The territory itself was only a small corner of the city, but it had been theirs for nearly three hundred years — long before the elves swept in to take control. Back then, it was a mess of feuding factions and people looking for a new start in a freshly discovered territory. The shifters, easily adaptable and vicious, might have taken control of the area entirely if the elves hadn’t marched in one day, claws at the ready, and swept nearly the entire West Coast into their pockets.
It wasn’t that shifters weren’t capable of taking them on. Viktor could heal faster than any elf could, and though he lacked the diamond sharp claws and steel bones of the elves, shifters were elastic. They could take enormous amounts of damage and bounce back unscathed.
The issue was that elves, even when they hated one another, acted as a single unit for the best interest of the group. Shifters never could manage that.
Pack was the heart and soul of a shifter. It was what tied the animals in their hearts together, gave them a sense of purpose in a world that would otherwise not make a damn lick of sense to them. To live in a pack was to be important, no matter your position in the hierarchy. It was to know that you were loved, that someone would always be looking out for you, and that you had a place.
But between packs, the intensity of that loyalty could become a poison. The Alliance was as close as they came to truly putting their differences aside and pooling their political power.
Even that, as Viktor knew firsthand, was a shaky thing.
Still, it was better than living in the confined sliver of territory they were afforded by the EVP. He would take an uneasy truce over watching his own pack eventually wither away, families melting into other packs as they sought more space, more freedom to let their cubs roam.
He loved Lake Merced. As he shucked off his dress shoes and tied the laces together, he thought of what it would be like to say goodbye to the salty breeze blowing off of the ocean and the call of wrens in the hazy time between night and blushing dawn.
He imagined it would feel a bit like tearing out a chunk of his soul.
Viktor’s throat constricted as he wadded up his socks and shoved them in his pocket. He slung his tied up shoes over his shoulder and crossed the border into the intensely monitored perimeter of his territory at a loping run into the darkness.
His eyes changed automatically, shifting to the superior vision of the coyote’s. They glowed with reflective green as he wove through cypress and fir trees. Normally he would have already ditched his clothes and shifted, but he only had the one good suit left, so he was forced to satisfy the urge to run as a man.
The deeper he ran, the more he felt the ache of impending loss, as well as the bone-deep understanding that this was for the best.
The animal in him loved its pack, but it balked at the unnaturally cramped quarters they had been forced into. He should not have been able to see the homes of his packmates through the trees, though they were a familiar and comforting sight.
One’s den should never be immediately visible to outsiders. It was where mates and cubs were kept safe, where each pair had their own tiny territory. Although they had gone to great lengths to disguise their homes so that they blended in with the scenery, they were still obvious to anyone with eyes. There just wasn’t enough room to sprawl out as they should, to give each den and its family space.
Viktor knew that his pack felt a deep loyalty to the land on which so many of them had been born and raised their own cubs. He also knew that they felt hemmed in, exposed to the outside in ways that the animal could not accept.
The last straw had been the loss of three young families. All of them cited the same reasons for leaving the pack: they didn’t feel right raising their cubs in a cage. If he weren’t the alpha, bound in blood and magic to serve his pack, he might have made the same choice as them a long time ago.
As it stood, hewasthe alpha, and he couldn’t just sit and watch his pack die a slow, suffocating death.
No one stopped Viktor as he ran, though he felt the presence of several packmates pass him in the dark. They were quiet and moved like quicksilver even in their bipedal forms, but he would always know when they were near. They lived in his blood and in the wild heart of the animal that connected them all.
He was grateful that they sensed his aggression, his need for space. He knew they all wanted updates on their progress with the Alliance, but he could not give them that time tonight.
Tonight, he ran until sweat slicked down his back, until his lungs burned with exertion, and then doubled back around to do the circuit again. By the time he felt like he’d finally let off some steam, dawn was already starting to creep into the velvet dark.
His den was situated in the heart of their territory, on a tiny jut of land that nearly cut between the two halves of the lake. Swathed in darkness cast by massive, old growth trees and underbrush, the clever use of mirrors and proprietary m-tech nearly hid it from view.
It was not the home he grew up in.Thatden was knocked down after his father’s death. Viktor could no more stand to live there again than he could look at his father’s picture. It didn’t matter that it had been nearly twenty years since the old bastard met his gruesome and well deserved end. He would never stop hating him.
Slipping through the hidden door, he didn’t bother turning on the lights as he padded into the main living area. Like many shifters, he had an aversion to most walls. The only kind he found permissible were those that protected cubs from the cold and wet. Inside, only small concessions for privacy were made for even crowded homes.
Seeing as he didn’t live with anyone else and hadn’t brought a lover into his spaceever,he only bothered with blocking off his bedroom and the bathrooms — mostly so nosy packmates didn’t accidentally catch him in a compromising position.
That didn’t mean he didn’t care about his living space, though. On the contrary, Viktor was obsessive about the state of his den. Not a single corner went uninspected or piece of furniture came into it without meeting every last one of his exacting standards.
Was it sturdy? Did it smell good? Could it hold up to claws? If a cub stood on it, would they risk a broken neck? Would his mate prefer a soft mattress or a firm one?
Camille had different dietary needs than he did, so he’d gone out of his way to secure a specially designed refrigerator meant to store large amounts of meat.
She liked light, so he had large, reflective windows installed.
He knew she liked clothes, so he’d even gone so far as to build her a walk-in closet. It, like everything else, sat empty, unused. Waiting for her.
Camille had no way of knowing that he had spent the last twenty years building his life around her. Even when he didn’t think he would ever have her in his life again, she went into every decision he made.
