9. Leo #2
He stared at me for a moment, blinking rapidly. When I held out my hand to help him up, he took it without hesitation. Probably too confused by a grown man saying he didn’t want a raccoon to get hurt.
I certainly wasn’t going to tell him I wasn’t just protecting Drew, but that I also wanted Altair to bite me again. Worst idea ever. Bad enough I was some kind of weirdo, I didn’t need to go around telling anyone, let alone Altair himself.
“It’s not too close to the pack, so you shouldn’t accidentally run into each other,” I told him as I turned in the direction of the cabin and started walking.
When I crossed the last vestiges of sunlight, I paused, but he didn’t seem bothered by it.
Maybe actually getting a meal helped a little with that.
He just followed me, watching, waiting for me to continue.
“I . . . I know you’re hungry, but I’ll feed you, if you just . . . ”
He caught up with me, to walk by my side, and offered me an amused smile, his eyes half hooded as he watched me in the waning light. “Are you asking me not to eat your pack?”
I squirmed under that watchful eye, because . . . well, yes, I was. Was that silly? “Sort of, yes. I don’t want them to think you’re going to hurt them. They’ve been through a lot this year. They wouldn’t react well to a threat.”
His gaze turned curious at that, so I sighed, shrugged, and started telling him about the last year of the Wildwood pack.
Grant and his goons, Ermengarde and her continuing demands.
Grant’s death, Ermengarde’s attack that had hit Viktor, which we still hadn’t figured out.
Aleks still stared at him with worry sometimes, but Viktor had been completely ignoring whatever it might have been that the witch had cast on him.
Altair was an excellent listener, and I recognized the skill.
He wasn’t just letting me yammer on because he didn’t care.
He was listening, taking in information that he might need to save his own life later.
It was strange, being listened to like that.
Most of the pack just tuned me out when I started yapping.
So when I finished with the story, I turned the tables. “Tell me about the witches. You spent a lot of time there. It’s—it’s a common enemy, right? We need to know all we can about them, to fight them when they come.”
He didn’t even hesitate, just narrowed his eyes and set his jaw, then gave a sharp nod and started talking.
Altair, as it turned out, was an excellent observer, even though he’d seen relatively little.
“They’re desperate for something,” he said immediately.
“Something to do with your lot. They always talked about the wolves as though they were owed. Something about a chosen apex, and how with the fruition of their plans, they would be able to wipe out all the other covens.” He looked at me, eyes shrewd.
“They said it like that, too. Not all the others in the territory or the country. All of them.”
An involuntary shiver ran down my spine.
It reminded me of their deal, their attempt to get their hands on Dakota from the Crescent pack.
The witchwolf. A lot of people seemed to think he was some sort of special all-powerful creature, and while I’d never met him, Aleks talked about him like he was any other wolf, just one with magic.
It didn’t seem all that incredible to me, or something that could be used to kill so many witches, but what did I know about witches?
I nodded back to him. “There’s something wrong with them. We’ve been bracing for attack since Aleks sent them away.”
“You should,” Altair said, nodding, his eyes hard. “They don’t give up.”
After what they had done to him, I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. That, fortunately, was when the cabin loomed up out of the woods. It . . . well, it wasn’t precisely falling down, but it was nothing like I’d have imagined an actual “hunting lodge.”
It looked like what it was: a dilapidated cabin in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity or running water.
Altair didn’t seem put off, though, just walked up to it and tried the door.
It opened surprisingly smoothly, and inside, the air smelled damp and musty, but there were no holes in the walls or roof, so that was something.
Altair, far from as horrified as Evie would have been by the place, was turning around, nodding with something that looked like acceptance.
“This is good,” he finally said when he’d finished his inspection.
“There are no holes that will let the sun in but that window, and it faces north, so it won’t let in too much. ”
He was right, I realized as I took a second to look around. I’d been inspecting peeling paint and rotting wooden flooring, and there was Altair, thinking of sensible things like “will this place kill me in the morning?”
This was why my brothers thought I was a naive child. I thought about mildewed rugs and they thought about sensible things like threats to our lives.
I went over and poked at the bed, and it wasn’t in terrible shape, actually.
There were no sheets, no blanket, but somehow, it hadn’t been ruined by the damp that had started to rot the floorboards.
I took a deep breath and nodded. “I’ll go home and get you some blankets.
” Frowning, I turned back to him. “You . . . I mean, blankets are good for everyone, right?”
His charmed smile did not warm me. Not at all. “Blankets would be wonderful.” He glanced around, biting his lip. “Is there a river? I could use some cleaning up. And . . . ”
He drifted off, looking down at his tattered clothing, and I cringed. Clothes. Of course.
I nodded sharply and drew myself up, mission accepted. “Okay. Blankets. Soap. Towels. And clothes. I can do that. Will you be okay here on your own?”
If anything, he looked even more charmed by that. “I’ve spent most of the last two centuries alone. I think I’ll manage.”
Ouch. That sucked. “Maybe I can bring you a book. Aleks reads a lot. And Evie’s got some books, though they’re mostly romance novels. I don’t know if you’d like that.”
He just gave me a half-hearted shrug, which, fair. How should he know what he’d like? “I’ll be back soon,” I promised, and headed out into the dark.
Half an hour found me in Mama’s house, my softest set of sweats in my arms. Mama was in the living area, crocheting on a blanket like she did most nights—she’d made half the blankets the pack used.
Aleks and Cash were holed up in the room they used in the house while they were finishing building their own, and I could hear quiet talk about planning, the same thing they talked about most nights.
Solar panels and water systems and where each house would go.
Me, I was good for the labor part, cutting and trimming and carrying, but planning the pack’s new life?
That was not for me. Nope. I was a work guy, not a plans guy.
So I grabbed the clothes, then went straight to the linen closet.
Two of Mama’s blankets sat there on a shelf, and I wondered if I could take one for Altair without it being noticed.
Mama’s blankets were a popular commodity in the pack, but Altair was worth that.
He deserved something nice. Something beautiful. Something soft and comforting.
Mama would agree, I was sure, if she knew what he’d been through. So I confidently took the top blanket, a deep navy shade that would hide a little dirt well, and then looked at the towels on the shelf above the blankets.
“What are you doing?” The voice, Viktor’s fucking voice, came out of nowhere, and almost made me throw everything up in the air in shock.
“Fuck, Viktor, don’t startle me like that,” I demanded, leaning against the wall, breathing hard and clutching the blanket and clothes to me.
His eyes narrowed and he leaned in, taking a long sniff.
I cringed away, frowning at him. “Also, stop being a weirdo. I’m .
. . just grabbing some extra stuff.” At his blank, suspicious stare, I scowled and reiterated.
“Still being a weirdo, Viktor.” Then, acting like it was totally normal, I reached into the linen closet and grabbed a huge fluffy towel, then turned and marched away, like what I was doing wasn’t weird at all.