Leo
Conflict wasn’t even a strong enough word for what was happening in my head.
Viktor was my brother, and I loved him more than anything.
It had nearly killed me when we’d lost him, and getting him back had been one of the most important things that had ever happened to me.
Helping him come back to us, slowly, relearning that we were his family, had been the hardest, most rewarding work I’d ever done, surpassing even building new homes for the pack.
I loved my family, dammit, and I would live or die for them.
But also, Viktor was being an asshole.
So instead of waiting for him to come inside to specifically pick a fight with him, I just rolled my eyes and turned away, looking at Altair. “Let’s go up. I’ll show you your room.”
I ignored how everyone around looked at me with confusion, since they were all still figuring logistics of moving Altair into a room Aleks hadn’t yet vacated, but I had a plan, so I ignored them.
Altair glanced around a bit, then ducked his head and stood up.
He’d only managed to spend a few minutes sitting at the table, and that annoyed me a little bit.
I thought Mama was going to love him if they got a little time together.
He was clever and quick and interesting to talk to, with wits so sharp you could cut yourself on them.
Mama loved that. He was talking about books with Evie, and she’d hardly engaged with anyone so much in years.
Yeah, Cash had sent her away because he was scared, but Cash, much though I liked him, was scared of a lot of things.
Cash had lived a hard life, and he’d reacted by constantly retreating.
Not like Evie, who hid when there was danger, sure, but who was otherwise fearless and fascinated by new things. And Mama was afraid of nothing.
Frankly, Viktor was using Cash’s fear against him, and that pissed me off.
But also, he was my brother. Being pissed at my brother on such a deep level was weird, and there were shame and guilt and frustration all layered into it.
So instead of dealing with my feelings, I took Altair up toward my own bedroom, and showed him around as I went, pointing out the bathroom and the linen closet in the hall in case he needed those things, and then I took him inside.
The bedrooms in the new house were enormous, as big as any two rooms in the houses where we’d grown up. We had huge beds in all of them, big enough for at least two people. Queens, I thought Cash had called them, and it seemed like an appropriate word for them.
Maybe I’d never met a queen in my life, but they seemed like the kind of bed a queen would sleep on.
Altair seemed just as impressed as I’d been, turning slowly to look around, eyes a little wide. “This is . . . so much.”
He wasn’t wrong. It was a lot. A big room, with a big bed, a desk, bookshelves and even a comfy armchair in one corner that I imagined he could use for his reading.
“Oh,” I said, perking up and going to the window.
“This will help.” I opened the screen, leaned out, and grabbed the handle on the shutter, pulling it closed and making it so that even when the sun rose in the morning, barely a drop of sunlight would find its way into the room.
I’d used it more than once to grab a nap in the afternoon when I’d been tired out by work and not getting quite enough to eat.
That was less a problem now than it had been under Grant, but still, it meant I knew exactly how dark the room was in the daytime with the shutter closed, and it was at least as dark as the shadows Altair had sat in relatively safely when we’d first met.
Altair looked around the room, pressing his fingers into the golden blanket on the bed, and I . . . did not imagine him sleeping on my bed, his face pressed into the very pillow I’d been using just the night before.
Nope, not me.
That would be weird. Right?
He sniffed the air, and I worried for a moment that he could smell me in the room.
Instead of asking me why the room reeked of me, though, he turned and leaned down to sniff one of the candles Mama left in all the rooms. I thought maybe she’d put rosemary and lemon in them.
They were a little bright and slightly medicinal to my nose, but not so strong as to be offensive.
And indeed, Altair just gave a soft smile at the scent.
Then he turned and opened the closet, and for a moment, he stood there, staring blankly at my clothes on the hangers. “I, er, don’t want to intrude upon—”
“It’s nothing. I’ll move it all tomorrow when Aleks and Cash move their stuff. Or whenever they move their stuff.”
Slowly, quietly, Altair reached out for a sleeve of one of the shirts on hangers in front of him, and lifted it up. “This is . . . yours. Your room.” He turned back to me, his eyes searching, maybe confused, and didn’t drop the sleeve. “These are your clothes. I can’t take your room.”
“It’s the safest,” I assured him, motioning again to the window. “It’s only got the one window, because of the bathroom next door, when the other upstairs bedrooms all have two.”
I refrained from telling him that the room Aleks and Cash currently resided in was between this one and Viktor’s, and that I’d decided I wanted to make sure Altair and Viktor were kept at least somewhat separated.
I didn’t think Viktor would go sneaking off to murder him in the middle of the night, but sometimes the Viktor who had come back to us surprised me in his cold-blooded, thoughtless violence.
I was a werewolf, and violence was something I’d always lived with rather than just an abstract concept, but for Viktor, it was a tool like any other. It had very little emotional impact.
I understood it. I mostly understood him. I hadn’t hesitated to kill when necessary. But Viktor was maybe quicker to leap to violence than I thought was strictly reasonable.
I motioned back to the door. “There’s a lock, too, if you need privacy, or . . . don’t feel safe.”
Altair, unimpressed, lifted a brow at me. “You think I don’t know a werewolf could break it down easily, lock or no? Any werewolf, even your little sister. Or . . . cousin?”
I blinked, and it took me a moment to understand he meant Evie. He was right, she definitely could if she wanted to. But breaking down a door would get attention and give me time to intervene, so at least there was that.
And also . . . well, it was beyond thoughtless violence, the notion of breaking down a door and murdering the person behind it. It had to be fully intentional and planned, killing someone like that, and I didn’t think Viktor was quite there, mentally.
Either way, I wanted to alleviate some of his fear, so I stepped in and grabbed his hand, pulling it up to set it on my chest. “I am not going to let my brother hurt you. He’s just a little paranoid and needs some time to see that you don’t mean us any harm.
We all have a mutual enemy, and even if you didn’t like us, it’d be ridiculous of you to hurt the people who could help you defend yourself.
You’re not unintelligent or out of your mind.
You’re not overcome by bloodlust. He just needs some time to realize that.
And I am not going to let him hurt you in the meantime. Okay?”
He met my eye steadily for a moment, holding his hand over my heart and biting his lip.
His canine was just a tiny bit longer than what one would expect from a human, and I tried not to focus on it.
The fact that he was a vampire wasn’t what mattered here.
He was a person, just like anyone else, and a frightened one who was running from bad guys who’d done terrible things to him.
Just because being bitten was hot didn’t mean I should focus on that.
Instead of saying anything, he slipped his hand from beneath mine and stepped into my space, wrapping his arms lightly around me and pressing his face into my chest for a moment. My heart sped, not at the threat of having a predator so near my throat, but at the intimacy of the action.
Altair, holding me.
When he pulled back, he didn’t meet my eye, just stared at the floor.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“I’d do this for anyone in your position,” I promised, then I reached up to cup his cheek.
“But also, I . . . I like you, Altair. I believe you deserve a chance at the life no one ever let you have, if only because everyone deserves that. And you’re fun, and I like talking to you.
You don’t owe us anything for basic decency, and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. ”
He’d been starting to open his mouth halfway through my little speech, but he paused, rolling his lips between his teeth and swallowing hard. All he said when I finally stopped talking was a little whispered, “thank you,” again.
And then I was slipping out into the hallway, leaving him to settle in, but making sure to toss back, “You can come down whenever you want. I think you and Mama will get along well, and she loves company,” before I headed back downstairs.