37. Viktor
Viktor
The wretched scream that came from Daire’s throat in that moment echoed through the whole square, and everything around us seemed to go silent and still, even the rain.
Like the whole world took a breath, waiting to see what happened next.
Daire’s naked body whipped around and curled into me, burying his face in my shoulder, his whole frame shuddering with emotion.
I couldn’t have said what exactly the emotion was, but I recognized it.
I remembered the night I had killed our captors in the camp in Russia.
A few of them had been kind to me, sometimes.
I remembered laughing with one when we had succeeded in a mission and found a whole kitchen of food we could appropriate for the camp.
Another time, asking for a cigarette from a guard out of sheer curiosity, which he’d freely given and lit for me.
Sure, the thing had been disgusting, but there had been a sort of camaraderie there. Kinship.
And then I’d sneaked into his room and cut his throat in the night, because none of them would have allowed us to escape. If I’d left him alive, he would have either come after us, or his own people would have killed him for his failure.
This wasn’t even as simple as that.
Ermengarde hadn’t just been Daire’s captor. His sometimes-kind tormentor.
I doubted she’d ever been kind, but she’d literally been his mother.
It seemed appropriate to me that she’d been killed by the very tether she’d forced on Daire and me, but I would probably never say that to him. Certainly not now, while he was trying to deal with the immediate fallout.
I also wasn’t going to tell him about the tiny stab of jealousy in me because I’d wanted to be the one to end the toxic bitch.
That was the last thing he needed.
Instead, I wrapped my arms around him and held him tight.
The witch who’d caught Ermengarde’s body turned to stare at me with hatred radiating from her black eyes—or more likely at Daire.
Before she could so much as say a single accusing word, though, Evie came bounding out of the space between the houses in her wolf skin, teeth bared.
She growled at the witch, who clumsily tried to put the body of her leader between herself and wolf fangs.
Evie took a menacing step forward, and the witch started to babble. It wasn’t even a spell, just some kind of mantra, and I couldn’t tell if she was out of strength or just terrified entirely out of her wits.
She had just seen a wolf—Daire the wolf—tear out her leader’s throat.
She might even understand it had happened because of the tether they had put on us, and the way she’d thrown me away from him. I doubted any of them had the decency required to feel sorry they’d done a thing, but at least she could regret it.
Aleks strode out to the center of the old square, where the witch sat with Ermengarde’s body in her lap. Other witches were rushing out of the woods and darting over to join her, trying to put forth a strong front, but it wasn’t hard to see that they were terrified.
Especially with the way they all continued staring at Evie’s fangs more than Aleks.
I’d have thought they must not know Evie was a fourteen-year-old girl, but it didn’t matter to them if she was a literal cub. Any wolf bite was a wolf bite.
How we’d ever ended up subservient to a bunch of people whose health was more fragile than tissue paper, I could not understand.
Shockingly, Tristan also went to the center of the square, walking up to where the witches were congregating. He looked over at Aleks, who hadn’t spoken up yet. “May I, Alpha?”
Aleks looked over at him, slow, considering, and finally nodded, remaining silent.
Tristan’s face was almost serene when he turned back to the people he’d once called his own.
“The coven was told that they were no longer welcome on Wildwood land,” he told them all, his voice chiding rather than angry.
“Ignoring that is how I ended up a part of the pack, and Kate ended up dead. You’re trespassing and attacking people who have never done you harm.
It’s against everything the coven is supposed to stand for.
Everything witches are supposed to stand for. ”
The woman holding Ermengarde dropped the body on the ground with no ceremony whatsoever, and I was glad Daire was facing me rather than that.
She glared at Tristan as she shot to her feet, her eyes fiery and face contorted in rage.
“How dare you? These—you. You mutts murdered Kate. And Ermengarde. You’re monsters. We should—”
“You were warned,” Tristan corrected. “You were asked kindly to leave. When you—we at the time—attacked, the pack refused to be murdered. That is once again a fault on the part of the coven, by the rules of any governing body, be they wolves, witches, or mages. The coven is in the wrong. The pack was kind enough not to kill me, and took me in when I was turned.”
In truth, Aleks had offered to help Tristan find a place with another pack, but he’d “been busy.” Really, I suspected my honorable brother felt some responsibility for Tristan’s predicament and wasn’t ready to take his eyes off him, and at this point, I doubted he was going anywhere.
“We know you’re a traitor,” one of the other witches spat, glaring at him.
Tristan rolled his eyes, as unimpressed as any wolf had ever been with the coven. “I’m trying to give you a chance here. The coven was asked to leave. You continue to show aggression to the pack, with no provocation at all.”
“That one attacked us,” the woman who’d been holding Ermengarde insisted, throwing a hand out in my direction.
I half expected to be hit by a spell, and Evie growled at her, clearly having the same concern, but nothing came.
“Ermengarde attacked him first,” Tristan reiterated. “She stole his wolf, which again, any governing body would say was a fault on her part. He went to retrieve it, and was once again attacked. All this to say nothing of you turning on one of your own and trying to murder Daire.”
“He’s a traitor as well,” she spat. “A traitor who murdered his own mother. A mutt and a monster.”
Daire sucked in a breath next to my ear, his whole body going rigid. “Your wolf,” he whispered, barely more than a breath. “Oh no. She—she’s gone, and he’s still in me.”
I winced at the sheer horror in his voice, but also, maybe it wasn’t about being stuck with the wolf. He’d had the notion that he was at fault in this disaster to begin with, so maybe that was still it: misplaced guilt.
I just hugged him tight against me, finally swinging him up into my arms properly. For a moment, I hesitated. My arms ached with exhaustion.
Too much magic again.
But failure wasn’t an option, especially not when I was holding Daire in my arms. So I marched over to join Aleks and—so strangely—Tristan, standing against the witches.
“He defended his life and mine from those who would have murdered us. The fact that you wish the attempt had succeeded does not make him any less admirable in this disaster you and your leader created.”
I didn’t think for a moment Daire wouldn’t know who I meant when I said “your leader,” but I hoped at least not hearing her name would help.
She started to open her mouth again, and Tristan made a frustrated noise.
Poor guy. He was trying to make them see sense, likely because he still felt some attachment to some of them and didn’t want them all dead.
For the first time, I thought perhaps he was going to be a good pack mate and not just a responsibility the witches had saddled us with.
Aleks was done with them, though. “Enough,” he practically roared. “This is finished.” His accent bloomed in the way that said he was losing his temper. That, or just trying to sound scarier. Either way, it meant they were going away or they were going to get hurt.
The woman opened her mouth again, but Aleks slashed a hand through the air and snarled at her.
“I have finished being kind to you and yours as you attack us again and again. Any witch that is on Wildwood territory half hour from now, or ever again without invitation will be bitten on sight. Now leave.”
Signaling his agreement, Tristan took half a step behind Aleks, crossing his arms and looking on the people he’d once lived with in contempt.
The same look some of them turned on Daire.
“He murdered our leader,” one said, pointing at him. “You have to turn him over to us.”
Shocking everyone present who knew what was going on, the answering growl came from my throat.
The wind, too, started to whip up around us, seeming to respond to my anger.
Lightning struck less than a mile off, near enough to crack so loudly that it hurt my ears and whited out my vision for a moment.
Everyone else was blinking, but I met the eye of the one who’d been speaking.
“Leave Wildwood now,” I hissed at him. “Or I will kill you myself, half an hour be damned.”
Even my blunted human senses could smell the urine that hit the air a second later. Odd. I was used to people pissing themselves when I killed them, but not just at threats.
That seemed to be enough, though, because the witches huddled together and started out of the square and down the dirty road that led back to the highway.
Wolves followed on their heels.
I closed my eyes and focused on the storm. On calm. We didn’t need the torrential rain it was giving any longer. The fires were out, and the threat was leaving. We needed something gentler now.
As though directly linked to my mood—and maybe it was—the storm immediately responded to me. The rain slowed to a calm patter as most of the pack congregated around us, watching the witches disappear out of our sight, hopefully for the last time.
Me? I was busy trying to decide what to do with Ermengarde’s body. It was too wet to burn things right then. The woodchipper would make an unholy mess. I didn’t especially want to dig a hole for her—if nothing else, that seemed too respectful.
What didn’t escape my attention, though, was the fact that she was dead and I still had Daire’s magic. I should have been frantic and terrified, but I wasn’t at all.
As long as I had Daire’s magic, he wouldn’t leave us.