It didn’t matter how old a packmate was, nor how strong they were — they needed the physical reassurance of their alpha’s touch.
“It was just a shot to the shoulder,” he gruffly replied. “Nothing to cry over.”
Benny took a step back and shook his head. His expression was stark. “No, Vik, it wasn’t. What do you remember about last night?”
“I coaxed Cam to meet me at the beach. We were there for a few hours before someone started shooting from the cliff. I got hit and Cam nearly took a shot before I pulled her behind that boulder.” He shook his head, trying to dispel the goosebumps that broke out across his skin at the memory of how close his mate came to death. “Then she went after him. Things get kind of fuzzy after that, but I remember Teddy and Margot showing up, and then Cam being there. Past that it’s all blank.”
In the shadows of his mind, there was a vague sense of movement, of warm, foreign magic mending shattered bone and singed muscle, but when he dug for more, Viktor came up empty.
Benny’s lips thinned. “Vik, you almost died last night.”
That drew him up short. He made a face of disbelief. “What? No, I didn’t. The shot hit my shoulder.”
“It was a long range bolt gun set to maximum,” Benny bit out. “It didn’t just hit your shoulder. It shattered two of your ribs, took a chunk out of your lung, and sent you into shock. Healer Goode was working on you almost the entire night. She barely had enough left in her to heal your mate’s pulverized hand and stop her bleeding before the sovereign forced her to stop.”
“What happened to Cam’s hand?”
“Did you not hear what I said?” Benny ran a shaking hand through his hair, messing it up even more. “You almost died, Vik. Right there on the beach.”
Viktor wasn’t entirely certain what he was supposed to make of that. How exactly did one process a brush with Grim? All he could manage was a slow blink.
He’d never been one to obsess about the what-ifs, nor the fact that he would die one day. One did not challenge their father to a death match at eighteen and not understand one’s own mortality.
Death was a fact of life. The animal knew it as well as the man.
What he did grasp, perhaps for the first time, was that his death would not simply belong to him.
Staring at Benny’s stark face, the memory of Camille running away from him fresh in his mind, Viktor was rocked by the knowledge that his death would have devastated his entire pack.
It was one thing to know that and quite another to see it written plainly on his second’s face, to feel the worry and the jagged fear in the bond he shared with every member of his pack. He hadn’t thought twice about going out alone, without notice, but he now recognized that he’d put himself — and his pack’s stability — at risk without a single fleeting worry.
This is why Teddy travels with the Guard, he thought, staggered by his own ignorance. Not because he can’t defend himself, but because there’s no sense in putting his people at risk if he fails.
“I’m sorry,” he found himself saying, voice hoarse.
“Shit, man, just…” Benny scrubbed at his face for a moment before he cracked a small, tired smile. “Just don’t scare us like that again, okay? I don’t fuckin’ wanna be alpha, got me?”
Viktor swallowed. He’d taken his father’s place as alpha at eighteen and had to learn a lot of hard lessons along the way, but none of them felt quite so hard to stomach as this one. “Yeah, I got you.”
Sniffing hard, Benny nodded toward Viktor’s bedroom and changed the subject. “How’s your mate?”
Viktor glanced over his shoulder and was pierced by an acute longing. He wanted nothing more than to slip back into his bedroom and hold her. It was a cruel twist of fate to finally have his mate in his bed, only to not be able to actually be with her. “Sleeping. Her side doesn’t look great.”
“Margot said it isn’t as bad as it looks.” Benny made a face that said everything about how serious he thought Camille’s wound was. “She took a nasty swipe, but apparently he missed anything vital. Her hand was the worst. Margot used up the last of her energy piecing the bone back together and didn’t have anything left for her side.”
Viktor paced away from the couch and into the kitchen. He moved restlessly, bare feet whispering over the cool tile, and grappled with the animal that howled in rage at the thought of his mate being harmed. In a voice distorted by a low, coyote growl, he asked, “What happened to her hand, Benny?”
“Looked to us like the motherfucker bit her.”
He stopped by the kitchen island, grasped the edge of the countertop, and bowed his head. “Fuck.”
His mate shouldn’t have been put in the position of defending him. The only bite she should have been concerned with was his — the one that would be gentle even in its ferocity; the one that would tie them together until Grim called them to the Underworld.
Struggling to hold the horror and the fury in, he grated, “Who was he?”
The click of the knob and the soft whush of the door opening came seconds before Camille’s sleep-roughened voice answered, “Cougar shifter. That’s what he smelled like, anyway.”
Viktor’s head snapped up. His muscles coiled, ready to spring. The cold knowledge that Andreas almost certainly had a hand in the mess of the previous night took a backseat to the awareness of his mate.
She stood in the doorway of his bedroom, dressed in her ruined clothing from the night before. Her tight black pants were streaked and her navy turtleneck was torn on her right side, revealing hints of the bandage. Her short black hair was mussed and her face looked drawn, but she stood with her shoulders back and her spine straight, as if she was about to walk into a ballroom, not the living room he’d designed with her in mind.
“Cam, you shouldn’t be up,” he exclaimed, pushing away from the island. He was in front of her a second later, one hand pressed against the small of her back to gently urge her into the bedroom. Unconsciously, he eased himself between her and Benny, blocking her from sight.
“I’m fine,” she murmured. Violet eyes stared up at him like she was seeing him for the first time. They were so damn soft, he almost couldn’t stand to meet them.
Palming his cheek, she leaned in to press her lips to his in a trembling kiss. “I thought I lost you last night,” she whispered into his mouth.
Viktor cupped her neck with both hands. “Never. Never, Cam.”
Her shaky exhale burst across his lips. “Damn right, never. You’re not allowed to leave me just when I decide to keep you.”
“Yeah? Sounds like a good deal to me.” He smiled against her mouth. Not caring even a little bit that Benny was standing only a few feet away, he tilted her head back with his thumbs and deepened the kiss. It was the drugging kind of kiss that held no urgency, no pressure. It was a kiss shared, each person giving as much as they received.
Fuck, he thought, forcing himself to pull back. I could kiss her like this for hours.
Husky, he murmured, “Sweetheart, go lay back down.”
“No,” she replied, pressing her palms against his bare chest. Her fingers skated over the fresh skin there. “No, I need to talk to you about last night.”