34. Aleks
Aleks
The weeks took forever, and also no time at all, because every minute in the city felt like torture, but also . . . was I ready? Really ready?
No, of course not.
No one was ever truly ready for a thing like what I had to do.
What Viktor and I had to do, because yes, the fight with Grant was for me, but Viktor would always be at my side, no matter what.
Grant didn’t say a word to us the day of the challenge.
He and half a dozen of his assholes left the house around noon, leaving Viktor and I alone.
Viktor watched them go from the front window, and he turned and gave me an approving nod.
“He knows it’s over. That you won’t put up with him being dishonest any longer. ”
I wondered if he really understood what he was saying, but who was I kidding?
It was Viktor. He, of all of us, was the most painfully honest and realistic.
He proved that point a moment later when he turned toward the room we’d been staying in together, speaking as he went.
“If he sees you again, he will try to kill you. We should be prepared.”
I followed him, wondering if he was planning some kind of specific preparation.
When we got to the room we’d been staying in, he pulled both of our bags from under the beds and started packing them.
Of course. We had to leave, because if Grant saw me again, he would attack me. It was obvious, really, but I hadn’t thought it through that far.
“Why do you think he didn’t attack before?” I asked. “When I was alone here, or the when I came back from visiting Cash?”
Viktor didn’t even turn from his task to look at me, just answered with his back to me.
“He had to convince the others first. He can’t handle you himself, and they know you’re dangerous.
Not soft like Cash or his Papa. He needs them to do it for him.
” He did turn then, and gave me a wicked grin.
“Also, I stayed with you always. Harder to ambush a man who isn’t alone. ”
It was true, now that I considered. Viktor had been practically glued to my side for over a month. I wondered how long Grant had been planning my demise.
Maybe since the moment Viktor and I had first gone to demand Evie, and he hadn’t wanted to give up a person he thought of as property.
Funny.
I hadn’t been there for it, but my understanding of the situation was that my father treating Fyse’s sister precisely like that had been what had led to his downfall.
First Fyse’s challenge, and then a long downward spiral after he had lost the fight.
Perhaps I was lucky, in my disinterest for sex, and women in general, since women seemed to be the downfall of men in my family.
No, not women. Girls. Children.
And that was what shook sense back into me. I wasn’t lucky at all. I just had morals, where my father and uncle had none.
Grant didn’t even want to abuse Evie himself. He wanted to sell her to other men who would do so. Somehow, it was even sicker than merely being a monster who abused children.
I packed my own bag, checking the room over to make sure nothing was left behind, since we would not return, regardless of who won the fight. If Grant somehow beat Fyse, I would kill him and we would return home this very night. If Grant lost, there would be no reason to stay either.
If, by some bizarre happenstance, Grant managed to beat both Fyse and me, Viktor would kill him, and my family and loved ones would still be safe. Viktor was not going to be bested by some pathetic little man with a need to be powerful. My brother was by far the scariest man I knew.
We took the last truck sitting in the drive and headed for the Crescent pack’s territory again.
It looked different with the house no longer there—even the burned shell of a place had been demolished, all sign of it gone but a scorched concrete slab and the tiniest hint of debris from where the rest had been cleared away.
I wondered, briefly, if they would rebuild.
How often they used this house, when they had a whole house somewhere else, and all lived in the city anyway.
How many houses did people need?
I thought of my bed in Mama’s house, that I’d never been allowed to sleep in, and my mood was buoyed.
I would never have to go back to Grant’s house. I could fucking knock it right down into the dirt, and no one would ever have to sleep there again. I could do to it what Grant’s plotting had done to this house.
I would never again be bartered off to witches who wanted a healthy young wolf for their experiments and “awakenings,” in hope they could somehow grasp at a wolf’s power.
We left our bags in the truck, climbing out and looking around the area. For a moment, I thought we’d been the first ones to arrive, but then I saw the truck Grant and his goons had taken earlier, hidden in the trees.
Viktor took a deep sniff of the air, and his eyes narrowed. “You should wait in the truck. I’m going to go handle something.”
Handle what?
But before I could actually ask, he was loping off into the woods, looking angry and determined. I didn’t want to get between Viktor and his goals, so I just shrugged and headed back toward the truck.
I got bored after three minutes, though, and wandered over to the bare concrete.
At where Giselle had died. I still wasn’t sorry.
Didn’t miss her, or the idea of her. Instead, I wondered how a soul became so blackened, so monstrous, that they were willing to hurt children, murder people, burn houses down, and all in the name of what? Of Grant?
Grant was a worthless person, and a worthless leader.
“Well, well, well,” came a snide voice from behind me that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I spun around to find Marcus behind me, and bared my teeth at him.
Marcus, I would be happy to kill, right up close and personal.
He was with Dave, who was another thorn in my side, and loyal lackey to Grant.
I’d have said the only person missing was Grant, except that they’d actually left the house with other guys that afternoon, so a bunch of people were missing.
I was out of patience for it all, and rolled my eyes at him. “Grant not here for you to lick his boots?”
Marcus snarled and launched himself at me. It was a poorly conceived attack, coming at me with all his weight thrown forward, too much momentum to stop, and all I had to do was side-step the attack. Well, and throw out an arm at about throat height for him to run into.
There was an audible crack when he hit, with enough force that my arm was actually pulled backward, and I wondered if that was it.
If he’d snapped his neck on my bicep. I looked down at him, and he was clutching at his neck, eyes wide, opening and closing his mouth like he was trying to . . . to what? To breathe? Could he not?
He clutched his throat, his claws coming out and then retracting repeatedly, like he couldn’t control them. He didn’t seem to be healing, certainly not with any speed.
“You fucking killed Marcus!” Dave wailed as I stood there staring at the writhing man in confusion.
That transferred my confusion to Dave. Could he not see his friend was still alive? Also . . . “He attacked me. You think I should have stood here to be gutted?”
Dave started toward me, but his eyes darted to a spot on my shoulder.
No, something behind me.
Too late, I realized that he was looking at someone behind me.
I felt claws rip into my side and around to my front as a triumphant Grant came around me, claws out, and shoved his hand into my unprotected belly.
“Shouldn’t have ever gotten you and your whore mother to come back from Russia.
Should have left you to die.” He grinned.
“But that’s okay. We can always correct our mistakes.
Who gives a fuck what happens to the pack when I die? They don’t need an heir.”
Dave came up next to us, and I thought he would also attack, but instead, he looked down at Marcus, still writhing and arching up.
Distantly, I realized as I collapsed to my knees beside him, that Marcus wasn’t breathing.
He’d collapsed his own trachea on my arm. Shouldn’t that have healed? How badly did he have to have hurt himself that he wasn’t better already? I looked down at him, holding my guts in with one hand, the whole world going strange and quiet around me in the waning twilight.
He was terrified. He couldn’t breathe, and he’d never experienced helplessness before. He’d inflicted it on others for as long as I’d known him, but finally, he understood how it felt himself, and there was a little bit of vicious satisfaction in me for that.
He died there.
Just like that.
Not gasping for breath, because he couldn’t even gasp. The fear in his eyes unfocused, and his whole body slowly went slack. Dave had been right, as it turned out. I had killed Marcus. Not really on purpose, and with one of the most rudimentary bits of fighting that Viktor had taught me.
But he’d taught me those things to fight Grant.
Not to die by Grant’s hand without so much as a fist thrown.
A dark gray form I’d have recognized anywhere came bounding out of the woods—Viktor, as a wolf. He rushed to me, whining and licking my face, then nosing at the wound in my side.
Not fatal, I didn’t think.
Probably not fatal.
I suspected Grant had meant it to be. Maybe he thought I’d lie there in the dirt and bleed out. Die by inches, like Marcus.
Marcus . . . where had Marcus gone? It was darker than last I’d noticed.
Fuck. Was I dying? Losing time couldn’t be a good sign.
A voice sounded behind me. Fyse’s voice. “Aleks?”
I looked up, trying to locate him. Grant was . . . something was off about all of this. Where was Grant? Where had Marcus gone? And Dave? And all the other goons?
Viktor crouched, ready to spring, and I heard Fyse speak again. “I’m just checking on him.”