But the woman who screamed for coddling, for a soft den and a gentle hand, was not the woman who stood before him now.
She was comfortable, entirely at ease, and she wasn’t just a witch. She was a proud halfling — witch and elvish. Her ears, revealed by her slowly unraveling updo, were very gently pointed. Now that she’d stopped using a dizzying amount of Noscent, she smelled crisp and clean and wild.
Elvish, but with a twining scent of ozone and magic that was distinctly witchy.
I knew there was something familiar, something that reminded me of Cam, about her, he thought, a tiny fraction of his tension easing at the sight of her. It was something about the air healers carried. Some tangible compassion that lingered just out of sight, easing stress and pain without even a touch. Healers just had that effect on people, though he wasn’t sure they always realized it.
“All the suitors looking to steal you from me,” Theodore answered. He set down his glass and walked across the room to cup his wife’s cheeks, which were creased with a bemused smile. His blue hands dwarfed her delicate bone structure. “I would never let any of them near you, my brilliant, beautiful wife.”
Margot’s pert nose wrinkled. “I never even had suitors.”
“Not true, sunshine,” Viktor argued. He grinned, knowing he was probably about to start some trouble for his gruff second in command. “Benny was pretty damn hung up on you, remember? Still is. Can’t say I blame him, of course.”
Theodore’s head snapped around to pin him with a hard look. “Your second?”
And because he was a coyote who loved to play, he answered, “You know Benny. Big guy. Dark skin, good smile, looks like he could crush steel girders between his thighs?”
“Viktor, are you trying to get Benny killed?” Margot smoothed her hands down Theodore’s chest, petting him, soothing him. Magic hummed between them. It was almost tangible enough to make the air shimmer, though he didn’t know if that was a symptom of the witchbond he knew they shared or something deeper.
“He only came by when you all had teenagers that needed healing. Benny was sweet, but he barely spoke.” She patted her husband’s chest. “Besides, I knew right away that he wasn’t who I was looking for. I knew I wanted Theodore from the moment I saw him, though I couldn’t exactly admit it.”
Viktor could make out the sound of Theodore snapping his teeth together from across the room. “See? It only took me a week to bind and marry my consort.” Theodore slid his hand around the back of Margot’s neck and pulled her close. She sighed and wrapped her arms around his waist, her eyes dropping to a relaxed half-mast as he stroked her nape. If she cared that he was fresh from a workout, she didn’t show it. “It wouldn’t have been an issue even if Margot was spoken for already. We were a done thing from the start.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t have a history like Cam and I do,” he argued, suddenly annoyed by all the open affection oozing through the air. He didn’t usually feel bitter, seeing as he lived in a very openly affectionate pack, but something about the relationship between Theodore and Margot made him sick with envy.
“No,” Theodore dryly replied, “we just had a nascent psychic bond, a looming death sentence, and a life changing secret keeping us apart.”
Margot poked his side. “Don’t forget the bomb.”
“And a bomb.”
They did not, Viktor noticed, mention the fact that the bombing in question was orchestrated by Theodore’s own sister, the terrifying Delilah. Last Viktor heard, Theodore had quietly banished her from their inner circle and confined Delilah to her post in the UTA Congress in the New Zone until tempers died down.
“Fine, but it’s not the same.” Viktor stood up from the couch to pace, his hands on his hips. His animal clawed at his insides, snarling to be let out, to hunt down their mate, but he restrained it with a ruthless mental grip. He couldn’t mess up again. If Camille wanted him to chase her, to challenge her in her own territory, then by the gods he’d fucking do it.
“Are we talking about Cammie’s betrothal or whatever it’s called?”
Theodore answered her with words when all Viktor could do was snarl. “Yes. Vik wasn’t able to talk her out of it or find out what prompted this.”
“Don’t give me that shit. She wouldn’t even let me through the door!”
Theodore sent him an arch look. “Wouldn’t have stopped me.”
“Oh, shush.” Margot rolled her eyes. “You’re the man who sat out in the hallway like a pitiful little puppy until I let you in. You have no room to tease him.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Only because I’m a pushover.” Margot ignored Theodore’s emphatic denial in favor of peering at Viktor, her expression thoughtful.
He expected her to ask why Camille hated him so much, but she simply asked, “What are you going to do?”
Viktor pinned Theodore with a hard look. Jabbing a finger in his direction, he announced, “I’m going to get on that fucking list.”
“That’s not how that works.” Theodore shook his head. Sliding his hand down Margot’s back, he gently guided her to sit on the couch in front of Viktor. When she was settled, he sprawled out beside her, his arm slung over her shoulders. Neither seemed to care that he was sweaty, nor that Margot had clearly just come in from a day of working in the Healer’s Ward of Solbourne General, San Francisco’s premier medical institution.
They were perfectly domestic. It made him want to gnash his teeth.
“Vik, this isn’t something you would understand. She’s making business deals, and it’s not a process open to Others.”
Gods, the idea of Camille turning her life into nothing more than a business arrangement, of her having cubs with someone because it was stipulated in the cold lines of a contract, made him feel ill.
Theodore was right. He didn’t understand it, but if he had to play this sick game to get his mate back, he would do it.
He wasn’t even sure how it would work if he succeeded. The Alliance was his pack’s chance at a new, brighter future. They could expand, stretch their power, secure a place for their descendants that would forever remain under their own authority.
All of that was already jeopardized by his public connection to the Solbournes. If he took Camille as his mate, that connection would be utterly irrevocable.
The smart thing would have been to wait until after he secured their place in the Alliance. Once his pack was settled into their new territory, expelling them would be much, much harder than simply denying them entry. But he couldn’t wait. Camille forced his hand, and finding a way to have her and provide for his pack wouldn’t be simple or easy.
Doesn’t matter.
The part of him that was more coyote than man knew with the certainty of instinct that he was doing what was right. He would just have to figure out how to make it work. There was no other choice.
“Make it open,” he insisted, a deep growl rumbling through every syllable.
Theodore rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye and sighed. “Vik, I can put you on the list. I can even insist that she consider you and follow the proper courtship protocol to secure my blessing, but I can’t actually make her give you the time of day.”