Behind her, a woman’s voice dryly noted, “Well, I must have missed something interesting.”
ChapterThirteen
“You’re awfully tense.”
Viktor didn’t look up from his task to reply, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Mia Larkin, mother of two wild teenage coyote shifters and his childhood babysitter, leaned her hip against the picnic table he was helping clear. Around them, pack members of all ages milled around, swapping gossip and speculating about the future. Cubs ran between legs, yipping and laughing, their bellies full of pasta salad and chips and way more pudding than was healthy. It was a beautiful day.
When the summer heat came from the inland, it tended to hit a solid wall of coastal mist, creating a soupy fog that blocked out the sun. Occasionally, though, summer managed to break through.
Today was one of those rare days. The sky was a crystalline blue, cloudless and vast, and the sun made the air shimmer with heat. Everything felt charged; more full of life and color. Anticipation hummed in the air like the low buzz of insects hidden in the scrub around the clearing they gathered in.
Viktor used the occasion to personally speak with every pack member, giving the adults and elders an update on the Alliance. He also checked in on all the teenagers, as well as the littlest ones, though they were not privy to the same information as their parents. The teens knew something was going on, but he didn’t want them to worry about being uprooted for nothing. If the negotiations fell through, it was better to let them live in ignorance.
But it wasn’t stress over the Alliance that made the muscles of his shoulders tense. It didn’t matter that he’d gone out of his way to appear relaxed, to give no hint about what he was struggling with.
Pack always knew.
They were connected not just by blood and memory, but by a thin, remarkably sturdy latticework of magic. It bound them together — cubs to parents, mates to one another, pack to alpha. It was a tapestry of bonds, each one as important as the other, their threads woven tight enough to make something unbreakable.
Usually he found an untold amount of strength in those bonds. At that moment, however, he could have used a littlelesscloseness.
“I’m fine, Mia,” he replied, shooting her an easy smile as he stacked sealed food containers into a tower by the edge of the table. All the leftovers would go home with the elders, though they never went without ready made food to begin with. Pack looked out for everyone.
“Uh-huh.” Mia crossed her arms and looked at him with the knowing, motherly gleam in her eyes she’d perfected when she was barely sixteen. She was something of a mother to him when his own couldn’t be, though she was just a child herself. “Is that why half the pack is ready to run, fight, or fuck?”
Viktor rolled his shoulders, hoping it would loosen the painful knots that had taken root under each shoulder blade. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s summer. The pack always gets rowdier in the summer.”
Even he knew that was a weak excuse, true though it was. He and the rest of the dominant adults had been forced to break up no less than four scraps since the start of the picnic, and he didn’t want to consider exactly what was going on with the teens that snuck away half an hour prior.
Everyone was restless, hungry for something they couldn’t quite put their fingers on.
Of courseViktorknew what was going on. He was damn near coming out of his skin with the fever, fighting every single second against the compulsion to hunt down his mate and lick every inch of her until she clutched at him with those pretty claws.
Because he was the alpha, he sat in the center of the pack’s tapestry. Everything flowed through him — everything flowedoutof him and into the rest of the pack. It was no wonder that every young, single packmate looked like they were dangerously on edge.
That’s howhefelt.
“Vik, I know this isn’t just about the Alliance bullshit,” Mia pressed, sidling closer and lowering her voice. Her fingers skimmed his bare forearm. He felt her gaze searching his profile. “Are you courting someone?”
He clenched his jaw hard enough to make the hinges pop.Yes,he wanted to say.I’m courting an infuriating, gorgeous elf who hates me. Everything is great.
But he couldn’t say that. Admitting that he was courting someone would open up a whole line of questions he wasn’t yet ready to answer.
Except he couldn’t rightly say no, could he? Viktor was honest to his core. Lying to his pack was anathema to who he was as a man, as a leader.
He was also violently stubborn.
Hewouldwin Camille to his side. There was no other option for him now. While he’d spent the better part of his life keeping her a painful, beloved secret, the time was rapidly approaching when he would have to share her with the rest of the pack.
If he wanted Camille to be his, she would have to betheirstoo.
But that didn’t meannowwas the time to tell the whole pack who she was. Until he knew for sure that she wasn’t going to slip through his fingers again, he would keep her identity to himself.
He’d try, at least.
Viktor opened his mouth to answer her with a vague affirmative, knowing Mia would spread the word to the rest of the pack as soon as she possibly could, but was cut off by the sight of Benny jogging into the clearing. His expression was bewildered, but there was an underlying tension in his muscular frame that Viktor knew well.
