Altair
If Tristan had been willing to come here and fight the Wildwood wolves, I thought we ought to throw him at Ivan first. It wasn’t like he wasn’t willing to do violence, and out of every werewolf I’d ever met, I wouldn’t be all that bothered by losing this one.
Losing anyone else? Unthinkable.
But Viktor had said to take him, and I . . . I wasn’t going to let my worst impulses rule the day.
Maybe, if I were being particularly generous, Tristan hadn’t had much choice when he’d attacked us. He’d lost a lot, and he’d been lucky to get away with his life.
I tried to hold onto that generosity as I pushed him through the door after Prudence. She veered off toward the kitchen with the cup of my blood still in her white hand, and he stumbled, clutching his cell phone and breathing hard.
“He’s going to kill us, isn’t he?”
I huffed, pushing him toward the stairs. “If he finds you, maybe. Do you want to find out?”
Tristan made a pitiful little sound, but he allowed me to herd him upstairs. I pulled down the ladder into the area above the second floor and let Tristan climb up first. Once I’d followed him, I pulled up the hatch and shut it behind us.
Simultaneously, I felt silly for hiding in the attic and also like it wasn’t nearly far enough away.
I should’ve buried myself in the ground.
I didn’t think Ivan would go digging for me any more than the witches had, but it hadn’t occurred to me, because Tristan, and maybe because hiding while the pack was in danger didn’t feel like the right thing to do, even if I knew that I was more of a liability to them out in the open.
Most likely, it wouldn’t have mattered and Ivan would have been able to drag me out of the dirt without crawling into it himself.
I shut us away in the dark, and the starlight from one small window flashed in Tristan’s eyes as he spun to face me. He clenched his jaw and swallowed hard.
“Why are you helping me?”
I scowled. “Helping you?”
“You brought me up here,” he said, crossing his arms. “Presumably because you thought it’d be safe.”
“Yes.” Or as safe as anywhere in pack territory might be, though I really wished I did have dirt under my feet.
“So why take me with you? Why help me?”
I shrugged, walking past him to the window on the balls of my feet. I couldn’t hear much from up here, but if I stood at the corner of the window, I could look out toward the square and see the witches’ shiny black carriages pull up.
Ermengarde was the first out, and every line of her body was tense. She’d never been a particularly relaxed person, but this was something else.
Her son got out of the driver’s seat. I was glad Daire was still in one piece after he’d helped me, but maybe Ermengarde didn’t know about that.
I could’ve asked Tristan, but I only had half a second to think about it before he went on.
“I never helped you,” he said defensively.
I scoffed through my nose. “Indeed. I’m a better person than you are.”
“Are you?” He sounded skeptical, but maybe that was just wariness.
Truth told, I wasn’t sure that I was, but I meant to be. For Leo, I would be. He just needed to survive this.
I watched the witches pile out of their cars with narrowed eyes, but Ivan was nowhere to be seen.
It was dark out, and he could be anywhere.
I liked to imagine that he wouldn’t take off running through the woods on his own.
Once upon a time, he wouldn’t have, but it was just like him to send in a vanguard and wait until the field had been set to his advantage before stepping foot on it.
“Don’t worry. I’m not that good,” I promised Tristan. “If anything happens to Leo or the others, I’ll eat you alive before Ivan finds us.”
His breath caught, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh.
Tristan wasn’t very appetizing. Like stringy, cold meat.
Then there was Leo, with his broad, warm chest and his thundering heartbeat and his easy smile. I wasn’t interested in Tristan. I was interested in—
Leo stepped forward with his brothers. Obviously, they were speaking to Ermengarde, but I couldn’t hear a word of it. I could imagine she was demanding they hand me over, and for some ridiculous reason, this whole pack was standing behind Leo and his brothers in protecting me.
Well, not everyone, but more people than I expected had come out to the square to defend their territory, and fuck, I should’ve grabbed Evie.
I didn’t want her anywhere near Ivan. Bad enough that I had to tolerate this from afar, but Ivan shouldn’t be close enough to get his hands on her. And there she was, stubborn as anything, planted between Henry and Katya.
Out of nowhere, Ivan dropped on top of Ermengarde’s carriage.
He was as I remembered him—with light gold hair and skin as pale as paper.
Like a lesser imitation of hale, hearty Aleks with his sun-bronzed skin and burnished gold hair.
Everything about Ivan was beautiful, but in a way that screamed to me now of inhumanity.
I’d swear, his gaze flashed up to the window I peeked through. I threw myself back against the solid wall and sank down to the attic floor. It had only just been built, so it wasn’t all that dusty yet, but I wished I could sink through it nonetheless.
“What’s happening?” Tristan asked, stepping up to the window because he didn’t know any better.
He hadn’t seen the unholy red light in Ivan’s eyes. He didn’t feel a fist closing around his heart and squeezing, squeezing . . .
Hello, pet.
I gasped.
Tristan jerked back from the window, frowning down at me. “What?”
I shuddered. “I can . . . hear him.”
Tristan blinked, looking around. “You can? I don’t hear anything.”
A feeling like tearing metal ripped at my chest. I gritted my teeth and hissed.
“Oh shit.” Tristan’s eyes widened, and he dropped to his knees. There, he threw his hands over my ears and dug the heels of his palms in.
But it was no good. It wasn’t Ivan’s voice I was hearing.
This close, he was inside my head.
I’ve missed you.