22. Daire
Daire
They were being nice to me, which was absolutely horrible, because I had no choice but to tolerate it. Arguing would only make them nicer to me, and I was pretty sure if they kept it up, I was going to crumble to pieces.
Which would’ve made it a mite harder for Viktor to carry me. I sniffled pitifully against his chest, no longer bothered by not walking on my own two feet, because now we weren’t fleeing.
Or something.
Maybe it was just that I was exhausted, sadder than I knew I could be, and everything felt kind of pointless, so why not be a terrible imposition to everybody who’d been kind?
He carried me through pack lands to a part I’d never seen before. Here, the houses were clearly newer. They were built of huge, freshly treated logs, instead of the rotten planks of the old houses.
It was surreal, to get to the biggest of the new houses and find that it was lit by candlelight.
Leo took a deep breath before we got up on the porch, but Viktor? He was perfectly in control. Locked down as ever.
Inside, there were a handful of wolves waiting for us, including the alpha and, given his glare, a man I assumed to be Cash. When we came in, he stood firmly behind a chair, like he’d rather be anywhere but in a room with me.
“It’s been a long day,” Viktor announced to the room at large. I heard Tristan scoff from the couch. “This can wait until tomorrow. We’re going to bed.”
Okay, I had zero doubt that was for my benefit. I was falling apart, and Viktor was trying to give me a reprieve, and as much as I appreciated it, there was no way he’d leave his pack hanging of his own accord.
I squirmed in his grip, and it only took him a second or two to shift his arms to let me gently place my feet on the floor.
“No we’re not,” I whispered, throat too tight to talk aloud.
I slipped my hand into his and squeezed.
I appreciated his support—needed it, really—but I could manage one conversation before we went somewhere I could collapse in on myself like a dying star. “I’m fine.”
The second I was out of his arms, a blonde woman crossed from the kitchen and wrapped her arms tight around Viktor’s middle. When she pulled back, she pressed her pointer finger into the middle of his chest, narrowing her bright blue eyes up at him.
“You were reckless,” she accused.
Viktor’s lips narrowed into a thin line. “I knew I could handle it, Mama.”
Mama? She . . . she looked just like the alpha, and he’d said we’d talk at his mother’s house. So Viktor was the alpha’s brother.
It explained why he’d leapt in front of the spell for him, but a whole new wave of guilt swelled in my belly.
His mother arched a brow high, hands on her hips. “Did you? And what would you have done if Aleks or Leo had run off with nothing but a note, hm? Would you allow them to ‘handle it’ on their own?”
Viktor said nothing.
Awkwardly, Leo scratched the back of his neck. “You would’ve come after us for sure.”
The way his mother smiled then, it was like Viktor had been caught.
“Mmhmm,” she hummed. “But you ran off, leaving nothing but vague scribblings, no promise when you’d come back, no hint where you were going. Do you know what that did to us?”
Viktor took his first deep breath. “Yes, Mama.”
“But, what, you think we do not care about you?”
He shook his head, just once.
“So you think that you’re expendable? That we would survive losing you again?”
To that, Viktor had nothing to say. I squeezed his hand, but I wasn’t sure he even noticed.
Aleks sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. When he dropped his arms, he looked older. “We’re building a pack where no one carries the weight of their struggles alone, Vitya. We want you to be a part of that. That’s all. I wish you would have told us what was going on.”
Viktor inclined his head minutely. He . . . he hadn’t been exaggerating, when he explained the way that he was—that he kept everything inside. He hadn’t said as much, but it was clear now, around his family, that he held them apart too.
His mother turned and looked me over. At first, I couldn’t tell if she was angry I was there or not. Her lips were pursed, her eyes slightly narrowed. Then, she took in what must’ve been my embarrassingly splotchy face and softened.
“I am Katya,” she said, her hands falling from her hips.
“Daire,” I whispered back.
“Well, come in. You must be exhausted. We have solyanka.” She ushered us to the large dining table.
Drew bounced on the balls of his feet. “That smells great!”
Solyanka turned out to be a tangy, salty soup, but it was thick and filling. The sourness on my tongue helped reset my mind and give me something to focus on other than . . . everything wrong in the universe?
Viktor ate on one side of me. Drew, on the other, lifted the bowl and simply drank. He set it down with wet lips and a grin on his face. “That’s so good, Mama, thank you.”
Okay, she definitely wasn’t his mother, but Katya at the head of the table wore a charmed smile and motioned to the pot in the middle. “Eat as much as you want, darling.”
There was soft brown bread to drag through the stew, and by the time my belly was full, I’d come around to the candlelight. Proper lighting would’ve felt overstimulating right then, but I could handle this.
Aleks was at the other end of the table, Cash had settled right beside him, and Leo and Altair were across from us. Tristan had stayed on the couch, bent over his legs with his elbows on his knees. I thought I maybe understood how he felt—seeing him now was . . . weird.
He’d changed, and I had too, and neither one of us knew how to reconcile what had happened with the people we’d been, both very much in Mother’s pocket but for very different reasons.
Leo was the first to interrupt dinner. “So, how screwed are we?”
Drew tilted his head curiously.
“I mean,” Leo went on, “we handled Grant, and we handled Ivan, so . . . how bad is this?”
Pair after pair of eyes turned on me, and there were only remnants of my stew against the side of the bowl where I’d scraped the last of it up with my bread, so I set my spoon down and shrugged.
“Mother’s determined to get a witchwolf one way or another, and this is the closest she’s gotten so far.
She won’t give up, but . . . if the coven were confident about attacking your pack, they would’ve done it earlier today when they had the element of surprise, when you weren’t organized.
Since Tristan and Kate didn’t come back, and .
. . after Ivan? Too many witches have died.
They’re hesitant. Tristan might have a better idea about how everyone feels.
No one would tell me if they were pissed at Mother. ”
From the couch, he sighed. “There’s . . .
unrest. Ermengarde has always promised power, but after you let Altair out—well, everything crumbled pretty fast. Maybe Daire doing something against her will was the first time anyone realized that was even an option.
But then people started dying, and . . .
nobody wants magic at the expense of their lives. ”
“That is why you never tried the bite?” Aleks asked, turning so he could look between me and Tristan.
Cash’s nose flared, and he stared hard at the wall over Viktor’s head.
I shrugged. “I don’t know the others’ particular reasoning, but yeah, I’d guess no one wanted to risk it.
Dakota Morris is one in seven billion. There hasn’t been anyone like him in .
. . ” I remembered the books Mother had pulled off the shelves, the old stories, and couldn’t properly put a date to the phenomenon.
“It’s been centuries since one was recorded.
Most people didn’t think there could even be a witchwolf until him. ”
“And your mother’s willing to sacrifice you to get one?” Aleks asked, point-blank.
Katya made a small sound of protest at the head of the table.
I swallowed hard, staring down at my empty bowl. I was still parsing that. It was hard to say it aloud.
Viktor had no such hesitation. He squeezed my leg under the table.
“She is,” he said. “She came at us both with a knife.”
“She thinks I betrayed her when—” My gaze slipped to Altair, and I smiled weakly.
His expression twisted. “Sorry.”
“I’m not,” I said immediately. “I mean, I’m sorry I didn’t do anything sooner, but . . . I guess I just . . . stopped being useful to her.”
“So we’re just going to let him stay?” Cash snapped, not looking at me or Aleks, but at Katya.
She started to nod, but it was Viktor who broke in.
“We are bound together by magic. Where he goes, I go.”
Cash’s nose flared when he sucked in a breath. His jaw flexed, and he returned his glare to the wall.
At the very least, he wouldn’t tell Viktor to leave, as intolerable as he found me.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked.
Viktor’s hand squeezed my leg harder.
Katya shook her head. “You should eat more.” She stood up to ladle another helping into my bowl.
I wasn’t hungry anymore—actually, I was kinda nauseous—but I dug in right away. Anything these people would give me? I meant to be grateful for every bit of it, because I didn’t deserve a mouthful.