His plan, so far as he could recall, was to use his claws on everything they owned. He wanted to smash every mirror and rend every curtain. He wanted to tear down the massive oil paintings and shatter every vase. He wanted to act on the vitriol his father had filled his head with. He wanted to let the coyote out and howl in what should have been their territory if only to feel like he was doing something.
What he got was caught.
It was bad luck and pure foolishness that landed him squarely in Valen Yadav’s sights at the end of the hall, his hand on the doorknob he now knew he never could have opened without his biometric scan anyway.
Viktor remembered that moment with the perfect clarity of an animal’s perception: Valen, huge and intimidating, looked nothing like the men he was used to. Dressed head to toe in black, his neck covered by the signature elvish collar and his claws capped in gleaming silver, he looked like a specter out of Viktor’s childhood nightmares. His jewel-toned skin shone in the light from a small window.
So did the flash of his fangs when he opened his mouth to ask what exactly a coyote cub was doing in a high security penthouse.
Of course Viktor made a break for it, but there was no chance of success. Valen was an elf in his prime — and General of Patrol to boot. He was a living weapon honed in fire. Viktor, by comparison, didn’t even have all his adult teeth in yet.
When Valen grasped him by the scruff of his neck and hauled him into one of the apartments, Viktor was certain that the elf would rip his throat out.
That’s what elves did, right? They killed — violently, without hesitation or remorse. That’s what his father told him. One of the many lies he spewed when he wanted to blame his failures on their elvish overlords.
The predator in Viktor respected the ruthlessness, but the boy was just terrified. Not enough to stop fighting for even a second, though. Even at home, where he knew he could never hope to win, he kept fighting. He would always fight.
Even when he cried, he fought.
In hindsight, that was probably why Valen took such a shine to him, and why he didn’t just dump him on his ass in front of his father, demanding he mete out bloody retribution for the trespass. Valen saw something familiar in the stupid, angry kid, and, astonishingly, took mercy on him.
He couldn’t have predicted that he would go on to spend some of his hardest and happiest moments in those fancy apartments, nor that he would, twenty-six years later, find himself breaking into them once more.
Viktor didn’t care that the old service shaft was a tight fit for his adult body. He didn’t care that he had to disable the alarms and, the first time he tried it, use a small laser torch to cut through a new steel access panel. There were no barriers tough enough to keep him from Camille.
The only person who could really accomplish that was the elf herself.
Racing up the emergency stairs two steps at a time and deftly avoiding the security sensors he knew only scanned in regular, exploitable intervals, Viktor felt his senses sharpening, his claws prickling at the tips of his fingers as his animal fought to burst free. It was damn sick of waiting for him to act, and it blamed him for what might be the permanent loss of their mate.
By the time he slid out of the fire door — alarm disabled, of course — his heart was racing and his eyes were no longer blue, but a wild coyote gold. He sank into a very canine half-crouch. The need to hunt, to track, was a wild call in his blood.
Immediately, he picked up the scent of her in the air. It was faint, but he would be able to follow that scent through driving snow or sleet, in his sleep or drugged, through complete darkness or across a scorched desert.
Wildflowers and amber. Rich like honey, but with a floral edge that reminded him of a childhood spent tumbling in the grass.
It lived in his pores as surely as Camille lived in his soul.
Biting back a snarl, Viktor was down the hallway and in front of her door in a flash. This time, he had no gifts to leave her, no way to show her that he cared, that he would always care, even when she didn’t want him to. He had only himself and his need for her.
That need demanded he kick down the door to her apartment and force her to look at him, to see reason before she committed herself to someone who didn’t love her, but the part of him that was still a man knew that was a bad idea.
For one thing, she wouldn’t take that sort of invasion of her space well at all. For another, he knew for a fact that the doors were reinforced with sigil-lined steel. The Solbournes might have kept the antique look of the building, but that didn’t mean they neglected security.
Mostly, he thought, a tiny bubble of amusement making its way through his panic as he recalled the service shaft. He’d have to tell them about the security breach at some point. Just not yet.
Viktor braced his palms on either side of the door and tried to get his ragged breathing under control. He squeezed his eyes shut.
I shouldn’t have come here like this.
He knew it in the car, but now that he was actually standing there, grappling with the compulsion to howl until his mate was forced out of her den, he felt like he was being torn to shreds. It was stupid to think he could do this rationally when he rode a wave of pure possessive fury.
He should have waited. He should have let himself cool down. He shouldn’t have allowed the thought of her with someone else to drive him half insane. She deserved better than that.
Camille had every right to live her life without him. He forfeited any claim on her the day he rejected her. Viktor knew that.
He just couldn’t stomach it anymore.
Claws, coyote sharp, dug into the wallpaper on either side of the door jamb. Every sense was strung tight as a bowstring as he wrestled with himself. He could smell her, clear as day, but he could also make out every chemical cleaner the staff used, the smell of someone’s perfume, even the faint hint of earl grey tea. He could hear people moving around the floors below them, and if he strained, he thought he could make out the slightest sound of a woman’s voice in a room far beyond the door.
His spine went rigid as he strained to listen to the faint, husky notes. The animal in him knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the voice belonged to his mate.
In that instant, any chance that he might have gathered his senses and left without making a scene, fled.
His mate was in there. She needed him. He needed her. The time for going back had passed.
Viktor curled the fingers of his right hand into a fist and knocked on the door.
Camille was in the middle of a video call when a knock echoed through her cavernous apartment. A chime sounded from the speakers discretely embedded in the ceiling, unnecessarily alerting her to the presence of someone at her door.
She was too well trained to express her unease, but she felt her perfectly poised spine tense. He’s here.
“…and a furnished home in Henderson, on the edge of the Sloan Nature Preserve. You would retain it as a private residence, but would of course be expected to appear regularly with Epifanio at The Luz for social functions.”
Cammie swallowed, her focus torn between the keen, catlike features of Elio Luz and the furious presence she could feel buzzing just outside her door. She didn’t possess any powerful psychic abilities like her cousins, but she knew who stood out in the hallway. Her intuition was damn close to Foresight and had yet to steer her wrong.
Energy, violent and searching, buzzed against her skin.