“We were fourteen,” he murmured, watching her closely, “and I swear, that moment I saw you out in the garden, I thought my heart stopped. You were the prettiest damn thing I’d ever seen.” Viktor pressed his palm against his heart, as if it could help contain the warmth of the memory that glowed there. “And then you told me that if I kept staring at you, you’d be happy to give me a closer look at your claws.”
Camille looked away, her cheeks turning a deep purple that made him want to stroke every inch of her skin. “What about it, Vik? None of that matters now.”
His smile widened. “It matters, sweetheart.”
“Why?”
“Because this thing between you and me — it didn’t start gently. You never liked soft for too long. You always wanted a reason to use your claws, even when you were pleased with me.” Viktor breathed deeply, his chest expanding as if he could take in the scent of her from all the way across the city if only he tried hard enough. “You like a challenge as much as I do, sweetheart.”
He knew that like he knew his own soul, his own strength. Camille hissed and clawed only because she enjoyed the tangle as deeply as he did. She could be soft — oh so, so soft — but only when heworkedfor it. That dance of chase and play and submission was a siren’s song for a shifter like him, an alpha in the prime of his life who knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what he wanted.
“You forfeited the right to anychallengetwenty years ago,” she flatly replied, like she didn’t feel the heat, the tension that drew him to her every second of every day.
“You want to talk about that? Fine. Let’s get it out of the way.” Viktor sat up straight, his hands loosely curled on his thighs. In a hard, matter-of-fact voice, he said, “Cam, we were sixteen. Fuck, you have to know it would have been a shit-show if we ran off together. My dad would have hunted us down and killed you in front of me — andyourfamily would have flayed me alive for even thinking of taking you from them.”
Andgods,it still fucking hurt to talk about it. How many times had he relived that night, playing it out over and over again, wondering if he made the right choice?
Shaking his head, Viktor continued, “It wouldn’t have worked. How was I supposed to protect you from my shitty alphaandyour family? And even if we could hide out somewhere, what kind of life would it have been for you? For our cubs? I couldn’t do that to you, Cam.”
Camille’s features, beautifully sculpted and so very dear to him, tightened. “You didn’t even think to try,” she accused, voice trembling with decades of hurt, of rage. “You didn’t ask what we could have done. If I recall correctly, you saidI don’t want a mate,not,I want to protect you.”
Viktor winced. “I was a stupid kid, Cam. I meantright now,not—”
“You didn’t even consider what it might be like if my family actuallyapprovedof you, did you?”
Viktor went very still. “What are you talking about, Cam? Elves weren’t even allowed—”
“Do you know what thepullis, Viktor?”
ChapterSixteen
Oh gods,it’s never good when she uses my name like that.Icy fear trickled through his veins. “No,” he rasped. “No, I don’t know.”
Camille leaned forward slightly. Her expression was hunting sharp, like everything in her was poised to go for his throat, when she continued, “Of course you don’t. You didn’t even think toaskwhy I would be so keen on running away with you. Why it matteredthat nightofall nights.”
“Cam, I don’t—”
“For the record,” she continued, steamrolling over his objection, “us running away together was foryoursake, not mine. Knowing what your home life was like, I knew what your father would do if he found out about us. I wanted to get you out of there as fast as possible. Butmyfamily? My mother? She might have beendelightedto hear we were together, if only to make the Solbournes look bad. Yes, I would have given up a lot to be with you, but not what you assumed. And nothing I wasn’t prepared to live without.”
Viktor wracked his memory, trying to recall every specific detail of that awful night, when he’d rejected the only mate he’d ever have.
Camille had been gone for months, but that wasn’t unusual. Her mother hated the Solbournes and only brought the twins into the city when absolutely necessary. He and Camille had worked out how to privately message one another and fell asleep to the sound of the other through an audio feed every night. It wasn’t the same as being together, but it was close enough.
The week prior to her ultimatum, she had been strangely silent. His messages went unanswered. His calls went to voicemail. Viktor had about gone out of his mind with worry, but when she finally called to tell him that she was going to be in the city, he only felt relief.
When he saw her next, she looked… different. Not in a huge way, but subtly. Her body looked softer, her cheekbones more pronounced. There had been other signs that something changed, but he was too distracted by her offer to properly investigate them — or get answers about her disappearance.
He didn’t know what triggered her sudden desperation to run away with him that night. Viktor simply assumed that something had happened with her mother during that mysterious week — perhaps she discovered their messages, or otherwise found out about their budding relationship. It made sense to him at the time.
Elves, after all, didnottake outsiders as mates. Everyone knew that.
Viktor shook his head hard, a growl building in his throat. “Don’t act like your mother would have been jumping for joy if you and I ran off together,” he bit out, a brewing storm of disbelief and guilt churning in his stomach. “Until a few months ago, elves weren’t even allowed to mate with shifters — or anyone else. I don’t care how much the Solbournes liked me. They never would have let me take you as my mate.”
“You underestimate how much my mother hated the Solbournes.” Camille looked away from the camera, her expression shifting into something distant and terribly sad. “You never asked, Viktor, why I wanted to be with you. Why it mattered so much. You never asked.”
A tremor ran through his body as his coyote pressed up against the surface of his mind, demanding to be let out. It howled in response to the sound of the sorrow in his mate’s voice.
“Tell me now,” he demanded, ragged. “You shut me out after I said no. You didn’t give me a chance to ask again. So tell me now.”
