7. Viktor
Viktor
I woke, and for a moment I thought I was home, even though I was not in my own soft bed. No, I seemed to be sleeping on a stone floor, the likes of which we didn’t even have in Wildwood. Floors were wooden or dirt, never stone.
So where was I, and why had I thought I was home?
Altair.
My wolf was gone, but I could still smell that much.
The place I was in smelled so strongly of Altair that it couldn’t have been missed by the weakest nose.
That strange perfume-like scent of a vampire.
It had never drawn me the way it did others, but Ivan had been my introduction to it, so when others were intrigued by the unusual, almost floral, musk of a vampire, it just reminded me of what I’d seen the monster do to people.
In this case, though, after Altair’s scent had settled into my brother’s . . . well, it felt like home.
But even before I opened my eyes, I knew.
I’d been taken by the witches, and there was a reason something to do with them would smell like Altair.
Because they’d held him prisoner in their basement for over a century, and now they were holding me prisoner too, in the exact same place.
I sat up and looked around, and something swooped in my stomach. I’d been so terrible to Altair when he’d first come to us. And this, this tiny stone cell in a basement, was where he’d spent over a hundred years immediately before dropping into my brother’s lap.
For some reason, I’d been imagining they kept him in luxury, picturing velvet drapes and a huge bed with a red duvet and a million pillows. Maybe because that seemed like a backdrop that suited Altair.
Or maybe just because I hadn’t wanted to think about what “prisoner” actually meant.
A ten-by-ten stone cell, with a threadbare cot, two chairs that looked like they would collapse under a werewolf’s weight, and a rickety table that had three legs, but looked like it was supposed to have four.
My nose wasn’t what it was supposed to be, but the smell of decay led me to a dark place under the corner of the cot, where there were half a dozen rat corpses in various states of decomposition. It was sickening, and not because I was so prissy I couldn’t handle a couple of dead rats.
No, it was because if you were holding someone prisoner, at the very least, you owed them food. You didn’t leave them to catch and eat the very fucking rats you were letting them live with.
The sick churning in my belly was disgust and horror, and also, shame. I’d imagined Altair living in luxury. A kept creature, spread across a bed and giving the witches come-hither eyes.
But no. Clearly, just from the look of the place, Altair knew even better than I what it was to be nothing. To be erased from the world and held in a horrible limbo where you weren’t even sure if you were living or dead.
This room didn’t take up the whole basement by any stretch of the imagination.
It didn’t even take up the whole room it was in—a huge reinforced set of metal bars bisected the room, not quite in half.
Thankfully, the cell part was a little bigger than the other, but it was a small favor, given everything else.
A light voice outside the room caught my attention, but without my wolf, I was lucky to hear it at all, and couldn’t make out what it was saying.
A deeper response came, and it sounded short, truncated, maybe even annoyed.
Again, I couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was clear enough.
The lighter voice went a little louder, a little more strident, and a moment later, the door to the room opened.
The redhead.
He shoved the door closed behind him, then paused, blinking and shaking his head. He put a hand to his forehead and muttered something I couldn’t make out.
Fucking witches stealing my wolf.
The sawdust in my soul started buzzing again, and I worried somehow I was setting off an alarm without touching a damn thing, but . . . well, who cared? I was already caught. It didn’t matter so much who knew where I was now.
But then I realized something. The buzzing wasn’t like the alarm. No, it was . . . it was almost alive in me, and it very much wanted to be in the redheaded boy.
It seemed Ermengarde had stolen something from him as well. A trade. My wolf for . . . whatever the hell was in me now.
He came over to the bars and looked in at me, and some tiny part of me wanted to throw myself at them. At him. At the other half of my soul, stuffed into this sad little boy. Well, no, not boy. He wasn’t a child. He was almost certainly an adult, even if he looked softer than my bed back home.
For a long, silent moment, we simply stared at each other.
There was relief in it, this longer look at my wolf.
My soul wasn’t irrevocably broken. It was right there in front of me, inside this stranger.
This witch. Part of me wanted to snarl at him, except that he looked as miserable and lost as I was.
Like just maybe, he also hadn’t agreed to this exchange, and whatever this dead weight was that I’d been given, it was as important to him as my wolf was to me.
Maybe even a little like he was unhappy we were in this situation at all.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said, right when I’d convinced myself he was just going to stand there and give me puppy eyes for the rest of the day.
I lifted a brow, and he continued. “I mean, I know I didn’t do it.
Mother cast the spell, not me, but I never would have .
. . It’s not right. I’m not sure how she thinks she’s going to keep your wolf, but I’d give him back if I could.
I don’t . . . I never wanted to be a werewolf. ”
I leaned against the back wall of the cell for a moment, just letting him ramble.
Something in it was comfortable, reminding me of Leo.
The rest? Well, the more he rambled the more I learned.
The cold and distant leader of the witches, Ermengarde, was his mother.
Poor kid. Maybe my life hadn’t been a charmed one, but I’d been lucky enough to have not one, but two mothers who had loved me completely and without reservation.
He hadn’t even gotten one, because it was obvious he was also terrified of her.
No decent mother inspired fear.
The rambling also told me what the end goal of this disaster was: she wanted a witchwolf.
She’d sent Grant to get the existing one, and since she couldn’t have him, she’d decided to make her own, by stealing an existing wolf and what, stuffing him inside her son?
But he didn’t seem much like Dakota Morris.
He had none of the brash, confident swagger of the young witchwolf, even though it seemed likely they were of an age.
But that was what she wanted. A witchwolf under her control.
Me? I just curled up my nose at the whole concept. “You want to be wolves, but without risking anything. That’s not how it works.”
He squinted at me, then his eyes widened a bit, his lips parting, and .
. . well, I was rarely a man distracted by such things, but it was a fetching look on him.
For the first time, while I still saw the innocence, I could see the actual man in him.
Perhaps because he clearly understood what I was saying, and not just because of his moist, parted lips.
“Putting the wolf into someone that already has magic, but with a spell. I hadn’t . . . I mean, you know how likely it is to become a witchwolf.”
“More likely to die of the bite,” I said, implicit agreement in my voice. “But that is the way it works. That is the trade. You offer everything and hope for everything in return. When you offer nothing, you should expect to receive nothing.”
His eyes narrowed, and for a moment I thought he’d tell me his darling mother was infallible and knew more than some dirty wolf, but then, slowly, he nodded.
“That . . . makes sense. The witchwolf had to risk his life and his magic to become what he is. Mother wants to create a witchwolf with no risk. Nature doesn’t like that so much. You can’t avoid the laws of nature.”
It was shockingly astute for someone whose own mother clearly didn’t comprehend what she was trying to do. Maybe I was no witch, but trying to ignore the natural law seemed a terrible plan to me.
“He will never accept her, my wolf. She has no conscience. He is mine.”
He blinked his wide eyes, and suddenly they looked so green that they were all I could see. The bright spring-leaf color in an otherwise drab gray room. “Your . . . conscience,” he whispered. “I’m not going crazy.”
I almost snorted at the notion. My wolf had been giving him shit, then. Still, if he wasn’t trying to scratch off his own skin, he had to have something in common with the wolf, didn’t he? My wolf never would have put up with being put inside someone who was irredeemable. I had to believe that.
I pushed off the wall and stalked forward. “What is your name, zaichik?”
He blinked at me a moment, confused and suspicious, or maybe terrified of the wolf approaching him, despite the cell bars. “D-Daire.” He frowned, then drew himself up. “What’s . . . what’s your name?”
“Viktor.” My voice went low, almost . . . was that seductive? What the hell was I trying to do? Seduce my way out of the cell? That was not in my skill set at all.
Still, he swallowed hard and stared up at me with his big green eyes, and part of me thought I might like to give it a try.
Then the door to the room burst open, and three witches marched in. Without a word, two of them used those tasers on me, and while I had no wolf, they worked quite effectively. A moment later, I was on the floor of the cell, counting myself lucky I wasn’t pissing myself.
Daire shouted that what they were doing wasn’t necessary, but even I saw what was coming next. One of the witches came up behind him. “It’s time for the ritual,” she said, matter of fact and just as cold as I’d ever seen Ermengarde. “And your mother requires you as well.”
Daire looked confused, and I couldn’t speak in the moment, couldn’t tell him what seemed obvious to me. She wasn’t planning on making him the witchwolf. How could a woman like that be looking for anything but power for herself?
The only joy I could find in that moment was the clear and obvious fact that put into her, my wolf would end them both in under a week.