18. Aleks
Aleks
I marched out of the house onto the front stoop the moment I heard Cash’s voice coming from there, before even registering how panicked he sounded or how worried Mama and Leo looked, both standing motionless in the kitchen.
I’d come for dinner with my small collection of books, thinking I would leave them on the shelf in the room that should’ve been mine. It was a comfort, to think they would be safe there. Nothing in Grant’s home was safe.
Outside, Viktor was calming Cash, something my brother had gotten very good at over the years they had been spending most of their time together.
It took me a moment to gather what was happening: Cash was having a breakdown over Grant targeting Evie. Well fuck, I couldn’t blame him.
Although targeting was the wrong word.
Every reasonably attractive young person in the pack could expect the treatment Evie was getting.
I’d been a bit older when I’d gotten it, but .
. . come to think of it, that mostly came down to the fact that I’d mostly been sent off with women, and women didn’t generally like the look of little boys, but men . . . well.
It wasn’t going to make anyone feel better about anything, my pointing out that men were disgusting and often seemed to prefer children.
It was a clever idea on Cash’s part, suggesting Viktor claim Evie, and frankly, it was one of the few things that would be able to stop Grant doing whatever he wanted.
Viktor, who hadn’t given me any indication he’d noticed me standing there, motioned me over without turning to look at me. Then he pushed Cash into my arms with a nod. “I will inform Grant.”
A tiny, somewhat rough whisper emanated from underneath the front porch. “I can go with you, if you want.”
Evie.
She’d been hiding under the porch, hearing how the pack alpha and his conspirator planned to pass her around like a bottle of liquor. Which was incredible, because I hadn’t heard or smelled her there any more than I normally did. The kid really was incredible at hiding. It was a gift.
But also, it was good, because Evie should know what was happening.
On the other hand, Viktor said what I was thinking before I managed to put it to words. “No. If he tries to refuse me, I won’t have you standing there as an easy target to send off with that woman.”
It wasn’t that I expected Grant to refuse Viktor outright—Viktor was terrifying and anyone in their right mind would give him anything he demanded.
But whatever Grant might be missing in decency and scruples and physicality, he made up for, and then some, in quick thinking.
The man was cleverer than I could ever hope to be, and I wouldn’t have even tried to outthink him.
There was a reason Viktor had spent so much time trying to teach me how to fight. Without that, I had no hope of beating the man in any way.
I wasn’t sure I held much hope regardless, because again, Grant was clever and I was just Aleks.
“In the morning,” I told Viktor, before he could march off without me. “They’ve been drinking today, and I don’t want anyone to get rowdy because they’ve consumed enough vodka to knock out an elephant. We’ll do it in the morning when everyone is sober.”
The next morning, I walked beside Viktor to Grant’s horribly sagging house and tried not to think about how much work Cash was currently putting into building him a new one.
He was building a stunning palace of a home, far grander and more beautiful than Grant deserved.
Two stories, half a dozen bedrooms, and so many windows . . .
I wondered if Cash was doing it like that in hopes that it would take decades to build, and Grant wouldn’t live long enough to see it done.
Viktor walked with the same confidence as always, and maybe a hint of swagger. I wondered if he was emulating one of Grant’s goons, or if it was some hint of the old Viktor, an overconfident teenager who’d thought the world was his to walk through.
Or maybe it was just entirely an act, since he seemed much more comfortable in his skin nowadays, and no one ever questioned the perfunctory way he did everything.
Personally, I found it a little scarier, the almost mechanical way he moved sometimes, not a single motion wasted.
Everything calculated, like he could break your neck and then toss your body into the woods in a single sweeping arc, so that not only would you be dead, but your body wouldn’t be around to inconvenience anyone.
Grant and the goons were already out on the porch, which seemed to be sagging even more than usual. Maybe it was the weight of four grown men—the usual crew minus Tommy, who actually seemed to be having an emotion about having to sacrifice his daughter for his pitiful amount of power.
More likely, the porch really was just sagging more and more, especially since Grant and his friends tended to sit there all day, surveying the people of the pack instead of doing something useful to add to the value of our community.
“I intend to claim Evie,” Viktor said, without a hint of accent, which was good. I was never sure why, but Grant seemed to hate my accent.
Not to say I exaggerated it around him because of that . . .
But I did.
Grant’s eyes narrowed at Viktor, because clearly, this was not something he’d been planning for. It wasn’t what he wanted. Any tool taken out of his box was a loss to him, and that was how he viewed each of us. A tool, to be used until it broke, then replaced.
Marcus snorted and waved him off. “Please, you wouldn’t even know what to do with a woman. Do you even have a cock?”
Where I might have broken and given Marcus the fight he clearly wanted, Viktor just lifted an unimpressed brow at him.
“Are you looking for a measuring contest? If you’d like, I can oblige.
” He even lowered a hand to his fly, like he was ready to unzip right there in front of the whole pack, to prove his dick was bigger than Marcus’s.
Given the common wolf lack of care about nudity, I could have told Marcus not to bother. Viktor would definitely beat him, in cock size and every other way.
Grant waved Marcus back, and he went, grumbling all the way. “Have you bitten her?”
“It would be inappropriate to do so before discussing it with her alpha and her family, and then having a mating ceremony,” Viktor answered, rote and calm, like he was reading out of a textbook on the subject of mating.
He and Grant stared at each other, and it reminded me of something in nature. Two predators staring each other down, trying to decide dominance. I could stare Grant down, but Viktor? I thought maybe Viktor could stare down a painting, and it would be the first to look away.
That flat expression and complete disinterest was downright disturbing.
“Well then, consider permission given. No need to worry about Tommy, he’ll do as I say. So bring her out. Bite her.” He leaned back in his chair. “Unless you don’t actually want to.”
Oddly, Viktor hesitated on that.
Not because he wasn’t willing to follow through, I realized. Because Grant wasn’t actually planning on giving him his way. Grant was demanding he produce Evie, so he could have his goons grab her, with no intention of following through on his words.
“Obviously, she isn’t here,” Viktor told him, and his voice was suddenly pitched louder than before.
Maybe so the whole pack could hear him, or maybe because he knew where Evie was, and didn’t want her to come out.
“But you give permission? Evie will come live with me, at Katya’s home, and not with that woman. ”
People were peeking out of their windows, watching and listening, so clearly, Viktor’s raised voice was also for the benefit of the whole pack.
Grant glanced around, his eyes narrowing, and I knew. He was going to refuse. Worse, he was going to do something awful. I’d seen it a hundred times in the years I’d lived in Idaho, that moment Grant decided he had been disrespected, and that he was going to take out his anger on someone.
Could Viktor and I handle Grant and three goons at once?
I wasn’t worried about Viktor, but I wasn’t sure how much help I would be.
He’d been teaching me, yes, but he was the only person I’d been in a “fight” with as an adult.
I had no practical experience since I’d been a teenager, fighting for my life during the government raids, but that was a totally different experience than a one-on-one duel.
Not that I wouldn’t fight for my fucking life, but I hated the thought of letting him down and getting us both killed with my incompetence.
I would never hesitate for a second, though. I would stand with Viktor to the end.
I hated what it would do to Mama, but—
“Alpha,” Tommy’s bright voice rang across the dilapidated, filthy pack courtyard and he came hurrying between two houses, smiling like a fucking crazy person. He was waving something around, like it was the answer to all of our problems.
Unless it was a magic spell to convince people that abusing children was wrong, I had my doubts.
He ran right up between us and the porch, and held the thing out where Grant could see it and not me, but even when I walked around him to look at it, nothing became clearer.
It was a couple of guys, one handsome and square-jawed, and the other a beautiful Asian man.
They were looking at each other rather than the camera, and it was a sweet picture.
CEO of Crescent Enterprises to Marry Igarashi Heir, the headline proclaimed. So what? Some rich assholes didn’t affect anything about us. Then a subheadline caught my eye. “Ajax Fyse, from rural Idaho to Fortune 500 CEO.”
Rural Idaho.
No.
It wasn’t possible.
That guy was—
Grant shot up out of his chair so fast that the old sagging porch couldn’t handle it, and one of the rotting boards under his feet gave way.
He didn’t even seem to notice, and his eyes never left the picture on the magazine as Marcus caught him, and he started shouting.
“Get me my phone. I need to talk to Ermengarde. Fucking now.”
Not that I wasn’t grateful for the reprieve, but . . . what?
“Next time, we bring Leonid and Mama,” Viktor whispered near my ear, so low no one but me—and maybe Tommy—could have heard it. “Next time he threatens, we fight.”
And maybe . . . maybe he was right.
Maybe it was time.