Leo
I stayed the whole night in my old room with Altair. Maybe . . . maybe it was still my room, because I couldn’t imagine wanting to go back to sleeping in Aleks’s room, let alone when Altair was right there in mine.
And the sex. Fuck me, but I’d never had sex so good.
It was perfect.
Altair was perfect.
And then he’d worried about hurting me. Tried to make me promise I wouldn’t allow him to hurt me. It wasn’t hard to see my brother’s fingerprints on that, and it annoyed me even more at Viktor.
So when I slipped my sleep pants back on just after dawn, when Altair had finally fallen into something like a real, if fitful sleep, and went out into the hallway to find Viktor standing there, well . . . I was maybe a little more annoyed than I’d ever been with him before.
I narrowed my eyes at him, and initially, just shooed him down the hallway without a word. Down the hallway, then the stairs, and into the kitchen. Maybe vampire hearing was as good as ours and Altair would hear every word no matter how far I took Viktor, but I hoped not.
“What?” I demanded in a whisper-shout once we were there in the kitchen.
He kept his arms folded over his chest, glaring at me like I’d committed a fucking crime by sleeping with Altair, rather than just having near life-alteringly amazing sex. “You fucked that leech.”
Standing at the stove stirring eggs, Mama made a noise of disapproval, and we both turned to look at her.
She was looking at Viktor, not me, and something in my gut settled at that.
“We wouldn’t want to be called mutts, Viktor.
Perhaps we don’t call other people by pejoratives based on their species either? ”
That was fair. It wasn’t exactly a full-throated defense of Altair, but she also wasn’t judging my behavior, so I accepted it without a word.
Viktor sighed and shook his head. “Neither of you are taking this seriously enough. You’ve never met his kind before. They aren’t like us. They—”
He broke off mid-sentence and went silent, turning his whole head away and not looking at either of us.
We were butting up against the things we weren’t allowed to speak of, obviously. Viktor’s kidnapping, and the time he was held by the Russian government. I’d known that if he had met a vampire, it had been then, but also, we didn’t talk about it.
We never had.
It was simply . . . off limits.
When he’d first returned home, too many reminders of the time he was gone would just make him zone out altogether, staring off into space for hours at a time, lost in his own head. So we’d learned to talk around it and over it and every which way but at it.
For the first time, I wondered if we’d done Viktor a disservice by allowing things to continue that way.
I didn’t know if there were a lot of therapists who dealt with kidnapping and torture trauma for the supernatural, but there had to be someone, right?
And Viktor would be better if he talked things through and dealt with them?
I didn’t know for sure, since my knowledge of both therapy and massive trauma were miniscule, but there had to be something we could do.
“Viktor. I . . . I know we don’t talk about this.
But if you want me to believe all vampires are bad, you’re gonna have to give me more than just ‘all vampires are bad.’ I love you, but Altair hasn’t done a single thing wrong.
There’s no reason to think he’s any danger to us, other than his race and your insistence. ”
His face scrunched up at that, and he turned back to glare at me. “He bit you.”
“I told him to. And it didn’t hurt me at all.
I told him it was enough, and he stopped right away.
Even though I’m pretty sure he was half starved when he found me.
Nothing but complete control over himself.
” I stepped in, closer to him. I hated to be at odds with my brother, but damn it all, I needed him to hear me.
To believe me, and know I wasn’t just a naive child who was going to get hurt.
“How do you know he was starved?”
Mama sighed at the question, giving Viktor a look that said we all knew how I knew.
Did we all know?
Did they . . . there was no way they could know that Altair had attacked me before speaking to me. Only Altair and I knew, and neither of us would tell, because there was no reason for it.
“He’d been held prisoner for years,” I pointed out. “You think the witches were letting him bite them?”
There was a sigh from the door then, and I realized Aleks had come in when I’d been worrying. “I know you’re trying to protect Altair’s pride, Leo, but I think you should tell the truth. All of it.”
I stopped and turned to him, blinking in shock. Did everyone know something I didn’t?
When he turned back to Viktor, though, he said something I hadn’t been thinking at all. “He’d been eating rodents. He was half-starved because he was subsisting on rats. Voles. Field mice. I found their bodies out near the hunting lodge where Leo had him staying.”
Clearly, Viktor had also not been expecting that.
He just stared at Aleks for a moment, then turned back to me, as though for confirmation, so I nodded, because it was actually true.
I didn’t know anything about rodent bodies out near the lodge, but I supposed it made sense Aleks had looked.
He was less loyal to Altair and more worried about the pack’s safety than anyone else alive, so he’d checked to make sure Altair wasn’t a danger.
And he’d found rats, apparently. Or mice, or voles or something.
Gross.
I wondered if I was able to produce enough blood to keep Altair fed all by myself, because I didn’t like the idea of him having to feed on rodents.
And obviously, the notion of him feeding on other people was even worse.
Pathetic that I was jealous of the very thought, but .
. . well, I sure wasn’t going to tell them all that.
Mama turned around, waving us all at the table. “Go, sit. You all need to eat.” She met my eye as she pushed half the eggs she’d been scrambling onto the plate in front of me, but thankfully, she refrained from saying what she was obviously thinking. That I needed extra because I’d fed Altair.
But . . . but that was fine, right? Instead of feeding Altair food, we fed me his share, and he got it out of me in his own way. It seemed perfectly reasonable and not at all sinister to me.
Viktor had actually gone quiet, thinking, and Aleks looked at me as he sat. “There are no rats in Mama’s house, Leo.”
Viktor dropped his fork on his plate, and I glared at Aleks.
“Everyone has to eat,” Mama said, and I could have kissed her.
Even more when she continued. “Clearly, Altair is not starving, and your brother is in good health. If that changes, then we would act. But now? What would you do? Tell Altair he must starve? Simply because we do not approve of his diet does not make him bad.”
Viktor sighed, and the fork, where he’d picked it back up, made a strange squeaking sound from the way he was gripping it far too tight.
“How many vampires have you known?” I asked him, deciding to try to skirt the line of the things we didn’t talk about.
He looked over at me, eyes narrowing, but nodded after a moment. “One. Two now, I suppose.”
“And Mama was right, if we all judged werewolves on Grant, we would all think wolves were monsters. So maybe the one you met was a monster. Shouldn’t we give Altair the chance to prove he’s not like that vampire?”
“He’s bitten you,” he spat, his jaw clenching.
I put my own fork down and held my wrist out to him. “He has. Here. Does it look any worse for wear to you? I’m not a fucking child, Viktor. I know how to take care of myself. And I promised Altair I wouldn’t let him hurt me.”
Aleks’s eyes went wide, and Viktor froze in place.
Shit, had that been too much? Was the fact that Altair had implied imperfect control over himself going to be the last straw that made my brother see red and refuse to listen?
Instead of rushing upstairs to throw open the shutter, Viktor took a deep breath, slowly let it out, and then met my eye. “He asked you that?”
“Last night,” I agreed. “I think you bringing up vampires who were monsters made him think of someone he must have known. Made him worry. I”—I lowered my voice, like speaking quietly could make the betrayal of private conversations less immense—“I know he’s been running from the one who made him for years.
I don’t know how many other vampires he’s known.
I don’t know how many there are, or if it turns out they’re common, or .
. . I don’t know anything, and to be honest, I don’t know if he knows much more.
I just know he took me out to look for those flowers to help Henry yesterday, and he seemed pleased at the idea of having a pack.
Maybe overwhelmed, but hopeful. He wants to be something other than a monster.
That has to count for something, doesn’t it? ”
I only realized how caught up I’d let myself get when I felt a tear slide down my cheek, and Mama reached over to squeeze my hand.
“Yes, solnyshko. It does.”
And for the first time, Viktor didn’t disagree and point out something awful about vampires instead.