It took a second for it to click, but when it did, Viktor could only rub his palm across his face. “Gods, you’re challenging him for the pack, aren’t you? That’s what this is.”
“Yes.” She cut a look at her father. There was not even a hint of warmth in her gaze when she looked at Andreas, and it appeared he felt similarly. A snarl lifted his lip when they locked eyes. There was no love lost between father and cub. “That man is going to get my pack expelled or killed or worse. It’s time. It’s well past time.”
Viktor shook his head. “Lana, I’m not going to request your pack’s expulsion as recompense. You don’t have to do this.”
“I do. It’s about our honor, Alpha Hamilton. If it was your pack, your father, what would you have done? Would you let him send one of yours out on a fool's errand like he did to Damon? Would you let an alpha like that represent your pack?”
It was well known amongst shifters that Viktor had challenged his father when he was eighteen, the youngest age a person could claim the legal status of an alpha. He couldn’t very well deny that he did exactly what Lana was trying to do — killed his father before he could drive his pack into the ground.
“Shit.” Viktor scuffed the toe of his shoe against the platform. Glancing over his shoulder, he soothed himself with a brief look at his mate’s grim, expectant face before he asked, “Did you give him the choice?”
“To step down? Or his choice between fighting you or me?”
“Both.”
Lana gestured to Lee with one long-fingered hand. “Lee gave him the choice and he picked me. And yes, the pack’s seniors gave him the chance to step aside. He refused.”
Gods. Viktor struggled to imagine what kind of monster voluntarily chose to fight his own daughter. He didn’t care what kind of bad blood might exist between himself and his offspring — he would never willingly raise a hand or a claw against them. He’d die first.
“It’s up to you, Viktor.” Lee’s voice was a dark rumble. Nothing about the situation pleased him, and that came across loud and clear in the harsh lines of his normally reserved expression. “If you let Lana do this, it’s over.”
Unspoken was the knowledge that if she failed, he would have also forfeited the right to his justice. Their laws were the wild kind, but that didn’t make them any less firm than that of the EVP: Once a challenge was issued and accepted, it could not be done so again without severe censure to the challenger.
Shit.
“Let me talk to Lana alone for a second, Lee.” When he stepped away with a solemn nod, Viktor said, “Listen, Lana… I know that you feel like you have to do this to save your pack’s reputation, but you shouldn’t have to. If they’re already behind you, then you’ll become alpha anyway. Why risk it?”
Why do this to yourself?
“Because I have to.” Her expression grew stark. Tension stretched her skin taut over high, blade-like cheekbones and around her hooded eyes. In an inflectionless voice, she explained, “The bastard killed my brother.”
He stared at her blankly for a moment. Over their heads, a hawk let out a piercing cry that tore through the silence.
“I… what? I thought Juan died in a boat accident.”
“That’s what he had the pack say, yeah.” Fury made her hazel eyes look like two hard chips of green-gold stone. “Who could tell the difference between a cougar’s bite and a gator’s after a few days in a swamp, right?”
A deep chill spread through his veins. It was one thing for Andreas to be a lying, manipulative bastard. It was quite another to know he was a cub killer. “Why?”
Lana shrugged. She wasn’t particularly muscled, but every movement was catlike, almost silky in its gracefulness. “Because Juan disagreed with him? Because he didn’t like the shirt he wore that day? Because he argued against my exile? It doesn’t matter. He did it, and now I’m here to kill him for it.”
“Gods.” Viktor rubbed at the back of his neck. “I can’t fault you for wanting to. Fuck me, I want to kill him even more than I did ten minutes ago, which I really didn’t think was possible. But Lana, you have to know that this isn’t— it’s not just about me. It’s about my pack, and it’s about what this could do to you. If you lose, I legally can’t pursue the matter any further. If you win, it’ll change you. I promise you, it will.”
Lana clenched her jaw. Speaking slowly, she replied, “I know, and I understand that I’m not sure what I would choose in your place. But I have to do this. Let me.”
Viktor’s stomach turned. He glanced over his shoulder again and caught Camille’s eye. Her expression was stiff with worry, her complexion ashen. Her eyes were locked unerringly on his back. She stood tall next to Valen and Benny, but he could see past the cool elvish exterior to the broken heart underneath.
If something happened to him, she would not recover.
This is her worst nightmare, and Lana is giving me an out.
His pride demanded he not take it. Andreas had sent someone after him and his mate. Honor demanded that he be the one to take his head off of his shoulders, to feel the slide of viscera between his claws. Righteous bloodlust was a raw howl in his blood.
But he was not an angry boy any longer. He was a man, an alpha, a mate. Someday he dreamed of being a father, a grandfather, an elder. That man could not think with the mind of the animal.
It was a risk to let Lana take his place, knowing that she might lose, that he might have to watch Andreas murder his own daughter in the circle, but it was one he had to take.
For his future. For their future. For Lana herself.
Reaching out to clasp her shoulder, he rasped, “Okay, Lana. If you’re sure, then I concede my place to you.”
Relief was a flash across her features — there and gone in a moment. “Thank you, Viktor.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he warned. “You can do that after you come out of the circle alive.”
He turned to walk back to his mate and second, but a fleeting touch to his arm forced him back around. Lana’s expression was still hard, but her eyes had softened with concern when she asked, “What are your plans for Damon?”
Viktor’s lips thinned. “He shot at and mauled my mate, Lana.”
She didn’t flinch, but he caught the bob of her throat when she swallowed. “I know. I just— it’s important to me that you know he wasn’t always a bad man. Fear made him stupid, but he wasn’t the one who gave the order. My father is manipulative, cruel. You know what that kind of alpha can do to someone weak-willed, Viktor.”
“What do you want me to do with him?” Viktor gestured sharply toward Camille and Valen, whose stares he could feel burning a twin pair of holes in his back. “I can’t let that shit slide, Lana. And even if I could, my mate is the sovereign’s cousin. If I don’t take his head off, Teddy will. With relish, I might add.”
Neither man loved violence for its own sake. Fighting together in the ring, learning side by side what it meant to be a man and a leader, they both understood that it was a tool honed for protection and used only when absolutely necessary. The only true difference between them was that Theodore viewed threats to his loved ones as a golden opportunity for an example.