Instinct prowled close to the surface of his mind. His coyote gnashed its jaws, too caught up in the fever to care that Benny was a dear friend, not a foe. It took several deep breaths for him to get that protective rage back under control.
Benny was in his den because he was guarding his alpha and his alpha’s mate. He was doing the work of a good packmate, a loyal second.
Still, his coyote balked at the idea of someone being in their den when his mate — not even marked yet, gods help them — lay vulnerable and injured in their bed.
He can’t come in here.
Viktor wasn’t used to being out of control or quick tempered. He was as easy-going as a dominant alpha coyote could be, really. It was jarring to admit to himself that, should Benny step through that door, he couldn’t say his friend would safely make it over the threshold.
Careful not to jostle Camille, Viktor slid out of bed and planted his bare feet on the cool floor. He was in his boxers, he noticed, and though he was grimy from spending so much time laying in the sand, a quick check showed that he was no worse for being shot.
Margot really is something,he thought, trying to tamp down his agitation over the fact thathewas healed while his mate wasn’t. Standing up to quietly find a pair of pants, he rolled his shoulder experimentally.Not even a twinge.
He’d been to his fair share of healers with a myriad of gruesome injuries. Not once had he come away feelingbetterthan he had the day before. Margot hadn’t just patched him up: she made himstronger.
Shaking his head in disbelief, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants before he padded back to the bed. Camille had moved slightly; just enough to fall into the divot he’d left and bury her pert nose into his pillow.
His breath quickened again as he leaned down to press a featherlight kiss to her cheek. She stirred, her head turning towards him with sleepy yearning, but he didn’t dare disturb her more than he already had. His mate needed her rest. As soon as she woke naturally, he’d take her to see Margot. With her skills, she was the only healer he trusted with his mate’s health.
After he quietly left his bedroom and closed the door behind him, Viktor found Benny in the open living area. He was on the couch, which had been hastily made into a bed with a throw pillow and one of the spare blankets he kept in the ottoman by the feed screen.
Incredibly, Benny looked worse than Viktor felt.
“You look like shit,” he announced.
Benny stood up from the couch and turned to scowl at him. The skin under his eyes was dark, his hair was a mess, and he hadn’t changed clothes since Viktor saw him last. Worry grooved his rough features. “Damn,” he breathed, circling the couch to haul Viktor into a hard embrace.“Damn,Vik. Fuck. I thought we were going to lose you.”
Viktor clasped his hand around Benny’s nape and drew him close, bringing him into the shelter of his alpha’s embrace. He felt his second shudder, as if a great tension had finally begun to loosen inside him.
It didn’t matter how old a packmate was, nor how strong they were — they needed the physical reassurance of their alpha’s touch.
“It was just a shot to the shoulder,” he gruffly replied. “Nothing to cry over.”
Benny took a step back and shook his head. His expression was stark. “No, Vik, it wasn’t. What do you remember about last night?”
“I coaxed Cam to meet me at the beach. We were there for a few hours before someone started shooting from the cliff. I got hit and Cam nearly took a shot before I pulled her behind that boulder.” He shook his head, trying to dispel the goosebumps that broke out across his skin at the memory of how close his mate came to death. “Then she went after him. Things get kind of fuzzy after that, but I remember Teddy and Margot showing up, and then Cam being there. Past that it’s all blank.”
In the shadows of his mind, there was a vague sense of movement, of warm, foreign magic mending shattered bone and singed muscle, but when he dug for more, Viktor came up empty.
Benny’s lips thinned. “Vik, you almost died last night.”
That drew him up short. He made a face of disbelief. “What? No, I didn’t. The shot hit my shoulder.”
“It was a long range bolt gun set to maximum,” Benny bit out. “It didn’t just hit your shoulder. It shattered two of your ribs, took a chunk out of your lung, and sent you into shock. Healer Goode was working on you almost the entire night. She barely had enough left in her to heal your mate’s pulverized hand and stop her bleeding before the sovereign forced her to stop.”
“What happened to Cam’s hand?”
“Did you not hear what I said?” Benny ran a shaking hand through his hair, messing it up even more. “You almostdied,Vik. Right there on the beach.”
Viktor wasn’t entirely certain what he was supposed to make of that. How exactly did one process a brush with Grim? All he could manage was a slow blink.
He’d never been one to obsess about the what-ifs, nor the fact that he would die one day. One did not challenge their father to a death match at eighteen andnotunderstand one’s own mortality.
Death was a fact of life. The animal knew it as well as the man.
What hedidgrasp, perhaps for the first time, was that his death would not simply belong to him.
Staring at Benny’s stark face, the memory of Camille running away from him fresh in his mind, Viktor was rocked by the knowledge that his death would have devastated his entire pack.
