42. Aleks
Aleks
Fucking witches.
The whole thing had happened almost too fast to react to; Ermengarde snarling something in another language, Viktor hurling himself in front of me, and a flash of .
. . well, honestly I wasn’t sure how much of the spell I’d felt from Viktor, and how much had been my imagination, summoning up worst-case scenarios.
If there had been an actual flash of light, or if it’d just felt like there had.
The stink of ozone filled the air, and I was really starting to hate that scent. Not that Dakota’s magic had ever felt particularly threatening to me, but there was one of him, and dozens of witches.
I lunged forward in the moment, catching Viktor and keeping him from hitting the ground, and then the air filled with growling and snarling, which was somehow the most comforting sound I’d ever heard in my life.
Viktor looked stunned, like he’d been hit over the head from behind, and he was slowly blinking away the cobwebs from a concussion.
Only no one had touched him with anything but magic, and I didn’t dare hope that whatever spell she’d cast had been so simple as kinetic force to his head.
A concussion, he would shake off and there would likely be few consequences—that was why most people called wolves hard-headed.
Even blunt-force trauma had to be enormous to actually cause permanent damage.
A howl went up around me, and a second later, every single SUV was screeching its way out, as fast as they could make their tires go on the loose gravel of the square.
Wolves followed, racing along beside the SUVs as they left, barking and howling and just doing everything a wolf could possibly do to intimidate a whole damned car.
More than that, it was definitely working, as the SUVs accelerated more than was remotely safe on the gravel roads that led back to the highway.
Suddenly, they wanted away from us as much as we wanted them gone.
Viktor pushed my hands away and braced himself on the ground, pushing himself to his feet.
For a fraction of a second, he was unsteady, but he hid it well by spreading his legs and going into that pose I always thought of as military.
He rolled his shoulders back, and a moment later, he was surrounded.
Evie, a tiny sleek black wolf, sniffing at his knees, among a bunch of others on four legs who moved to our flanks, protective.
Like a pack should be.
Maggie, who hadn’t shifted, came up to lay a hand on his cheek. “You look pale, dear. Do you want a cup of tea?”
He blinked at her in shock for a moment, shock I could not only see on his face, but feel in my bond with him. People didn’t worry about Viktor. He was the solid one. The protector. He worried about them. Having them worry for him was distinctly uncomfortable.
“That’s very kind of you, Maggie, but I think Viktor is well.” It was a lie, or half of one. He wasn’t unwell, but he was a little dizzy and still had the faint smell of ozone about him. But the attention was only making things worse, and it wasn’t like a cup of tea cured magic.
Viktor nodded to her, agreeing with me, but also acknowledging her offer. Frankly, it was better than he’d done with anyone but me, Cash, or Evie since he’d gotten to the States. Even his relationship with Leo was a little confused at times since he’d returned to us.
For a moment, I considered shoving Viktor in the truck and driving all the way back to California right then, asking Dakota to figure out what magic the witch had put on my best friend, and how we could remove it. If anyone could, it was him.
But Viktor was shaking it off, and I knew him. I knew without a doubt he would never allow that. We were in a sensitive moment for the pack, and me running off in the middle of it could irreparably damage my position as alpha.
That, in turn, could destroy the pack. We were all struggling enough as it was, trying to find what we could hold onto as life battered the pack, tearing away members, leaving us fewer, nervous, and vulnerable.
If we weren’t careful, a bad blow could be the last, and Viktor was the most careful among us.
“I will be fine,” he told Maggie, inclining his head to her. “Just witchery. We are wolves. We will endure.”
It was an odd turn of phrase, and I wondered where it had come from. Also, maybe I didn’t want to know. To some degree, I appreciated the sentiment, because we had endured a fucking lot and survived.
We would survive this too.
But we weren’t just trying to survive anymore, dammit. We were ready to start living, and Viktor was as much a part of that as anyone.
If he so much as stumbled with the smell of magic still on him, world be damned, I would pack him right into Grant’s . . . my truck, and take him to San Francisco.
He clearly had other plans. He turned to where Mama was coming back from chasing the witches out of town—and I thought she’d probably enjoyed the hell out of scaring the wits out of them—and nodded to her.
“I believe Mama was in the middle of pancakes when they rudely interrupted. We should go eat, and then get started.”
Get started.
It sounded overwhelming and perfect at the same time. There were a million things to do, houses to build, and ideas to research, like Evie’s solar power.
I had dreamed of hot showers the night before.
Hot showers with Cash.
Cash, still on all fours, came back into the square, head held high, and strangely, it was Walter who spoke. “Well done, alpha mate. Getting those monsters off pack territory. We should have done that years ago.”
Cash blinked at him in clear shock, but I grinned. “Indeed. A fine job letting them know they’re no longer welcome here. We should never have had any part of them, and now, they know not to come back.”
A cheer went up in the pack at that, reminding me that I wasn’t the only one who’d always dreaded hearing the SUVs coming. Grant had done that to us, and never given a damn about anyone else’s feelings. But that was gone, now. They were gone.
And none of it was ever coming back.