He propped his hands on his hips.“Fuck. No.”
She made the sweetest, scariest little growl, and bared her four fangs in a purely elvish display of ire. Camille wrenched open the passenger side door, clearly intending to leave him in the dust.
She was already halfway in when he barked, “Four o’clock, Cam!Four o’clock!”
“Gods, I hope a bear shifter comes along andeatsyou, you insufferable mutt!” Gesturing over his shoulder to where he could feel a packmate watching, she added, “Youandyour audience!”
She sent him one last seething glare before she disappeared from view. The windows of the car were tinted, so he couldn’t make out what she looked like in the back seat, but he could hear the slam of the door perfectly well.
Knowing she was watching him, he raised his eyebrows expectantly and tapped his wrist. “Four o’clock, Cam!”
The car rumbled to life and, as it was pulling away from the curb, the back window rolled downjustenough to see Camille flipping him off.
ChapterFourteen
It wasstupid to go to Viktor. She knew that even when she was doing it.
But not confronting him wasn’t an option. While her instincts howled for the joy of challenging him, the rest of her was galled beyond belief by his sheer audacity.
Deeper than that, buried beneath the indignation and the fear, the flame of hope grew a little larger, a little more dangerous.
As Camille prepared for her second virtual meeting, she tried to smother that hope down into cold, smoking embers. She could not hope. Hope led to trust, and trusting Viktor had once led her to make one of the stupidest proposals of her life.
Run away with me,she’d begged him, breathless with the first wave of the pull.Run away with me. I’ll be your mate. We can be happy anywhere, can’t we? Away from your dad, away from the elves. Just you and me.
She was certain he’d say yes. Everything Viktor had ever done, every touch, every look, every word, assured her that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. There was no doubt. There was no second guessing herself. Viktor loved her.
Until he didn’t.
It was the memory of those frigid moments after her proposal, when warmth hemorrhaged out of her, as his silence stretched and stretched, that made Camille wish she could tear her feelings for him out by the root.
He looked her in the eye and told her, with a wild, caged expression, that he didn’t want a mate. He didn’t want her.
Andnowhe did? Because he didn’t like that she was forging a union with another man, or perhaps because of what happened in the meeting room?
Certainly it wasn’t because he loved her. It was some twisted sense of honor, or even an unintentionally cruel coyote game that she didn’t understand that motivated him. Camille wished that thought didn’t slice her to ribbons, but it did. Better he not care at all than get her hopes up.
She could survive his indifference. She couldn’t live through another heartbreak.
So Camille firmed her chin, forced her roiling feelings aside, and got ready for her afternoon meeting with the Noors.
Donning a simple, professional dress of black silk and white piping, she carefully combed her hair back behind her ears and secured the cropped curls with a silver clip. Checking to make sure her high collar was securely buttoned under her chin, she smoothed out any wrinkles and forced herself to breathe deep.
Do not think of Viktor. Think of Cyrus.
ShelikedCyrus. He’d spent time with her at the Dia vineyard, helping them find new and more environmentally friendly ways to cultivate their grapes. He was a good man and a gentle soul. Though she knew that she had to go through with the other meetings for the sake of propriety, she’d always known that if the Noors were interested, she would choose Cyrus in the end.
Until Viktor ruined everything.
No, she had to stop thinking of him. It didn’t matter that her meeting with him was less than thirty minutes after the scheduled end of her meeting with the Noors. Viktor could not factor into any decision she made. His suit wasn’t real. His motivations were suspect.
She didn’t need to consider him at all.
And yet she thought of him as she settled onto the couch facing the feed screen. She thought of the way his skin gleamed like polished bronze in the sunlight; how it stood out against the soft white of his t-shirt. She thought of how he looked at her, eyes coyote gold, like both halves of his soul wanted to eat her up.
She thought of the way his expression changed when she told him to stop torturing her — how it went from stricken to darkly furious in a blink.
Camille carefully posed herself on the edge of her seat, her legs crossed at the ankle and tucked demurely to one side, her spine straight, her gloved hands folded in her lap, and squeezed her eyes shut with enough force to make her see stars.
