pride. Fuck justice. Camille didn’t care about any of it. All she needed, all shewantedwas her consort to live.
Curling her arms around his middle, she dropped her head onto his shoulder and shuddered. “Thank you,” she whispered, ragged.“Thank you.”
Viktor cupped the back of her head with one warm hand in a wordless gesture of understanding. She did not need to hear the words to know he’d given up the chance to exact shifter justice for her sake. Sheknewit, just as she knew that her cloying fear over the past week was not simply the past catching up to her — it wasinstinct.
The Solbournes didn’t advertise the fact that they routinely bore Seers, but Foresight ran in their family like a wide, turbulent river. Unlike Delilah, Camille couldn’t boast any real skill with the ability, she knew the difference between knowing andknowing.
Sheknewthat something was going to go terribly wrong if Viktor fought Andreas like she knew that Elio was a threat and that her mother’s end had loomed closer every day.
Relief was a lead weight in her stomach. It threatened to drag her down to her knees, but Viktor wouldn’t let that happen. With his arms wrapped tightly around her, he told Benny, “Lana’s got the support of her pack. It didn’t feel right to fight her on it if she really wanted to handle her father herself.”
