21. Viktor
Viktor
Drew had a handful of shiny, smooth river rocks, and he didn’t want to put them down.
It was very much like the raccoon we’d all met him as, and frankly, I didn’t think anyone was going to deny him anything for a while, so when he asked me to hold them while he put his (my) shirt back on, I didn’t hesitate.
“You sure you don’t want some pants?” Leo asked him, like Mama at her most smothering, worried mama-bear-esque. “It’s cold out.”
Drew scrunched up his nose and shook his head. “No way. Pants suck.”
Leo blinked in confusion, and Altair laughed.
I figured he’d been living as a raccoon for possibly decades, so it was a miracle we’d gotten him into a shirt.
I was rather more worried about Daire, who’d crawled into a big sweater Altair had brought him, and wrapped his arms around himself, like he needed a hug again.
Was it still appropriate for me to touch him? He hadn’t turned me down yet, and seemed to cling to every offered hand, so once Drew took his rocks back, I took a deep breath, braced myself, and went over to him, wrapping my arm around his lower back.
Casually. He could just step away if he wanted me not to touch him.
Instead of pulling away, he curled into me, like he was freezing and I was a nice cozy fire.
“Do you need anything else?” I asked him.
He shook his head, but leaned in as far as he could.
The look on his face was fucking tragic, and I wasn’t sure why, but also, I wasn’t naive.
This was going to be messy. A lot of the pack already wanted to blame him for everything the witches had ever done, and unlike Tristan, he hadn’t been bitten. He wasn’t grudgingly one of us.
They could hate Daire much more easily.
We walked back from the river’s edge slowly, Drew dancing along ahead of us, completely unaffected by the tension radiating off Daire.
“They’re very accepting creatures, wolves,” Altair said after a while. “They took me in. Not that there weren’t any issues, but they did.” With the last, he cut his eyes toward me with a sly smile, and I rolled my eyes back at him.
But no. I actually owed him something here. “Ermengarde took my wolf before you arrived. When I met you, I was . . . dealing with that. Poorly. I took my worries about being able to defend my pack out on you, and you didn’t deserve it. I apologize.”
Altair blinked at me in astonishment, opening and closing his mouth, but then he stopped and shook his head, bringing the whole party to a brief halt.
“No. No, you don’t need to . . . I appreciate it, and you were certainly an ass, but you knew vampires through Ivan.
Why would you have thought us anything but monsters? ”
I appreciated his willingness to let it go, but that wasn’t enough, and I knew it. But also, talking wouldn’t fix things, because it rarely did. I would have to prove myself in actions, going forward.
Turning my attention to Leo, I met his gaze. “I apologize to you as well. And not just because I need your support now.”
His guileless eyes scrunched in confusion a moment, then he cocked his head, looking just like a wolf in the same position. “You mean because Cash was so angry? What was that about, anyway?”
I lifted a brow at him. Funny, I thought Aleks and I had been the only ones who had been inappropriately dismissive of what had happened with the witches.
I didn’t want to say it in so many words, so I cleared my throat and said, “He’s very protective of the people he loves, and the witches weren’t kind to Aleks. ”
“But that wasn’t Daire,” he pointed out instantly. “Everyone said. He helped you and Drew escape tonight, and Altair before. Plus, I mean, if Mama told me to do things, I’d do them. I can’t imagine telling her no.”
“Your mother probably isn’t the kind of monster who kills people,” Daire muttered, drawing himself in tighter, like he wished he could curl up into a ball so small he simply disappeared.
“And I didn’t, you know. I had to escape tonight too.
It was self-serving to save Viktor. Drew helped us, I didn’t help him.
And . . . and . . . and I only let Altair go because of the spell.
Because the wolf in my head kept telling me keeping people prisoner was wrong, and I could do something about it.
I’m not good. The only good things I’ve ever done have been because of Viktor and his wolf. ”
He stopped and turned around, like maybe he would run off into the woods instead of joining us.
I didn’t need to remind him that wouldn’t work, though.
That we were tethered together, and he couldn’t leave.
I hadn’t imagined I would ever be grateful for that tether, but I was then.
I wasn’t eloquent. There was no way I could convince him with words that he was worth saving, even though I believed it completely.
All I could think to say was that he couldn’t go off alone because the witches would find him, and he didn’t seem like he was in a state of mind to be especially concerned about his own welfare.
So I turned and wrapped my arms around him, tugging him against me.
While I was still looking for words, Leo was the one who spoke. “Bullshit.”
I frowned at him, and Drew burst into giggles, but Altair nodded along, threading his arm into the crook of Leo’s and waiting for him to continue.
And continue he did. “Somehow, I doubt your mom was great to you. And this whole pack followed Grant for years, and Reeve for years before him. Sometimes when things are bad, it’s hard to see it from the inside.
And sometimes, you’re just used to being treated like shit, and you think that’s normal, so why would you try to change things?
And sometimes you just don’t know how to change things.
Regular people like us don’t just decide to kill someone because they’re bad.
It’s not your fault when other people do bad things.
Yeah, we should do something. We should stop them.
We should. But not everyone can. We’re not always in the position to do that.
And saying that you’re bad for not going up against your own super powerful mom is .
. . it’s victim blaming, that’s what it is.
And Evie always says it’s an asshole move. ”
Altair nodded again, smiling up at Leo like he’d hung the moon with his own hands. “Beautiful, darling. And entirely true. I did things I would like to never think about because Ivan forced me to. Ermengarde wasn’t any better. To say nothing of the fact that you’re terribly young.”
Daire clearly wanted to deny that, but he was blinking back tears, swallowing repeatedly.
Instead of opening his mouth again, he just turned toward me, his shoulders shaking with the weight of his mother’s monstrosity.
I scooped him up into my arms and carried him toward Mama’s house, holding his trembling body against me.