Altair
I wasn’t Ivan’s only progeny, but I had never known a vampire to work with another the way these wolves did.
We didn’t try to spare each other pain, only avoid it ourselves. If I could skirt a punishment by directing it at another, I would. I wouldn’t even hesitate.
Leo would’ve hesitated. That kindness would’ve killed him eventually, but he wouldn’t have let someone else hurt if he could take it on and spare them suffering.
Even a vampire.
I wanted to think that all these wolves had managed to do, by sharing the burden, was ensure that everyone suffered, but it was more than that. They took care of each other in a way that I’d forgotten.
And like it cost him nothing at all, Leo offered me the same. He invited me to participate in his pack.
A pack.
It wasn’t like I’d never been a part of a community before, but humans weren’t like this either. They didn’t work together and function as a unit. Maybe the Wildwood wolves were still struggling to figure out how to do that on a wider scale, but Leo wasn’t.
Leo knew precisely how the world ought to be and took what steps he could to see that it changed for the better.
I’d never met anyone like him—someone whose kindness wasn’t forged by ignorance but tempered by adversity.
I didn’t think a person could continue to be good when they’d faced loss like he had, and there he was, eating disgusting flowers in the woods just to make sure that they wouldn’t hurt another wolf.
When we were finished picking flowers, Leo’s hand slid across the small of my back. Wolves were touchier than I was used to, but I liked the heat radiating off him, and I didn’t want him to pull away, so it was a relief when his hand slipped into mine again.
We walked back to his place, our fingers laced together, with unhurried steps.
I wasn’t put off by the idea of returning to Katya, but all the thoughts knotting together in my head were made infinitely more complicated with every additional person to account for.
Leo’s brothers could be there, or Evie or Henry or—
I just needed a moment to get my head on straight, and I’d manage with any of them. I’d be polite and personable. But I could see light flickering through the windows of the back door through the trees, and there was the porch that wrapped all the way around Katya’s home.
We were right there on the bottom of the stairs, and I wasn’t ready to go inside yet.
First—
“Leo?”
He paused, pulling his foot off the stair and turning to look at me, a soft smile on his face. His gray eyes gleamed in the moonlight. “Yeah?”
I glanced down at our hands, still laced together. This was . . . This was definitely the stupidest thing I’d ever done. Okay, maybe it wasn’t. I’d made a mess of my own life time and again, but I’d never intentionally risked anyone else in the process.
Most of the time, it was just me that I got into trouble.
The last time I’d thought to kiss someone just because I wanted to, I’d gotten my throat torn open for the pleasure.
I knew Leo wasn’t going to hurt me, but would I hurt him? I’d pull him into harm’s way just like that poor family who’d tried to help me. Only this time, I knew I was being selfish. It wasn’t desperation and happenstance drawing me toward him.
But I looked up again, taking in the curious tilt of his head and the way his soft lips puckered in consternation, and I couldn’t help it.
The autumn air was cool, but when I gripped Leo by the front of his shirt, he was all heat. It radiated out of him, down my arm. I leaned toward him, and his lips parted on a soft gasp, but he didn’t pull away.
His eyes fell right to my mouth, and his tongue darted out to wet them. I wanted a taste of it. Just a taste. I wouldn’t hurt him. I didn’t have to be like Ivan, even as devoid of humanity as I was.
“Leo,” I whispered, tugging him down as I pushed up on the balls of my feet.
He made a desperate sound, his hand clenching hard around mine before he dragged it behind my back.
I don’t think he meant to pin my arm down, only that he didn’t want to let me go while he pulled me closer, and his free arm was occupied by his basket.
For some reason, the hold didn’t make me panic, as any hint of restraint had started doing over the years since my rebirth from death.
Our hands pressed into my back, and he bent to kiss me.
His mouth was all searing heat. The wet tease of his tongue across the seam of my lips sent sparks of life dancing from the corner of my jaw all the way down my spine.
I opened, and he did too, letting me inside. He was so soft beneath my tongue, questing to map every inch of him as my eyes fluttered shut.
Perfect. He was so perfect and warm and alive, and I might’ve sobbed for it if I could stand to stop kissing him. Instead I twisted my hand in his clothes and plastered myself against his front.
And I moaned.
That was my mistake—a quiet sound, almost swallowed by the breeze in the dry leaves above, but enough for a werewolf to hear.
Before either of us knew what was happening, Katya’s back door slammed open and Viktor stood as a hulking shadow in front of the candlelit interior.
Leo flinched, and I staggered back, my hand slipping out of his. The second I pulled away, he let me go. Maybe that was why his hold didn’t bother me—I knew, innately, that all it’d take was an uncomfortable twitch from me and he’d release me at once.
But it wasn’t for his sake or my own that I pulled away. It was Viktor, and how sure I was that if I didn’t part us, he’d do it for me.
In the light that fell over us, I saw that Leo’s face was pink and flushed. His lips were slightly swollen, enough that I wanted to bite them. And he was glaring up at the porch like his brother had spent the day stepping on puppy tails.
“It’s suppertime,” Viktor announced, sounding every bit as put out as Leo looked.
“We’ll be in in a minute,” Leo growled back.
Viktor walked off the porch, ignoring his brother entirely. “You’ll go in now,” he said. “I need to talk to the leech.”
Leo shoved his way between the two of us. “His name is Altair.”
Viktor’s glare only landed on his brother for a second before returning to me. “Then I need to talk to Altair.”
I straightened the shirt I wore—Leo’s shirt—and lifted my chin. “It’s fine, Leo. I’m happy to talk to your brother.”
Leo’s nose flared in annoyance. He didn’t want to leave us alone, and I . . . I didn’t want him in the middle of this conflict. Viktor had a problem with me. It was nothing to split their family up over.
That’d only hurt . . . it’d hurt Leo. And strangely enough, that was the last thing I wanted. It felt wrong, to take more from him than all he’d already given.
I just didn’t know why I cared. Vampires weren’t imbued with genuine emotion the way that the living were. Ivan said we had evolved past such pitiful impulses.
“Really,” I insisted. “Go ahead and eat. We’ll be in in a moment, won’t we, Viktor?”
Viktor glared at me like he wanted to flick my head off and send it flying back into the forest.
Leo shoved his brother’s shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere unless you promise me he’s safe. Are you planning to hurt him?”
Viktor sighed hard, but his shoulders slumped. “I won’t do anything to the vampire that he doesn’t start, but I’d have a word.”
“See?” I grinned at Leo. “We’re fine. Let Viktor say his piece, and we’ll be right in.”
Leo frowned. Clearly, he didn’t like it, but that just made me smile harder. We’d be fine. He didn’t need to worry.
He looked between me and his brother a few times before he swallowed, nodded, and stepped back.
“A few minutes,” he muttered.
My head bobbed. “No problems here.”
I wasn’t sure if that was entirely true, but Viktor granted his assent.
And the second Leo was inside, Viktor’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “Keep your fangs away from my brother.”
Viktor’s weren’t as long and sharp as a vampire’s, but blunter, meant for tearing rather than piercing. His snarl was a low rumble that took up the space between us, and something in me bristled at the threat.
No, this place and these people weren’t mine. They were Viktor’s. I was very much the interloper he thought I was.
So why in heaven’s name was I so bothered by him treating me precisely how he ought to? I was an outsider, a predator, and a threat. We both knew it, and the fact that anyone here had been kind at all was the surprising thing.
But then there was Leo.
The feeling of Leo’s warm arm wrapped around my waist hit me out of nowhere, the strange bubbly sensation in my chest when he smiled at me. He’d pulled me in and held my eye steadily, like I wasn’t some craven thing. He saw me as somebody.
I remembered Katya telling me not to disappoint Leo, and how sharp my desperation had been to avoid just that.
It wasn’t only to save my own skin either. Sure, Leo was undoubtedly my closest ally and supporter within his pack. If anyone would be driven to defend me, it would be for his sake before mine.
But that didn’t account for the comfort I felt at his side, or how the only person I wanted to see at the end of every day was him.
I didn’t dare let myself hope for anything more, but I thought we might be friends. I could be his friend. If I could just unwind myself from fear, I’d like to be his . . . friend.
For me to pull away, to shrink again, would disappoint Leo. Perhaps it was self-serving to keep him happy, but that didn’t change how I wanted to.
With a snarl of my own, I stepped into Viktor’s space. I had to tip my chin up to look at him, and I narrowed my eyes. “I’ll put my fangs wherever the hell your brother wants me to.”
“He doesn’t want you biting him. He’s just taken you on as a pet project. That’s all this is—Leo trying to save another lost fool.”
I scoffed. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” I knew I was tempting fate when I stepped closer to him, and I didn’t give a damn. When I leaned in, I lowered my voice. “I think your brother likes it when I sink my fangs inside him.”
A growl tore out of Viktor and he gripped the front of my clothes to haul me half off the ground. “If you hurt him, I will end you. I’ve seen what a vampire can do when they lose control.”
A manic laugh bubbled out of me, and Viktor reared back, surprised. I used the distraction to swing my arm and knock his grip off my shirt, and when I teetered back onto my heels, the world tipped off balance.
Oh, I kept mine, but the very idea that he’d say such a thing to me—it picked off a scab I had ignored for more than a century.
My laugh cut off abruptly, and a pressure of fury like I’d never felt squeezed my skull. “So. Have. I.”
I marched past him, up the porch and into the kitchen. Leo was sitting at the table with his mother, and they were alone.
Cash and Aleks were spending their first night in their new home, and they must have decided to have dinner there.
It was a reasonable choice, and any couple settling into their own space might’ve made it.
In all likelihood, it had nothing to do with me, beyond how I’d upended the living arrangement within Katya’s home.
Still, I couldn’t help feeling it was my fault, and I knew there was no way that both Viktor and I would be at that dining table for supper. Only one of us had to eat, though, so that made the choice pretty clear.
I swallowed down the strange, harried panic that squeezed my throat and nodded to them both. “Good evening.”
They both stared at me like I was mad, and maybe I was.
I hurried upstairs, shut the bedroom door behind me, and sat on Leo’s bed, doing my damnedest not to think about what, precisely, happened when a vampire lost control.
Trying not to think about Leo, surrounded by bloody sheets, his face gray and lifeless, his wide eyes blank because it was too late for fear or betrayal.
I knew what happened, and I’d kissed him anyway.
And if he let me, I’d do it again.