24. Daire
Daire
We had time. Mother would need it to keep the coven in hand. Hell, I doubted Destiny was in any great rush to get back to the coven house and explain how we’d gotten past them.
Because Leo and Altair were staying with Katya, and Drew needed a place to sleep, I’d be sleeping in Viktor’s room. It worked, given that we could hardly take half a dozen steps away from each other without pulling on the tether between us.
I had an animal sense that if it snapped, it would destroy me. I didn’t want to test how far we could go or try and stretch it farther.
But as I trudged up the stairs with Viktor behind me, I couldn’t help wondering what might happen if Mother did get her hands on me again.
What she wanted, more than my magic in Viktor, was Viktor’s wolf in me. If I could turn myself over, maybe that’d be enough for her. And Viktor was convinced that his wolf would never tolerate my mother. She’d finish the spell, his wolf would tear her apart, and then—
Well, it took a special kind of magic for a witch’s spell to outlast them. It wasn’t entirely unheard of, but when a witch wove magic, it was tied to them.
Maybe if Mother died, Viktor could get his wolf back.
Or he’d be lost forever, but at least the pack would be free of us.
Maybe that was a trade Viktor was willing to make.
But I wouldn’t know how to start, and there were too many variables. More than that, I already knew what Viktor would say. His voice was basically already in my head.
It’s not worth the risk.
He wouldn’t abandon me to my own people’s mercy. How strange it was, to feel that kind of protection and support from someone who should hate me.
I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve it. Actually, I didn’t think I’d done anything. Maybe all it had taken was not being an ass.
Upstairs, away from the fire in the kitchen, it was pretty cold, but there was an enormous, thick, crocheted blanket on top of the bed that was calling my name. Only, it was Viktor’s bed, and I wasn’t going to presume to take it from him.
When he came in and shut the door behind him, I turned his way with a smile. “I don’t mind taking the floor if there’s an extra pillow and blanket.”
He blinked, scowling at me like I’d lost my mind. “The bed is large enough for us both.”
It was. It was the same size as my bed back in the coven house, which had always felt a bit like it had swallowed me and Mariah whole.
“You don’t . . . mind?”
For a moment, Viktor just stared at me. Then, I swear I saw the corners of his mouth tugging upward. It wasn’t a full smile, but it made my heart jump in my chest and warmth rush toward my cheeks.
“I do not mind,” Viktor said softly.
He stripped off his pants and left his boots by the dresser. I didn’t much want to sleep in jeans either, so I pulled mine off and draped them over the footboard of his bed. I left the sweater on though. It was cozy and warm, and it was plenty cold enough to justify wearing it.
I walked to the far side of the bed and slipped beneath the covers. I’d never slept with anyone before. I’d always had my own room at the coven house, and I’d never gone to sleepovers growing up. I’d been mostly homeschooled. By witches. Where would I have gone?
But there under the covers with Viktor, staring up at the ceiling, it wasn’t so bad. I was glad I wasn’t alone, and his body radiated warmth that kept the chill out. I didn’t mind that one bit.
“Viktor?”
He hummed. When I looked over, he was still staring up at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry we dragged you into this. That I have your wolf, and that—that you didn’t have any explanation for what was going on. That must’ve been terrifying.”
His soft smile returned. Beneath the covers, he stretched out his hand and placed it on top of mine, which I turned over to squeeze him back.
“I wasn’t scared,” he said evenly.
Maybe he wasn’t. It sounded like he’d been through enough that he could handle pretty much anything.
But I wasn’t sure it was that simple. Really, I thought Viktor didn’t know how to be scared anymore. It was a luxury he hadn’t been given, so he kept himself together and took care of his own problems. If he was terrified, it didn’t matter. He’d push through it.
It wasn’t the same thing as not being afraid, though.
“Okay,” I whispered back.
“You had no explanation either,” he reminded me.
I snorted. “Sure, and I also spent the last couple of months coming out of my skin, thinking I was going absolutely batshit. But I was scared, too.”
His thumb swiped across the back of my hand, and my stomach clenched. Even that small comfort was so nice and, frankly, too generous for what we’d put him through.
“You don’t need to be scared anymore,” Viktor said, his voice a quiet rumble in the dark. “They will not get you. I won’t let them.”
I let out a long breath. If he was right, I suspected that I’d never see my mother again. Guilt twisted through me when I realized that was a relief.
I . . . loved her. Didn’t I?
If I did, I should’ve been pissed that she’d been willing to hurt me, that she’d sacrifice my life for her own power. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t even surprised. Just kind of . . . numb.
“Thank you,” I whispered back to Viktor. It might’ve done me some good to talk about it, but I didn’t know that Viktor had any more insight about my feelings than I did, and we were both exhausted.
I was sure I fell asleep with his hand in mine, but in the morning, I woke on my side. He was curled around my back, his arm draped around my waist, my fingers still tangled up in his though—yeah, it wasn’t the same hand as before.
And there, where his legs curled around my ass, I felt his morning wood pressing into my flesh.
My eyes flashed open, my breath caught. And—and sure. I was hard too, but that was just . . . it was why they called it morning wood. It was every morning, pretty much, and it didn’t have anything to do with who you were with or why or—
Was Viktor awake? Did he know?
He must’ve felt me move or noticed my breathing change, because he sighed against the back of my neck. It tickled.
“Good morning,” he mumbled.
“Morning,” I rasped back.
Did it mean something? No. It couldn’t. It didn’t mean anything. We were just in the same bed, and in bodies that were . . . vaguely human. And did vaguely human things, like getting inadvertently hard.
And I was not going to make more of this than it was just because I was needy and pitiful. I wasn’t.