She was, at least to Viktor’s eyes, a completely new person.
The healer he met almost a year prior had a desperate, wounded air to her that stirred every protective instinct. Her cheeks were thin, her smiles brittle. Even her scent had been… wrong. Washed away with astringent over the counter scent blockers, but still somehow carrying a note of sickness to it.
Healers were always soft, always in need of protection from the predators around them, but she was a special case. Not once did she ask for help, but he’d felt her desperation in his bones anyway. When she started healing members of his pack with extraordinary skill, asking for neither compensation nor explanation, it was only a matter of time until he began to think of her as one of theirs.
Her sharp wit and easy compassion didn’t hurt — and neither did her pretty face. At one point, Viktor was pretty sure half the eligible single people in his pack were infatuated with her, most especially his second.
But the woman who screamed for coddling, for a soft den and a gentle hand, was not the woman who stood before him now.
She was comfortable, entirely at ease, and she wasn’t just a witch. She was a proud halfling — witch and elvish. Her ears, revealed by her slowly unraveling updo, were very gently pointed. Now that she’d stopped using a dizzying amount of Noscent, she smelled crisp and clean and wild.
Elvish,but with a twining scent of ozone and magic that was distinctlywitchy.
I knew there was something familiar, something that reminded me of Cam, about her,he thought, a tiny fraction of his tension easing at the sight of her. It was something about the air healers carried. Some tangible compassion that lingered just out of sight, easing stress and pain without even a touch. Healers just had that effect on people, though he wasn’t sure they always realized it.
“All the suitors looking to steal you from me,” Theodore answered. He set down his glass and walked across the room to cup his wife’s cheeks, which were creased with a bemused smile. His blue hands dwarfed her delicate bone structure. “I would never let any of them near you, my brilliant, beautiful wife.”
Margot’s pert nose wrinkled. “I never evenhadsuitors.”
“Not true, sunshine,” Viktor argued. He grinned, knowing he was probably about to start some trouble for his gruff second in command. “Benny was pretty damn hung up on you, remember? Still is. Can’t say I blame him, of course.”
Theodore’s head snapped around to pin him with a hard look. “Yoursecond?”
And because he was a coyote who loved to play, he answered, “You know Benny. Big guy. Dark skin, good smile, looks like he could crush steel girders between his thighs?”
“Viktor, are youtryingto get Benny killed?” Margot smoothed her hands down Theodore’s chest, petting him, soothing him. Magic hummed between them. It was almost tangible enough to make the air shimmer, though he didn’t know if that was a symptom of the witchbond he knew they shared or something deeper.
“He only came by when you all had teenagers that needed healing. Benny was sweet, but he barely spoke.” She patted her husband’s chest. “Besides, I knew right away that he wasn’t who I was looking for. I knew I wanted Theodore from the moment I saw him, though I couldn’t exactly admit it.”
Viktor could make out the sound of Theodore snapping his teeth together from across the room. “See? It only took me a week to bindandmarry my consort.” Theodore slid his hand around the back of Margot’s neck and pulled her close. She sighed and wrapped her arms around his waist, her eyes dropping to a relaxed half-mast as he stroked her nape. If she cared that he was fresh from a workout, she didn’t show it. “It wouldn’t have been an issue even if Margot was spoken for already. We were a done thing from the start.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t have a history like Cam and I do,” he argued, suddenly annoyed by all the open affection oozing through the air. He didn’t usually feel bitter, seeing as he lived in a very openly affectionate pack, but something about the relationship between Theodore and Margot made him sick with envy.
“No,” Theodore dryly replied, “we just had a nascent psychic bond, a looming death sentence, and a life changing secret keeping us apart.”
Margot poked his side. “Don’t forget the bomb.”
“Anda bomb.”
They did not, Viktor noticed, mention the fact that the bombing in question was orchestrated by Theodore’s own sister, the terrifying Delilah. Last Viktor heard, Theodore had quietly banished her from their inner circle and confined Delilah to her post in the UTA Congress in the New Zone until tempers died down.
“Fine, but it’s not the same.” Viktor stood up from the couch to pace, his hands on his hips. His animal clawed at his insides, snarling to be let out, to hunt down their mate, but he restrained it with a ruthless mental grip. He couldn’t mess up again. If Camille wanted him to chase her, to challenge her in her own territory, then by the gods he’d fuckingdoit.
“Are we talking about Cammie’s betrothal or whatever it’s called?”
Theodore answered her with words when all Viktor could do was snarl. “Yes. Vik wasn’t able to talk her out of itorfind out what prompted this.”
“Don’t give me that shit. She wouldn’t even let me through the door!”
Theodore sent him an arch look. “Wouldn’t have stopped me.”
“Oh, shush.” Margot rolled her eyes. “You’re the man who sat out in the hallway like a pitiful little puppy until I let you in. You have no room to tease him.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Only because I’m a pushover.” Margot ignored Theodore’s emphatic denial in favor of peering at Viktor, her expression thoughtful.
He expected her to ask why Camille hated him so much, but she simply asked, “What are you going to do?”
