Chapter 22 #2
Luka slides over to sit next to me again. “Today was fucked,” he says by way of greeting.
I glance up, understanding we’re not going to talk about the strange aggression I’m throwing off in waves.
Instead, we’re going to focus on the real reason everyone is out here tonight.
The wolf who died on our mission, Joran, was clearly well-liked.
Deaths are common in the camps, but it’s always worse when it’s a friend, and Joran seemed to be a friend to many.
“Yeah,” I reply, grateful to him for distracting me even if the topic is grim. “I just met him, but Joran seemed like a good soldier.”
“He was,” Luka says, sounding pensive. “Did you see what happened?”
I nod. “He shouldn’t have died.”
Luka nods as if he expected that. He wasn’t with us on this hunt, but is clearly unsurprised that his friend’s death was an avoidable accident.
The entire hunting party was a shitshow, but at least now I’ve answered the question for myself why Viktor isn’t the alpha, although he’s obviously more dominant than Kai.
All the other soldiers hate him—or at least don’t trust him.
He can bark orders at them and some wolves are compelled to comply, but any of the ones with enough dominance to fight the order do.
It makes everyone sloppy and disorganized, a perfect fucking storm for preventable mistakes.
“What did Viktor do?” I ask Luka.
Luka doesn’t even pretend not to know what I’m talking about. “He killed the last Alpha.”
I raise my eyebrows, thinking of the alpha I grew up with. “Olaf?”
Luka nods, looking grim.
I frown, an unconscious growl bubbling up in my throat. “Then why the fuck is he still here?”
I also killed a high-ranking wolf once, and he wasn’t even the alpha.
The fucker I killed was the beta at the time, and not nearly as well liked as Olaf was.
I still got sent to Dyaspora for that, so how the fuck did Viktor get away with murdering the alpha.
Not only get away with it, but he’s the beta now. It makes no sense.
“It was difficult to prove,” Luka explains. “Happened years ago. They were out on a hunt together and no one else lived to see what happened.”
I raise my eyebrows. “They were out together? The alpha and beta never go out at the same time.”
“Exactly. It was all pretty fucking suspicious. I always thought that Viktor did it so he could be alpha. It’s not like we had many other choices of dominant enough wolves.” He gives me a sideways glance. “Not since you left.”
I make a non-committal grunt. “So why didn’t he become the alpha?”
Luka laughs darkly. “Because everyone hates him. Kai is a beta, but people like him so he has more control than Viktor does even if he can’t actually compel most wolves to obey him.”
I nod slowly. It makes sense, I suppose, but it’s a tenuous situation. I’m surprised it’s even lasted this long without half the camp turning on each other.
“If we could leave, I think at least half the camp would,” Luka says, clearly thinking along the same lines.
“That was always true, doesn’t matter who the alpha is.”
He cocks his head like he’s thinking. “If you came back for good…”
“I was never going to be fucking alpha,” I snap. “I’m a half-breed.”
“Yeah, but most people ignore that. I think everyone would have forgotten except for her.” He nods to Aurelia.
I growl, and Luka quickly looks away. Reacting to my sudden tension, Aurelia shifts on my lap. Without thinking, I put a hand on her thigh, hoping she understands what I can’t say aloud: “I’m fine, sorry.”
Aurelia relaxes and carries on her conversation with Inga.
“How did you meet her?” Luka asks, his attention shifting to Aurelia.
My chest squeezes painfully. “It’s complicated,” I say, watching her profile in the firelight. “We were in close proximity.”
“Everyone’s wondering, you know,” he says pointedly.
“‘Course, I know.”
“So nothing happened when you mated her?”
“Not yet,” I mutter, not knowing what else to say.
Clearly Luka is fishing for whatever magical loophole I found that allowed me to have a mate when no other wolf has been able to in decades—not without consequences, anyway. I wish I could tell him that there is no answer, because she’s not really my mate.
“She’s not a shifter.”
My eyes narrow dangerously. “What’s your point?”
“I just assumed all mates would be other wolves, but maybe there’s more to it.
There are a lot more Fae than there are of us, especially outside Thermia.
Maybe we’re not looking hard enough…not that it would matter, since we can’t leave anyway.
” He grins bitterly. “Who knows, maybe I have a Fae mate somewhere too. Maybe she’s from Hydratta, or something. ”
I make a noncommittal sound in the back of my throat, wishing he would drop the subject.
“Like you just said, though, you’re half Fae,” Luka says, as if thinking out loud. “Maybe that’s why.”
Again, I just grunt at him.
Truthfully, I don’t know and I don’t really want to think about it.
Wolves believe that mating is fated, so they all spend their whole lives waiting to find someone while at the same time dreading the moment when they do.
We can’t form bonds for the same reason we can’t leave the camps or have lives outside of the army.
That’s why there are so many couples who aren’t in defined partnerships—like Kai and Inga who have seven children but haven’t claimed each other.
Aurelia shifts on my lap again, and I take the opportunity to turn away from Luka. The irony isn’t lost on me that I was using him to distract me from Aurelia, and now I’m using her to avoid him. This entire fucking situation is a minefield.
Aurelia stretches her arm out to reach for a tankard on the ground by my feet.
She must have been drinking from it before I arrived, but now that she’s sitting on my lap she can’t reach.
I bend down to grab it for her, but stop just before handing it over.
I suck in a breath, my nose wrinkling at the burning scent of alcohol.
Instead of placing the tankard in Aurelia’s outstretched hand, I bring it to my mouth and take a tentative sip and it burns the back of my throat all the way down.
“Hey!” Aurelia snaps, trying to reach for the drink. “That’s mine.”
Holding it out of her reach I scowl. “Have you been drinking this all evening?”
“Sort of. Why?”
“How are you still talking?”
She rolls her eyes. “Because I haven’t had that much. Now give it to me.”
I shake my head. Shifters burn off toxins far faster than Fae do, so our drinks have to be much stronger. Even if she hasn’t had much, that’s more than enough. Too much could kill her.
It won’t kill me though, so I take another sip.
Aurelia looks even more indignant. “That’s mine.”
“You’ve had enough.”
“I’ve barely had any,” she protests.
“Good.”
Aurelia looks livid, and for some reason that makes the urge to drag her back to the tent even stronger.
My fingers dig into her thighs, my jaw clenching so hard I can hear my own teeth grinding.
The firelight catches the sheen of sweat at her collarbone.
Every breath she takes shifts her weight against me, and I have to suppress a groan.
Aurelia leans closer. “Spit it out.”
I raise her drink and look her dead in the eye as I take a sip. “The only way you’re getting any more of this is if I spit it in your mouth.”
Her eyes widen, then turn unexpectedly hot. She raises an eyebrow. “That’s not much of a threat, honestly.”
Fuck.
I hold her gaze and she stares back in clear challenge, neither one of us wanting to be the first to blink.
This is a bad idea, but I can’t seem to look away from her. I can hear my pulse pounding in my ears as I lift the tankard to my lips and take another sip, holding the burning liquid against my tongue.
My hand slides up to cradle the back of her neck, my thumb pressing into the soft hollow beneath her jaw.
Her lips part on a gasp and her eyes turn molten as I pull her face close enough to feel her breath against my lips.
She opens her mouth wider, and the burning alcohol passes from my mouth to hers, her wide eyes never leaving mine as she swallows.
“Thank you,” she says, licking her bottom lip.
My vision narrows to a pinpoint, the firelight and voices fading away until there’s only her.
She’s so fucking beautiful it’s painful, and if that was all I liked about her then maybe this could work.
Unfortunately, I know that starting this again will be the worst fucking decision of my life… and I can’t seem to make myself stop.
One moment I’m sitting, the next I’ve surged to my feet, my hands finding her waist. She gasps as I lift her, her body folding over my shoulder, her hair cascading down my back.
She makes a squawk of indignation, but I ignore her, already striding back toward our tent as I’ve been wanting to do since the moment I saw her.
“They’re all going to think we’re going back to the tent to fuck,” Aurelia complains, her voice muffled against my back.
“Aren’t we?”
She pauses for a long moment as if really giving the matter some thought. “...yes, I suppose we are.”
“Thank the fucking Gods.”
Coming to a halt in front of our tent, I practically tear the flap off in my haste to get inside. I put Aurelia down on the bed and she blinks up at me.
Somehow she looks even better than I remember. But then, I always feel that way. Every time she came to my room I would swear it was the best sex I’d ever had, and that she was even more beautiful than before.
Aurelia rises up on her knees and grips the hem of her dress and begins stripping it over her head. She’s not wearing any corset or undershirt, which leaves her in only a single scrap of lace and her tall leather boots.