Altair
Well, I might’ve found myself a new home.
It was cramped, yes, but safe enough. The earth was a bit cool, and I could hear bugs crawling through their tunnels all around me, but down here, I didn’t have to worry about sunlight, and grabbing a spade to dig me up? That seemed to be a step too far for witches.
Maybe they just hadn’t considered it yet. Still, it’d take some heavy effort to get me out from beneath the cabin above, and I didn’t think the werewolves would let the witches out here with sledgehammers and spellwork.
I’d lived worse places.
But the real issue was, having gotten myself into the ground, I had no idea how to dig myself out of it.
Long after the voices had disappeared, I stayed there. At first, I was simply convincing myself that it was to avoid getting caught, that the witches might still be nearby. Then, it became increasingly apparent that I didn’t know how the hell to get out of the ground.
So, I was just going to stay. Maybe, if I was lucky, some oversized werewolf, with gray eyes and a smile that came far too easy for anyone who’d lived on this cursed rock for more than a handful of years, would come by and drag me out of the dirt.
If I couldn’t get out, what would Leo think?
Probably, not much at all. I’d stumbled upon him in the woods, attacked him, and moved on. That’d simplify his life, at the very least.
A strange pang throbbed in my chest at the notion of him being glad that I’d disappeared. It was ridiculous, honestly. He’d been kind and generous, but I thought that had more to do with his malleable nature than any particular fondness he had for me.
He’d been honest with me; I didn’t doubt that. But it’d be foolish of me to think a bit of kindness and a sense of humanitarian obligation amounted to anything like friendship.
If I had to guess, Leo would be more upset if his raccoon friend disappeared than if I did.
Those thoughts circled in my head until I heard a harried, raised voice calling my name.
“Altair?” There were footsteps on the boards above me, but they were heavy and familiar.
Suddenly, the earth was rolling back, and I was rising through it, huffing and trying to blow sediment off my lips. “I’m here. Under the floor,” I called.
When I shoved my hand up through the hole I’d made in the floor, a warm, firm grip wrapped it a second later. Leo pulled me out of the ground, beyond the broken floorboards, and set me on my feet. He was frowning and worried.
“What happened?” he asked, sounding for all the world like Drew had disappeared after all. “Did you dig yourself down there?”
“Something like that,” I mumbled while Leo knocked dirt out of my hair, frowning.
It was nice to have him there. I hadn’t felt safe coming back up, but once he’d arrived, I knew I would be. Without him, I’d been stuck, but the second I heard his voice, coming out of the ground became easy.
My relief was so palpable that it took me a moment to realize there was another heartbeat in the room.
It was a man, another werewolf from the heat radiating off him, and he looked like the sun to Leo’s moon.
While Leo had a square face and dimpled chin, a quick smile and soft, straight dark hair, this other man was all golden curls and unnaturally perfect angles.
He was a little bit uncanny, and I didn’t like the curiosity lighting his bright blue eyes.
When Leo caught me staring, he looked over at the man. “Um, this is Aleks, my brother. Aleks, this is Altair.”
I wouldn’t have guessed that, given that they didn’t look a thing alike, but he had mentioned a twin and—his other brother. They’d been adopted by Aleks’s mother, right?
I put on my winningest smile and held out my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Aleks narrowed his eyes, hesitating before he shook my hand and frowning, probably at the relative coolness of it. He looked me over slowly, and rather than let go of my hand, he gripped it harder and pulled me a step in. His nose flared as he smelled me.
When he let out an exhale, he hummed. “You don’t look starved and feral.”
I slipped my hand free and stepped back, edging toward Leo again. “Miraculous, what a bar of soap and a couple of good nights’ rest can do.”
Aleks arched his brow. “I didn’t say you were clean.”
I huffed, looking down at myself.
That was fair enough. I was covered in dirt, the clothes Leo had given me damp and heavy with it. I doubted my hair had fared any better.
Heaving a sigh, I brushed some more off onto the floor. “Yes, well, we do our best, don’t we?”
Aleks crossed his arms, and his gaze slid toward Leo. “I guess we do. So tell me, Altair”—he looked my way again, and I clenched my jaw to keep from a more noticeable flinch—“what’s keeping you fed, elk or wolf?”
It took every bit of self-control I had not to look at Leo, but that’d give the whole thing away, wouldn’t it?
Leo’s alpha, his brother, wouldn’t tolerate a vampire eating him alive.
The truth would only land us both in a pile of trouble, and Leo didn’t deserve for that to be the outcome of his kindness.
And I didn’t want my best shot at safety ruined already.
“Honestly? Mostly rodents,” I said.
That wasn’t exactly a lie. If we were talking quantity, not quality or volume, I had eaten more rodents than anything else.
Aleks’s brows inched higher. “Really?”
I shrugged. “You get used to a diet, and it’s hard to break. What else do you think I had available in a basement cell?”
“Since when?”
“What?”
“Since when? I never saw you at the coven house, so how long did the witches have you?”
“Since eighteen fifty-one.”
Aleks exhaled long and slow through puckered lips. “That’s a hundred and seventy-five years.”
“Thereabouts.”
“What did they want you for?”
The mask he wore was too controlled, like he already knew the answer and was trying not to give himself away prematurely.
I summoned what little pride remained to me, rolled my shoulders back, and spoke without inflection when I answered.
“Any creature sustained by magic can awaken any latent practitioner, and I had the sense that they were hoping that by mixing awakener species, they would achieve a new form of power. When that failed, a vampire’s blood is rather a difficult ingredient to source for potion making and spellwork.
So my uses to them were twofold. I ate best when they needed my blood or required my . . . performance.”
Leo’s breath hitched, like I’d hit him or something.
His brother only stared at me. “And you escaped by, what, burrowing your way out?”
I shook my head. “That is . . . new. One of the witches let me out of the cell where they’d held me. It was in their basement. He didn’t tell me why and left me little choice but to flee, though I suppose that was a kindness.”
“And you came this way because? Were you looking for us?”
I shook my head. “Just trying to put distance between them and me as fast as possible, though this direction . . . the trees were thicker. I can’t say I was thinking clearly—I was starving—but it seemed a safer course. Because the sun.”
“Right.” He rubbed the knuckle of his thumb across his forehead. “The pack is still reeling.”
That was no coincidental change of topic. The way he said it, heavy and resigned, was like he’d already passed down a verdict. I supposed he had, in a way, but at least he didn’t sound happy about it.
“I understand,” I said. Leo had told me enough that .
. . maybe I did. I didn’t like that keeping their pack safe meant I needed to go, but I understood it.
I was fairly certain that on my own, I’d be caught in a matter of days, and I hoped it was by the witches and not Ivan himself.
If I got desperate, I could always walk out into the morning sun and—well, that’d be better than going back, wouldn’t it?
“I’ll be clear of pack territory by morning. ”
Aleks didn’t say anything when he met my eye, but this—this was the easiest solution for him. As for the sadness and understanding that sparked in those blue irises, well, I wasn’t going to think about it.
After all, he’d said he’d never seen me with the witches, which meant he’d been there. He must’ve had some idea what they were like.
“That’s crazy,” Leo insisted, shoving between his brother and me. “We’re not sending him away.”
“It’s all right,” I said.
At the same time, Aleks’s cheeks hollowed and he frowned. “We don’t know how the pack will react, and loads of them weren’t too pleased to follow me to begin with.”
I reached out and touched Leo’s wrist. I didn’t know what I was thinking, other than I wanted him to calm down. It’d be all right. He didn’t have to put himself out there for me.
He turned his hand around and grasped my fingers tight. When he looked back at me, his eyes were steely and determined. He glared at his brother, and his jaw ticked.
“I fed him.”
“Leo—” I hissed.
He shook his head and glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “You don’t have to cover for this. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He stuck his chin out at Aleks. “I offered to feed him. He was starving, but he didn’t bite me until I said he could.”
All right, that was stretching the truth a bit.
If I’d been able to, I certainly would’ve fed from him with or without his consent.
Like he could read my thoughts, Aleks looked my way. “That true?”
I could only shrug, but I squeezed Leo’s hand tighter.
Why the hell was he doing this? He’d already fed me, seen me clothed. He’d even brought me that ridiculous book, which was rather melodramatic but . . . well, I didn’t mind the idea of an oversized wolf at my back, and the story held my attention.
“I told him that I would keep him fed, as long as he didn’t hurt our pack. He hasn’t, so I intend to keep my promise.”
The way Aleks tilted his head right then looked more like a curious bird than a person. On second thought, maybe a curious dog.
“You’d go with him?”
The cost of that choice seemed to fall on Leo slowly, layer by layer, slumping his shoulders. His brother, his mother who’d made the beautiful blanket, his pack—he couldn’t leave them.
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” he said tightly. “But we have our pack, and Altair has no one else to keep him safe.”
Well, that was a little bit absurd. I was a vampire. I was perfectly capable of keeping myself safe.
Or, if not perfectly capable, then somewhat capable.
All right, I was a fucking mess, but I hadn’t said as much aloud.
“You know what they’ll do to him, Aleks,” Leo whispered. “What they’ll keep doing to him.”
Aleks’s expression twisted, but it only took him a moment to master himself. I got the sense this wasn’t a conversation I was meant to be privy to.
“We can’t let him wander freely around the pack. He might hurt them, or they could hurt him. We don’t know, Leo. We’ve never dealt with a vampire before. He’s only been here, what, a couple weeks?”
“Days,” Leo corrected without missing a beat.
“How do you know we can trust him?”
“I can stay here,” I offered before Leo could admit he didn’t. “I won’t come near the rest of your pack.”
Even though the witches had found me once, it was a better option than leaving. Or . . . it was a better option than leaving and dragging Leo away from his pack.
Tempting as it was to have a werewolf bodyguard dogging my every step, it’d be cruel. He had a life and a family, and in this, he was simply being stubborn.
The very idea was ridiculous. Foolhardy. I couldn’t begin to understand what he was thinking, in pressuring his brother on my account. Surely it was just misplaced gallantry.
If we couldn’t find a tenable solution, I’d find a time to slip away when Leo wouldn’t blame his brother or do anything as absurd as abandoning his family to slink through the shadows with me.
Aleks shook his head. “They’ve already come here looking for you once. It isn’t safe.”
“Then we keep an eye on him around the pack. Cash is almost done with the cabin for you and him. That’ll free up a bedroom in Mama’s house,” Leo said. “She’ll help keep everyone safe.”
What a fantastic idea! I’d kick the pack alpha out of his own bedroom.
Surely he’d go for that.
Shockingly, Aleks frowned, like he was seriously considering it. “We could make that work if you both take the day off working on the big house tomorrow. It might not be totally done, but as long as it’s got a roof and a bed to sleep in, that’s fine with me.”
“Done,” Leo agreed on the spot.
“Viktor’s not going to like it,” Aleks said.
Leo shrugged. “I’ll handle Viktor.”
“That’s brother number three?” I asked.
Aleks nodded. “The scary one.”
“And here I was, thinking that was you.”
The smile that turned Aleks’s lips up at the corners was uneven and dashingly handsome. “No, I’m the pretty one. Leo’s nice. Viktor is scary.”
Leo’s thumb brushed across the back of my hand. “Viktor’s fine.”
“For a terrifying soldier type who could kill you with a teaspoon, sure,” Alek agreed.
I wasn’t sure which one was lying to me, but it might’ve been both. Leo was trying to comfort, and Aleks was trying to make sure I didn’t get too comfortable.
In either case, I suspected I’d find out soon whether Leo was too optimistic about my chances with his pack. Aleks hefted the blanket and bedding off the bed and bundled it up in his arms. “Grab your things. Mama just loves guests who won’t eat her borscht.”
With the sense that I was definitely treading into drama I couldn’t begin to understand, I picked up my book, my old clothes, and the things Leo had brought me. Then, I offered him a tight-lipped smile.
“After you, Leo.”
If I dragged my feet toward the pack proper, well . . . who could blame me? I was half convinced they were going to tear me apart.
I was going to have to figure out how to eat human food, and fast. The last thing I needed was to insult Leo’s mother’s borscht.