4. Aleks
Aleks
He cared about my mother. Sat with her while Leo and I worked, his whole body facing her, expression open and hopeful and utterly angelic.
Because he was an angel, I decided as I was marking a tree behind where they sat. I didn’t know how such a perfect, sweet person had come up in the Wildwood pack, since on the whole we were a jaded, miserable lot who expected the worst and always got just that.
“Perhaps when he is done with Mama’s house, he will build a house for you,” Leo said behind me, sounding too amused.
Damned brothers.
I turned a glare on him. “I will live with Mama, as I always have.”
He lifted one dark brow over an equally dark brown eye. “Do you think Mama will approve of this? Of you”—he paused, searching for a word, then grinning in triumph—“railing her carpenter inside her home?”
I didn’t stop glaring, but it was . . . difficult.
Leo had struggled a bit with English when we had first arrived in America, since he had been born and raised in Russia, and he hadn’t grown up with Mama teaching him as much English as she could.
I still wasn’t sure why she had, but it had proven valuable for me.
Perhaps she’d had hope that someday we would return to the States, as we had.
She had likely imagined a better scenario, but the English had an excellent colloquialism for that: beggars can’t be choosers.
And in this, we were definitely beggars.
Things were not good in the Wildwood pack, yes. But they had been far worse in Russia.
“He is very pretty,” Leo said, his voice gone thoughtful, as he came up beside me. “I did not mean to—”
“He is,” I agreed, tossing him the roll of tape Cash had given us. “Mark the tree behind you. It is perfect.”
He turned, and it said something about how distracted he was that it took him a moment to locate the tree I meant. “You are allowed to want things for yourself, you know,” he said quietly as he taped the tree.
I didn’t have to answer him for him to know that . . . well, knowing a thing and feeling a thing were very different. I knew that it wasn’t even possible to put every moment into finding Viktor. We weren’t in Russia. I had to eat and sleep and live.
But still, it felt wrong, every moment I put into something other than finding our missing brother.
I wanted to say he wouldn’t have rested until he had found me, but it had been six entire years.
Viktor had been fifteen when last I’d seen him, and I fourteen.
How did I know if he was even the same person anymore?
Some days, I wasn’t even entirely certain he was alive.
I shook it off, though. My faith in my brother could not slip. He was alive. We would find him.
Someday, everyone I loved would be safe and free and happy.
Grant did not care about us leaving to have breakfast somewhere else.
Grant did not care about much, other than being the boss of everyone in the pack. It seemed like a sad goal, but everyone had to have a life goal. It wasn’t Grant’s fault that I found his unadmirable.
Or maybe it was, because his goal was not admirable to most anyone with sense.
I could understand wanting to be in control of yourself. That was one of the things I wanted most in the world, and I couldn’t yet foresee a time when such a thing would happen for me. Yes, I was Grant’s heir and was to one day be leader of the Wildwood pack.
But Grant was barely fifty years old, and without violence, a werewolf could easily live another hundred years.
I didn’t want to wish ill on him. His arrival in Russia to bring us back had been timely, and without it, we would likely all be dead or in government hands.
He had even agreed to bring Leo and Viktor, despite them having no blood relation to him, and given us leave to continue searching for Viktor after . . . after.
But it did not change the fact that Grant was a small, petty man who liked to cause other people pain. A man I would never be able to admire.
“More eggs, Aleks?” Cash’s father, Henry, asked me.
The man seemed downright thrilled to have strangers in his home. Extra mouths to feed. Admittedly, food was one of the only things that had never been a problem for the pack. Henry, for instance, had a chicken coop, and the eggs he was serving were likely from his own hens.
Pack members didn’t have electricity or telephones or other luxuries, but food? We had plenty of that.
“Thank you,” I said, holding up my plate as he dished more scrambled eggs onto it. How the man managed to scramble delicate fluffy eggs over a fire in a cast iron skillet, I would never know.
Especially when Henry was one of the only wolves I knew who could be considered disabled.
No one talked about it, but he was literally missing his left leg, from just above the knee.
He had a simple prosthetic that worked well enough, but it still seemed to me that it would make standing over a fire twice as hard.
All that combined made me wonder how exactly he was also one of the most pleasant, cheerful wolves I’d ever met. Grant had everything a man could want and was constantly sour and rude and sometimes downright cruel. Henry struggled for everything, and he was almost as uplifting as his beautiful son.
“These eggs are delicious,” Leo said, grinning at the man as he shoveled them into his mouth.
“We appreciate the cooking. It’s the best I’ve had since we left Russia.
” He glanced over at Mama, who was also there eating, albeit more delicately than either of us.
“Since Grant won’t let Mama cook in his house. ”
Everyone frowned at that, including me, since I missed Mama’s cooking.
Henry paused, considering, and offered, “Maybe he thinks she shouldn’t have to do that work?”
“That is what he says,” Mama agreed. Then she rolled her eyes. “But he just doesn’t like my cooking. He thinks spices are confusing.”
Cash let out a bark of laughter, but slapped a hand over his mouth, ducking his head and looking as though he couldn’t believe he’d done such a brazen thing. Mama winked at him and went back to her breakfast.
“You clearly do not suffer this problem, Henry. The sausage is lovely. Is this cayenne, sage, and . . . pepper?”
Henry grinned at her, nodding. “And thyme.”
He seemed so pleased someone had paid attention to his cooking, it was . . . sad. Odd. I wasn’t sure why it made me sad.
It did, though, and I was going to have to spend some time considering why.
As soon as we finished, Cash took us out to the well-named toolshed and started pointing out things that he needed out in the clearing to get started, including a chainsaw, which was a very impressive tool.
It required gasoline to work, but once Cash showed us the basics, Leo and I took well to it, going around to the marked trees and first felling them, then trimming the branches as Cash had instructed.
It was almost fun.
As we worked our way through a small group of trees on the east side of the clearing, I motioned to the spot. “If we cleared more here, there could be more houses.”
Leo looked around the area, then nodded. “Nice and flat.” He motioned into the south. “That way too. Could be a good place to—”
He looked up and met my eye, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. It would be a good place to move the whole pack. We could just build anew and then tear down the old buildings when we were done. Use them for firewood in the winter as I’d thought they would be good for so many times.
I nodded to him, and quietly, we began making plans.
Maybe not for tomorrow, or even five years from tomorrow. But someday.
Someday, I would be alpha, and we would change things.
Leo and I traded off who was using the chainsaw, as it was hard work, and by the afternoon, we had a neatly trimmed pile of trunks that would one day become my mother’s new house.
Leo set to the first orange-marked tree in a new area, and I looked around, taking measure. Mama was sitting in her spot on the log where she’d talked to Cash the day before, going through a book, her expression quite pleased.
But Cash . . . Where was—
My eyes found him just as I heard the creak that said the tree Leo was cutting was about to fall. Cash was too close. I looked to the tree, and sure enough, it was wobbling in a direction that told me Cash was in danger.
Without another conscious thought, I turned and ran, as fast as I could pump my legs.
I slammed into him, carrying him three feet back before we hit the ground together, knocking all the air out of my lungs.
And Cash’s too, if the way he was gasping for breath was any indication.
I immediately pushed up, because whether I was struggling to breathe or not, I had to see him. Had to know he was unharmed.
I leaned back and started patting him down, starting with his face and moving down his body. No broken bones. No blood.
Nothing. Just Cash, breathing hard, staring up at me with those spring green eyes, like I was the most unexpected thing he’d ever seen in his life.
“I . . . tree was falling at you,” I explained, sounding ridiculous even to myself. Even with the fallen tree sitting two feet behind us. All I could do was stare helplessly down into his beautiful eyes.