Standing up straight, Viktor moved around Mia with a small touch to her spine. Benny quick-stepped around a couple of brawling cubs, their silver fur streaked with dust and bits of grass, to meet his alpha at the table.
Viktor’s eyes went coyote gold. “What’s wrong?”
Jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, Benny told him, “There’s someone at the border asking for you. They’re waiting at the end of the corridor.”
“Who?” Viktor felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. It wasn’t unusual for uninvited guests to show up at the corridor, the narrow strip of unfenced land that connected their territory to San Francisco’s premier university and the rest of the city, but his instincts told him this was more than just a friend popping by.
He could feel Mia’s eyes on him when his second answered, “You’ll never believe this, but it’s anelvishwoman. Pretty purple, with the meanest scowl I’ve ever seen in my damn life.”
Well, fuck me. There goes that secret.
Not that he cared, really. The moment the words left Benny’s mouth, Viktor snapped into the hunt, his coyote prowling just under his skin. He heard Mia make an astonished gasp, but he was already moving, his long legs taking him out of the clearing without conscious thought.
Wearing only an old t-shirt, faded jeans, and sneakers, his speed wasn’t restricted by a suit or stiff dress shoes. When he ran to meet his mate at the border of their territory, hereallyran.
Only a handful of minutes later, he burst through the trees that closed in around the Merced pack’s end of the corridor. A wide expanse of well tended park rolled out from the border to the street. On the other side sat the sprawling campus of San Francisco Protectorate University.
Technically the public had access to the park, but no one really used it. Neutral or not, the land belonged to the coyotes, and no one wanted to risk life and limb by overstepping their bounds so close to where the pack raised their cubs.
Viktor caught sight of the sleek silver vehicle immediately. Sunlight bounced off of it in a blinding display, spilling light across the woman who stood stiffly beside the rear wheel.
His heart jackhammered in his chest. It’d beenmonthssince he saw her last, since he tasted her skin and held all that fierce warmth in his arms. Seeing her there, in the flesh, staggered him. Gods, he was so damn hungry for her ithurt.
Her short black hair was tousled by the breeze that blew toward him, blowing the sweet, wild scent of her straight into his lungs. Camille was dressed in an elegant cotton dress with a high, buttoned collar, her long lavender legs exposed, and her dainty feet encased in strappy stilettos. The ever-present Solbourne pin, cast in gold and pinned above her heart, winked in the sun.
Fuck,he thought, going instantly, painfully hard at the sight of her in those dainty, sharp-looking heels. He wanted to know what it was like to feel them bite into his back.
Without realizing it, Viktor slowed to a stalking gait, his shoulders slightly rounded as he moved in the shadows between the trees. He would have to leave them sooner or later, since there was no cover close to the street, but until he got there, he wanted to bask in the sight of her.
She didn’t look happy, but he knew she’d look even more upset when she caught sight of him. In the seconds he had left before that happened, he wanted to take in the way she looked in the sunlight, how her silver earrings dangled from her ears, how she adjusted the fit of her little blue gloves almost nervously.
They’d never met in secret here, back when everything was different. He couldn’t risk his father finding out that he was willingly spending time with an elvish girl, and she couldn’t risk getting caught fraternizing with a scrappy coyote shifter.
Usually they met on the beach, where the borders blurred, or behind the waterfall in Yerba Buena Plaza after he finished a training session with her cousins. His father had been informed that Viktor’s punishment for trespassing was being meted out by Valen himself — a good excuse that kept his father from becoming too suspicious of the time his son spent with the elves. For a while, anyway.
But Viktor had always wanted to bring Camille to his land. He wanted to show her his den, to see her eyes light up when he explained why he’d chosen what he had, how he’d kept her in mind every step of the way. He wanted her in hishome,no matter where that was.
To see her there, dressed like she was ready to join the picnic, made his chest tighten with an indescribable feeling. She was so godsdamned pretty and growly andhis.
He didn’t bother reining in the coyote when he stepped out of the shadows several feet away from where she stood. He wanted her to see it. Maybe if she actually saw how much every part of him craved her, she’d let him in.
“Finally,” she tartly exclaimed, making his lips twitch with a wide smile. “I’ve been waiting for— no, you standright there.”
Viktor halted his approach, his smile vanishing under a confused frown. “Cam, I’m not going to talk to you from halfway across the park.” He shot her a hungry smile. “I swear, I only bite when you ask me to, sweetheart.”
Her chin jutted out at a familiar, stubborn angle. “You stand right there or I’m leaving, Vik.”
Exasperated, he held out his arms. “Why? Are you afraid the big bad coyote is gonna gobble you up?”
Not far off from what I want to do,he thought, tactfully refraining from saying it aloud.
He watched, pleased, as a violet flush darkened the skin of her cheekbones. They were about twenty feet away from one another, but he had no trouble making out the way her eyes narrowed and her fists clenched by her thighs.
“No,” she ground out, “maybe I just don’t want to smell musty fur. Ever consider that?”
Viktor’s grin was sharp, full of the coyote’s need. “You had no problem with my scent that day in the meeting room.”
“A massive lapse in judgment.”
