Page 22 of Oakheart

I also didn’t know if I’d just given myself fully away.

I didn’t find out the next day, because Aleks wasn’t with Leo at the job site. Instead, Leo had brought his brother.

He was grinning, which was a stark contrast to the blank mask Viktor wore.

“Hey, Cash, this is Viktor. Grant needed Aleks today, and we thought it’d be a good idea for Viktor to get used to the pack, ah, slowly. Gradually? Yes. So since we are over here where Grant is not, it is a good place for Viktor.”

For the first time, I stepped up to Aleks’s other brother and stuck out my hand. It took every ounce of courage I had to hold his eye, but I did. “It’s nice to meet you, Viktor. I appreciate the help.”

Even if his frame was more compact than Aleks’s, he looked plenty strong for the kind of work we had to do. If I could manage, he definitely could.

Viktor stared at me for a moment, so long that I doubted he was going to shake my hand.

But then he reached out. He didn’t shake, just squeezed, and he held my eye with an intensity that didn’t seem unkind, but was staggering nonetheless.

“Great!” Leo announced. “This will be good. Viktor will be a great help, and Cash, you tell us what to do, yes? Just like before.”

Exactly like before, except that Aleks wasn’t there, and something about the idea of him at Grant’s side twisted my guts into knots.

CHAPTER 12

Aleks

The witches were watching me.Like some kind of awful, awkward tongue twister, the words ran around in my head.

Which witch would it be today?

They seemed to have no boundaries at all, and Grant made no attempt to rein them in. He seemed amused when they wandered past me, running their smooth, cold hands over my skin with each pass. This one got up to refill her drink and let her fingers trail through my hair. That one went to the bathroom, and when she returned, she ran a damp finger over my shoulder. The one man among them seemed conflicted about the situation. He stared at me with the same blunt sexual interest as the others, but he also squirmed with discomfort when they put their hands on me without so much as asking, let alone waiting for permission.

“Ravenna seemed to think things went well,” their leader told Grant. “And the result was... acceptable.”

Ravenna, I remembered, was a woman who’d been with them last time. She had been interested in one of Grant’s goons, doing the same to him as the others were doing to me now. Ithought... had it been the one of them who was related to Cash? Tommy?

Ermengarde’s expression didn’t say she thought the result had been anything to crow about. I didn’t know what “result” she was even talking about, but clearly, whatever had happened, she wanted something better. And apparently when it came to better than Tommy, I was the one on the menu.

In the months since I’d returned with Viktor, I’d been to a dozen meetings like this. Not just with the witches, but with other groups in the area. Both the Sawtooth and the Payette packs, the former seemed deeply unimpressed with us and the latter demanded a trade of pack members, like some ancient European noble child trade, to ensure a lack of war by giving each other hostages.

Grant had looked out the window at an opportune moment and locked eyes on Leo, clearly considering sending him as a hostage. I had moved into the way and instead suggested a young man in the pack who’d started to prove problematic for Grant. He was young and handsome and pleasant, and there were few things in the world Grant hated more than younger men who might supplant him.

I didn’t know why he didn’t count me among that number.

He didn’t know me well enough to know I was unlikely to turn on someone who had done me favors. He had never cared to get to know me. Yes, I spent a ridiculous amount of time with him, but everything in that time was always about him, never me. At best, it was “someday when you’re in charge...”

Usually, it was this.

Giggling gaggles of witches with wandering hands.

“I’m glad Thomas was acceptable,” Grant said, and when I looked up, he was glaring at me. Like my boredom and inattention was a personal insult. I couldn’t help it that I wasn’tinterested in oblique conversations about Cash’s uncle being “acceptable.”

I thought maybe he had gone home with one of the witches. Maybe even Ravenna.

It wouldn’t have been the first time Grant had done something like it, and it wouldn’t be the last.

What was it they called it in America? Sex work? One of Grant’s goons, Eric, had called it “pimping us out,” but I thought he was mostly angry that none of the witches ever put their hands on him. I usually refrained from telling him I would trade places with him if he’d like.

I preferred my own space, and not being touched without permission.

“Meadow does admire your young nephew,” Ermengarde said, and that finally got my attention. She was batting her eyes at Grant, which was strange. The woman was in her forties. Didn’t she know that expression was for children’s cartoons and not people? It looked silly on a full-grown woman.