Page 32 of Oakheart

CHAPTER 16

Aleks

It was probably a little pathetic,but it got me through.

In the months to come, having to play the seducer of witches for Grant, the memories of my single night with Cash carried me along. If I struggled to... rise to the occasion, which wasn’t common, but certainly happened a few times, all I had to do was think of Cash, and his soft eyes and miles of beautiful pale skin. I didn’t know how he managed to get by without a tan, since he loved to go swimming in the river and spent most of his days out in the sun, working on the next house.

He never took his shirt off while working, which probably helped, but still.

It meant that Viktor and I were the only ones who knew what he looked like mostly naked.

Werewolf packs tended to be careless with nudity, but here, things were a little different. Grant and Giselle had turned our bodies into commodities, and we were all hesitant to bare too much skin, lest anyone look at us and start thinking about making a purchase.

It became a sick kind of game as Evie turned eleven, twelve, and thirteen. How best to keep her out of sight of Giselle, or Grant, or any of his goons who were inclined to abuse children. When she was twelve, I clobbered Marcus over the head with a tree branch from behind when I found him chasing her.

That was when she got in on the “game.”

Twelve, and she knew that avoiding most of the men in the pack was the only way to survive without being hurt.

Evie became almost a stray feral cat who only came inside for dinner and sleep, and whenever anyone showed up, she disappeared into the woods. One night at dinner, she speculated it was why her mother had gone into the woods and never come back.

I’d never seen Cash so gutted by anything.

But none of us knew what else to do. How to keep her safe.

Viktor and I had discussed... how to remove Grant from power. It wasn’t so simple, though. Ignoring the fact that he was my uncle, which was relatively easy because I’d spent my life calling him by his first name and he’d never treated me with a scrap of anything but avarice, he was alpha. He was the boss. The only sure way to remove an alpha from power was to kill him in a challenge, and killing someone was...

I’d seen it happen before. Seen people die.

But...“I’ve never even been in a challenge fight,” I admitted to Viktor one afternoon while we were at the riverbank, skipping stones across the water. “I don’t know if I could beat him.”

He snorted at that and poked my chest. “All these muscles and no idea what to do with them?”

“They’re for helping build houses. Carrying things. Running. I made them helping people, not killing them. I haven’t been in a real fight since we left Russia.” It felt silly to even say it, because what kind of future alpha didn’t fight?

But Viktor didn’t even seem shocked. He just looked at me, assessing, for a long time. It was funny, because I’d been on the wrong end of that look hundreds of times in my life, but only here and now, when we were discussing murder, did it stop making me feel dirty. I knew it was because it was Viktor, and he would never expect anything of me I wasn’t willing to give, but... still strange.

Then he nodded, stood, and dusted himself off. When he was finished, he motioned for me to do the same.

I did, even though I had no idea what we were doing. Again, it was Viktor.

When he reached out and started repositioning my body, the confusion didn’t abate.

“Viktor?”

“If you do not remember how to fight, then you relearn how to fight. I could kill him, but I would be a terrible alpha. We need it to be you.” And with that, he went back to positioning my body.

Then we spent half an hour on breathing, because apparently it was very important I do it in a certain way. I’d never felt clumsier in my life than having Viktor teach me the things that came as second nature to him.

We started to do that whenever we had a spare afternoon. We would go out into the woods, and he would teach me how to breathe. How to move. How to defend my vulnerable bits when someone came at me. After a while, I started to recognize the motions that he did every day, always.

For a while, I thought about that. My best friend, my brother, was constantly ready to be attacked from all sides. Constantly on the lookout for violence. I wondered what he had gone through, and also, was glad I didn’t know.

I might never sleep again.

Fortunately for all of us, Viktor didn’t seem interested in discussing it.

He simply continued teaching me how to survive a fight with Grant, for the inevitable day when my uncle crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed, and I was forced to challenge him.