Because she wasn’t sure that she had ever said it to him before, Camille breathed deeply and told him, “I love you, Kaz. You know that, right?”
One green knuckle brushed the curve of her cheek. His expression, normally closed off, briefly cracked. For just a moment, she spied the depths of something great and tender in her stoic cousin. “I love you too, Cammie.”
He pressed a hard kiss to the top of her head. “Go on,” he muttered gruffly, nudging her over onto the grass. “Go be with your flea-bitten coyote already.”
“I donothave fleas.”
Camille turned her head to find Viktor waiting for her. At some point, he’d managed to lose his shoes and socks, but had acquired a gray-furred cub that couldn’t have been more than a few months old. The cub looked right at home tucked into his elbow. Reaching for Camille with his free hand, he looped his arm around her waist and drew her under his arm.
“You don’t think I have fleas, do you?” he teased.
Camille wrinkled her nose. “I share a bed with you, so I certainly hope not.”
“We do not have fleas in this pack!” Adjusting his one-armed hold on the sleepy cub, he demanded, “You look Bea in the eye and tell her she has fleas.”
Bea stared up at them all with eyes of the sweetest whiskey brown and, as if on cue, unrolled her tiny pink tongue in a canine yawn.
Camille made a soft sound of delight and, after glancing at Viktor to make sure it was okay, gently stroked the cub between her tiny triangle ears. “I wouldneversay something like that to Bea,” she promised. “Would you, Kaz?”
Sneaking a look at her cousin, she found him staring at the cub with the same unease she felt when Viktor introduced her to the pack. His dark eyes shifted over their shoulder, towards all the milling shifters, and back to the cub with open discomfort.
Before she could say something, Viktor asked, “You good, Kaz?”
Kaz gestured to the stiff guards standing a few feet away. Valen had left them at the m-jet hangar to go home and be with his consort, but Camille was confident he would have been included in Kaz’s gesture, too, if he stayed.
“Should we go?”
Viktor peered at the orc’s tense expression before slowly asking, “Why would we ask you to leave?”
Camille shot him a look. She knew for a fact that he understood why the elves and her cousin might be uneasy, but he clearly wanted Kaz tosayit.
Frowning, he answered, “Because you’ve got young here. We wouldn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.”
Viktor didn’t say anything for a moment. Apparently making some decision, his expression was thoughtful when he met Camille’s eyes. She knew what he was going to do approximately half a second before her consort stepped away from her and —gently —shoved the cub into Kaz’s bulky arms.
Panicked, he said, “What the fu—”
“Don’t swear in front of the cubs,” Viktor admonished him. Clapping Kaz on the shoulder, he gave him a nudge toward the party. “You get cub duty until she wants to be let down. Then just put her on the grass. She’ll find her way back to her parents.”
Ignoring the way Kaz was actively attempting to hand the now much more awake cub back to her alpha, Viktor made a swirling gesture with his hand, motioning toward all the assembled guards. “Join the party, folks. It’s about time we started trusting each other, don’t you think? I mean, my guess is your sovereign has already invited himself and is…” Viktor checked an imaginary watch. “…about five minutes away. Ifhethinks he can be around our cubs, then I think you can, too.”
The guards looked at one another, then at Kaz, who was busy being gnawed on by tiny puppy teeth and looking positively terrified. When he was no help, they looked to Camille for direction.
Straightening her spine, she turned to walk fearlessly into the fray. Camille waved over her shoulder and proudly called out, “Come on! We can’t have the shifters thinking we’recowards,can we?”
ChapterThirty-Eight
“Seems a little ostentatious, is all,”Viktor muttered, pulling at the stiff collar of his barely buttoned dress shirt.
They were sitting by a massive wall of windows that overlooked Union Square and its soaring column topped with a triumphant, winged harpy cast in bronze. The day was beautiful and blue. Viktor wished he was outside, running along the jagged edges of the lake or the sunbaked beach, enjoying the weather as only a shifter could.
“Even an animal can sit at a linen-covered table for a minute,” Theodore teased from his side of the table. He had removed his suit jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves to reveal powerfully corded blue forearms. One was draped casually over the back of his wife’s chair. Claws blunted, he slowly dragged his fingertips through the loose strands of her hair.
Camille, seated beside Viktor, leaned across the table to flick his other hand, which was resting by a glass of whiskey. “Don’t call my consort an animal, you oaf.”
Theodore flashed his fangs at his cousin, but there was only humor in his eyes when he replied, “I’m the sovereign and head of this family. You can’t call me an oaf!”
“AndI’man alpha,” she shot back, saccharine sweet. “So I can do whatever I want.”
