Sucking in a deep breath, she pried her claws out of the door jamb and rested her forehead against the door, her eyes closing. “I’ve already started the process,” she told him, firm, but softer than before, a small concession to the aching beast who wanted to claw and to soothe. “Negotiations have begun. This is done, Viktor, and it has nothing to do with you.”
A thread of challenge entered his voice. “What if I wanted it to?”
Her heart lurched. “Then you should talk to Teddy,” she answered, summoning some of that protective anger to shield herself from poisonous hope. Taunting him was easier than being gentle. He hadn’t earned gentle. “He’s the one who gets final approval of the list of candidates. Maybe if you ask nicely, he’ll consider you.”
She snorted at the idea. Unions were for elves. A shifter would never in a million years consider an arrangement built around business, politics, and loveless procreation. They believed in matehood before all things. To them, a union would seem blasphemous. Unnatural.
“You think I won’t do it?” Viktor seemed somehow closer, as if his voice managed to reach through the barrier between them to wrap around her with a possessive caress. The desperation and the frustration vanished. It was replaced by the smooth timbre that made the skin on the back of her neck prickle. “You want me to do it your way, Cam? I will. Believe me, I will.”
She might have balked if she truly believed he’d do it. As it stood, she’d been seduced by him once before and knew how this would end. Viktor took her on as a challenge. His damn coyote inquisitiveness had drawn him to her when they were sixteen, and she had no doubt that it was what drew him to her now.
He saw her as a conquest, not a mate. In the same way that he liked picking locks, he enjoyed getting under her skin, breaking down her walls, only to disregard what it was that he discovered inside. It wasn’t the treasure the lock protected that he cared about. It was the challenge the lock represented.
She didn’t see it when she was sixteen, but Camille saw it clearly as a grown woman.
Her lip lifting in a silent snarl, she braced her hands on the door and taunted, “You do that, Alpha Hamilton. If you can even make it on the list, I’ll have to see how you stand up to the elvish men I have in mind. No promises, of course. I’m afraid I already have my favorite picked out.”
There was a beat of taut silence. “Who?”
She smiled. He didn’t sound so confident anymore. Good.
“That’s none of your business,” she replied, silky smooth. “But good luck with Teddy. Seeing as you’re so close, I’m sure he’ll love hearing from you.”
This time, he really did growl her name. “Camille—”
“You have ten seconds to step away from my door and crawl back into whatever tunnel you used to get in here,” she warned, tapping her claws against the smooth plastic of the control panel by the door. She knew he would be able to hear it.
When they upgraded the building, they didn’t bother putting in feed screens by the doors, but they did link every apartment to the security floor. One tap of her claw and she could have the squadron of Patrol soldiers stationed there on their way.
Viktor could probably put up a good fight, but it would look awful for the alpha of the Merced pack if he was caught brawling with Patrol. His pack depended on him having a level head and they both knew he couldn’t afford that kind of bad publicity.
His growl rattled the door, but she got the sense that he’d moved away. “You want to challenge me, sweetheart? Fine. You’re not the only one with claws. Remember that.”
“Then swipe at me, mutt,” she challenged, blood hot to the point of boiling. “See what happens.”
His voice, dark and full of promise, slid against her senses. “I intend to, sweetheart.”
And then, prowling on silent shifter feet, he was gone.
Chapter Nine
“That is not what I meant!”
“Well, what did you expect me to do? Nothing?” Viktor rubbed the back of his neck, hoping to ease the painful tension there.
Theodore stood by an elaborate drink cart in the corner of the Solbourne’s private sitting room. He was dressed in dark gray athletic gear, his hair was mussed, while his skin was flushed and sheened with sweat. Viktor caught him just as he was heading back from the training floor, where he kept sharp and socialized with those under his command. Viktor was more familiar with that floor of the Tower than almost any other.
It was where Valen took him that day he caught him breaking into the apartments. It was the place where he met the Solbourne boys for the first time. It was where he learned to defend himself and those who needed his protection. It was also where he’d gotten the shit kicked out of him by elves three times his size on a regular basis.
It was there that he learned what he needed to challenge his father when the time finally came, and what it meant to care for the people who trusted you.
“I expected you to talk her out of it entirely, idiot,” Theodore growled, one clawed hand wrapped around the neck of a crystal decanter. He poured a splash of whiskey into an elaborately cut glass and then set the decanter aside. Bringing the glass to his lips, he muttered, “You were supposed to coax her, Vik, not make her dig her claws in deeper.”
Viktor squeezed the muscles bracketing his spine hard enough to bruise. “I know. I just… I freaked out, Teddy.” He looked up through his blond fringe to glare at the man who was, even after twenty years of stony silence, a brother to him. They’d spilled blood together, fought side by side, became young men of worth as one seamless unit. That kind of bond never really died.
“What would you have done? If it was Margot who signed herself up to be sold to the highest bidder, how would you have handled it?”
Theodore lowered his glass just enough to flash his fangs. “I would have made the competition irrelevant, one way or another.”
“And what competition would that have been?” Margot’s voice, soft and full of fondness, drew his attention to the doorway that cut off their private penthouse from the rest of the family floor. Dressed in a soft blue skirt and white blouse covered with an unbuttoned Healer’s Coat in charcoal gray, she leaned against the door jamb and smiled at her husband with unvarnished pleasure.
She was, at least to Viktor’s eyes, a completely new person.
The healer he met almost a year prior had a desperate, wounded air to her that stirred every protective instinct. Her cheeks were thin, her smiles brittle. Even her scent had been… wrong. Washed away with astringent over the counter scent blockers, but still somehow carrying a note of sickness to it.
Healers were always soft, always in need of protection from the predators around them, but she was a special case. Not once did she ask for help, but he’d felt her desperation in his bones anyway. When she started healing members of his pack with extraordinary skill, asking for neither compensation nor explanation, it was only a matter of time until he began to think of her as one of theirs.
Her sharp wit and easy compassion didn’t hurt — and neither did her pretty face. At one point, Viktor was pretty sure half the eligible single people in his pack were infatuated with her, most especially his second.