Settling her hands in her lap, she lifted her chin and said, with great dignity, “And that is why I am telling you to back off from this ridiculous suit of yours. Whatever care you have for me, whatever responsibility you feel like you have for my wellbeing — disregard it. Nothing is more dangerous to me than you are. So unless you plan on taking me as your mate in front of the gods and all the world, then leave. Me. Alone.”
Viktor realized two things simultaneously: first, that his mate thought, with every ounce of conviction she possessed, that he wished to hurt her.
Second, that he did hurt her.
Agony rippled through him. It permeated every corner of his mind, tainted every sweet memory he held close to his heart. It stripped him of his certainty in his actions with acidic ferocity, peeling away two decades of denial to reveal the horrifying truth.
Camille needed him, even when she had been set on saving him from his own father. On a chemical level, she needed him.
And instead of asking her why she chose that moment to ask him to run away with her, instead of fighting against the wall her family had put between them after his rejection, he sat in his absolute certainty that, whatever else happened, it was the right choice for her.
Gods, I’m going to be sick.
Viktor leaned his elbows on his knees and covered his face with clammy hands. Inside him, his coyote paced, whimpering and sick with grief, in the darkness of his mind.
“Did it hurt you?” The question burst out of him like a spray of poison, toxifying the air he drew into his lungs.
There was a beat of silence, then, quietly, “Yes. The first time. And the second.”
Everything went quiet inside of him for the span of several heartbeats before, with a tearing, furious cry, Viktor’s hands shifted to claws and swiped at the coffee table. It skidded across the floor, its surface gouged with ten jagged lines, as he fought to keep the horror, the rage, directed at himself.
A small part of him was furious with her for withholding the information from him when he could have done something, but he knew that wasn’t fair. In her place, he would have done the same.
Fuck me, I did do the same, didn’t I?
He hadn’t exactly told her about the fever, about the choice his coyote made that day in the garden. A part of him had always just assumed she knew — how shifters mated was common knowledge, after all — but he never actually said it. Was that why she hadn’t been open with him? Did she think that he had just been playing with her, coaxing her for a lark, all the way back then?
“Vikt—”
“Give me a minute,” he grated, head hung low and claws fisted on his knees. The muscles of his back and shoulders trembled as he fought the urge to shift, to get out and hunt her down so he could—
What? Apologize? Expose her to my pheromones? Force her to bond with me so she can’t choose anyone else?
A different kind of horror snapped across the surface of his mind. It was cold and hard; a blade that slid neatly through the blinding fury that threatened to consume him.
She didn’t trust him because he’d been actively, if unknowingly, attempting to steal her choice without so much as telling her that she had always been his choice. In a moment of perfect, brutal clarity, he realized that she must have seen nothing but history repeating itself.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
Raising his head, Viktor stared at the stark, pale face of his mate and announced, “Cam, you’re my mate. Always have been. Always will be.”
He watched, heart twisting with fresh pain, as her eyes widened. “I… what?”
“I’m yours, sweetheart,” he rasped. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I thought— I thought you knew, and when you cut me off, I just assumed you…”
Camille made a sound that struck him like a blow: half gasp, half growl. Gone was the fierce, hissing elf. In her place was a woman who looked like she was ready to run as far and as fast as her feet could take her. “No, Viktor, you don’t get to do this to me. You don’t. I won’t let you play your games with me anymore. I’m going to contract a union and I’m going to be free of the pull. You don’t get to just— just do this now!”
In that moment, he felt the gulf of time between them yawning open, dark and cold. His mind raced. How could he get her to see him now, not the boy she knew?
Gods, I’m an idiot.
She didn’t know him. He didn’t know her. Twenty years had gone by as he kept the idea of her, the memory of their brief time together, locked safely in his heart. That girl was gone — replaced by a woman honed to a razor’s edge, determined to keep her pride and live her life as she chose.
It was with agony and wonder that he realized he did not know this Camille’s dreams, her habits, her dislikes. He didn’t know what she wanted or who she dreamed of being. The things that drew him to her in the first place remained, but there was so much more to her than the feisty little elf he’d toppled head over heels for.
Viktor stared at Camille with wide eyes, comprehending, for the first time, that she was not the girl he’d loved, but something more, something precious and irreplaceable.
Pride in her swelled into a tidal wave inside of him, washing some small measure of his grief away. Urgency coalesced into ruthless decisiveness. Think, Vik. Think. If this was a woman you’d just met, how would you fix this?
“I’ve fucked this up,” he said, blinking hard. The image on the feed screen blurred, for just a moment, as he tried to get a hold of the coyote yowling with pain in his mind. “I’m sorry, Cam.”
Camille didn’t reply. Her expression loosened with surprise. “I… well, yes, you have.” He watched the little pearl buttons holding her collar together wink in the light when she swallowed. “Will you withdraw your name from the list now?”
Viktor smoothed his palms over his thighs, wiping away the clammy sweat. “No.”
It was her turn to blink. “For godssakes, Viktor, why?”
“I said I was sorry, not that I was giving up.” Consciously unbunching the tense muscles of his shoulders, he did his best to seem nonthreatening, to reel in the hunting instinct. Gentling his voice, he asked, “Cam, if I said that I wanted you to be mine, that I wanted to court you and know you for real, what would you say? No pretenses, no games. Just you and me.”
She was very still. For a moment, he worried that the feed link had glitched, freezing her image on the screen.
And then her expression, shell-shocked and unreadable, cracked.
Even though her voice wobbled, there was an unmistakable fierceness in it when she whispered, “Don’t be cruel, Vik. I can’t take it.”
Fuck. The itch to run to her, to wipe away the tears he saw glittering in those arresting violet eyes, was a real, physical ache in his chest. “I swear I’m not,” he assured her, rough and painfully sincere. “I mean it, Cam. Let me prove it to you.”
“How?”
The idea came to him in an instant, half-baked but good enough. “Meet me at our beach tomorrow night — midnight. Let's just talk, get to know each other like we used to. If you still don’t want me to… if you want me to take myself off of the list after tomorrow night, I will. I swear.”
For her, he’d do anything — even break his own heart all over again.