Viktor used the occasion to personally speak with every pack member, giving the adults and elders an update on the Alliance. He also checked in on all the teenagers, as well as the littlest ones, though they were not privy to the same information as their parents. The teens knew something was going on, but he didn’t want them to worry about being uprooted for nothing. If the negotiations fell through, it was better to let them live in ignorance.
But it wasn’t stress over the Alliance that made the muscles of his shoulders tense. It didn’t matter that he’d gone out of his way to appear relaxed, to give no hint about what he was struggling with.
Pack always knew.
They were connected not just by blood and memory, but by a thin, remarkably sturdy latticework of magic. It bound them together — cubs to parents, mates to one another, pack to alpha. It was a tapestry of bonds, each one as important as the other, their threads woven tight enough to make something unbreakable.
Usually he found an untold amount of strength in those bonds. At that moment, however, he could have used a little less closeness.
“I’m fine, Mia,” he replied, shooting her an easy smile as he stacked sealed food containers into a tower by the edge of the table. All the leftovers would go home with the elders, though they never went without ready made food to begin with. Pack looked out for everyone.
“Uh-huh.” Mia crossed her arms and looked at him with the knowing, motherly gleam in her eyes she’d perfected when she was barely sixteen. She was something of a mother to him when his own couldn’t be, though she was just a child herself. “Is that why half the pack is ready to run, fight, or fuck?”
Viktor rolled his shoulders, hoping it would loosen the painful knots that had taken root under each shoulder blade. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s summer. The pack always gets rowdier in the summer.”
Even he knew that was a weak excuse, true though it was. He and the rest of the dominant adults had been forced to break up no less than four scraps since the start of the picnic, and he didn’t want to consider exactly what was going on with the teens that snuck away half an hour prior.
Everyone was restless, hungry for something they couldn’t quite put their fingers on.
Of course Viktor knew what was going on. He was damn near coming out of his skin with the fever, fighting every single second against the compulsion to hunt down his mate and lick every inch of her until she clutched at him with those pretty claws.
Because he was the alpha, he sat in the center of the pack’s tapestry. Everything flowed through him — everything flowed out of him and into the rest of the pack. It was no wonder that every young, single packmate looked like they were dangerously on edge.
That’s how he felt.
“Vik, I know this isn’t just about the Alliance bullshit,” Mia pressed, sidling closer and lowering her voice. Her fingers skimmed his bare forearm. He felt her gaze searching his profile. “Are you courting someone?”
He clenched his jaw hard enough to make the hinges pop. Yes, he wanted to say. I’m courting an infuriating, gorgeous elf who hates me. Everything is great.
But he couldn’t say that. Admitting that he was courting someone would open up a whole line of questions he wasn’t yet ready to answer.
Except he couldn’t rightly say no, could he? Viktor was honest to his core. Lying to his pack was anathema to who he was as a man, as a leader.
He was also violently stubborn.
He would win Camille to his side. There was no other option for him now. While he’d spent the better part of his life keeping her a painful, beloved secret, the time was rapidly approaching when he would have to share her with the rest of the pack.
If he wanted Camille to be his, she would have to be theirs too.
But that didn’t mean now was the time to tell the whole pack who she was. Until he knew for sure that she wasn’t going to slip through his fingers again, he would keep her identity to himself.
He’d try, at least.
Viktor opened his mouth to answer her with a vague affirmative, knowing Mia would spread the word to the rest of the pack as soon as she possibly could, but was cut off by the sight of Benny jogging into the clearing. His expression was bewildered, but there was an underlying tension in his muscular frame that Viktor knew well.
Standing up straight, Viktor moved around Mia with a small touch to her spine. Benny quick-stepped around a couple of brawling cubs, their silver fur streaked with dust and bits of grass, to meet his alpha at the table.
Viktor’s eyes went coyote gold. “What’s wrong?”
Jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, Benny told him, “There’s someone at the border asking for you. They’re waiting at the end of the corridor.”
“Who?” Viktor felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. It wasn’t unusual for uninvited guests to show up at the corridor, the narrow strip of unfenced land that connected their territory to San Francisco’s premier university and the rest of the city, but his instincts told him this was more than just a friend popping by.
He could feel Mia’s eyes on him when his second answered, “You’ll never believe this, but it’s an elvish woman. Pretty purple, with the meanest scowl I’ve ever seen in my damn life.”
Well, fuck me. There goes that secret.
Not that he cared, really. The moment the words left Benny’s mouth, Viktor snapped into the hunt, his coyote prowling just under his skin. He heard Mia make an astonished gasp, but he was already moving, his long legs taking him out of the clearing without conscious thought.
Wearing only an old t-shirt, faded jeans, and sneakers, his speed wasn’t restricted by a suit or stiff dress shoes. When he ran to meet his mate at the border of their territory, he really ran.
Only a handful of minutes later, he burst through the trees that closed in around the Merced pack’s end of the corridor. A wide expanse of well tended park rolled out from the border to the street. On the other side sat the sprawling campus of San Francisco Protectorate University.
Technically the public had access to the park, but no one really used it. Neutral or not, the land belonged to the coyotes, and no one wanted to risk life and limb by overstepping their bounds so close to where the pack raised their cubs.
Viktor caught sight of the sleek silver vehicle immediately. Sunlight bounced off of it in a blinding display, spilling light across the woman who stood stiffly beside the rear wheel.
His heart jackhammered in his chest. It’d been months since he saw her last, since he tasted her skin and held all that fierce warmth in his arms. Seeing her there, in the flesh, staggered him. Gods, he was so damn hungry for her it hurt.
Her short black hair was tousled by the breeze that blew toward him, blowing the sweet, wild scent of her straight into his lungs. Camille was dressed in an elegant cotton dress with a high, buttoned collar, her long lavender legs exposed, and her dainty feet encased in strappy stilettos. The ever-present Solbourne pin, cast in gold and pinned above her heart, winked in the sun.
Fuck, he thought, going instantly, painfully hard at the sight of her in those dainty, sharp-looking heels. He wanted to know what it was like to feel them bite into his back.
Without realizing it, Viktor slowed to a stalking gait, his shoulders slightly rounded as he moved in the shadows between the trees. He would have to leave them sooner or later, since there was no cover close to the street, but until he got there, he wanted to bask in the sight of her.