She could feel his smile. “They’d have to be able to buy us out, and the land needs to go to good people who will take care of it, who need it — but yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.”
Camille gave his hand a squeeze. “Are you going to share?”
Chuckle rumbling out of his chest, he replied, “Have you ever met Angelique Batacan?”
ChapterThirty-One
Ideally,Viktor would have preferred to have this meeting alone. Unfortunately, Andreas didn’t give him that choice.
They were gathered in Theodore’s office. It was a large room walled with bookshelves and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Bay, but it still felt crowded. Theodore was there, of course, as was Valen, Kaz, and Laurence, Captain of the Sovereign’s Guard. Margot was perched on the edge of the live edge desk, her expression somber. Benny and another senior packmate, a lean wolf shifter named Diana, had accompanied him to the Tower as well.
And of course, Camille was with him.
Somewhere far below them all, in the bowels of the Tower, the cougar shifter had just confessed to trying to kill Viktor on his alpha’s orders.
They were all silent as the feed screen played his taped confession. Torture hadn’t been necessary — or even prudent, really. The cougar shifter looked like he was hanging on by a thread as he laid out his assignment to the Patrol officer sitting across from him.
“…and said that it was necessary. I don’t know. I don’t— he just kept saying that if we didn’t, they’d come in and take our territory. I fought in the war, man. I know what elves can do.”His words tripped out over bruised lips, almost too fast to be understood.“I got cubs now. What was I supposed to do? My alpha said he was a threat and told me to take care of it. What would you do? Do you have cubs? I couldn’t let him— my alpha would have—”
The Patrol officer held up a gloved hand, stalling the desperate, almost incoherent confession. Pushing a paper cup of water across the stainless steel table with one finger, he asked,“Did your alpha threaten your cubs, Mr. Carter?”
The cougar shifter took the cup in one trembling, bloodied hand. Water sloshed. “I— Not outright, no. No. He just— You don’t know him. He’d toss us out in a heartbeat. I’ve seen it before. And after Juan—”He sucked in a ragged breath and, apparently realizing that he was trending toward disloyalty, rushed to add,“He said elves were going to take our territory. I wasn’t sure, but then I saw him with that— with thatelfon the beachand I knew he was right. I had to defend the pack. Don’t you get that? I had to—”
Theodore stopped the video. The image paused just as the shifter was leaning forward over the table, as if he could beseech the cool officer to understand why he tried to murder another alpha on foreign territory.
Viktor swung his grim gaze over to his friend. He felt Camille’s fingers tighten around his hand, offering wordless support. “Send it to Lee.”
“Already done.”
“We should get custody of the cougar,” Diana piped up, her sweet voice pitched low. Her grandmother was a harpy, and though the physical signs were subtle, anyone with a tuned ear could pick up the almost unnaturally lyrical notes in her voice. That natural beauty didn’t do anything to make her sound less lethal when she added, “He attacked our alphas. We should be the ones who handle his punishment.”
Valen leaned forward in his seat and propped his elbows on his knees. He was aging, but Viktor felt it was the good kind of aging — the mark left by years of happiness after so much strife, rather than the ragged, worn expression he’d seen on others. His mother had aged like that until, one day two years after his father’s defeat, she’d simplygone.
The man who had been more of a father to him than Dominic Hamilton ever was, did not have that ragged edge to him. He simply looked like he had lived a full life, and that he had put on a few more miles chasing after the young men he helped raise. It was good to see.
He still looked scary as fuck, though, when he answered, “I’d normally agree, but he was technically in our territory when he attacked Vik. That complicates things.”
Diana’s dark eyes, a deep, warm brown that was echoed in the rich tone of her skin and waterfall of silky brown hair, flashed with a pale, wolfish blue. She crossed her svelte arms over her chest and demanded,“How?”
“For one thing, the Merced territory is not technically independent. It is semi-autonomous, as dictated in the Allied Charter, not its own sovereign country,” Theodore interrupted.
He stood beside his wife, one hand pressed flat against the desk by her hip, caging her in against his much larger body. Margot was small enough that, turned sideways, she could be completely blocked from view by her husband’s body. “The EVP, however, is. Andreas sits on the council of the Alliance, making him a leader of a foreign government. That makes what he did technically an act of war. Andthatmeans, until we know how the Alliance wants to handle this, the cougar stays in elvish custody.”
Diana opened her mouth to argue, but Viktor cut her off with a look. “He’s right. Us getting ahold of Andreas’s packmate could be viewed as the EVP ceding the right to retaliation, which would weaken our position. Believe me, I want to see that man pay for what he did, but if we don’t play this smart, Andreas could just end up with a slap on the wrist.”
A low growl circled the room.
Viktor agreed with the sentiment, though he wasn’t particularly enthused by the idea of delivering just punishment himself. It was an alpha’s job and the shifter way, but he wasn’t a naturally violent person. He didn’t relish the idea of taking a father from innocent cubs. Taking his own father’s life had been enough for one lifetime.
But justice was justice, and in the UTA, it had to be swift and unforgiving. The consequences of a failure to act could be too dire for anything else.
If Andreas was reckless enough to craft a plot as foolish asthis,then the gods only knew what else he was capable of.
Besides, Viktor might have been able to forgive an attack on himself, but Damon Carter, father of two and mate to an arrant woman in data science, had gone afterhis mate.He owed the man no mercy.
Benny cleared his throat. “What about the bounty?”
They had shared the news from Epifanio with everyone before the confession came through. Theodore took the fact that the elf had shown up on Camille’s doorstep without warning about as well as Viktor had — which is to say,extremely poorly.
