Page 37 of Oakheart

Grant’s eyes narrowed at Viktor, because clearly, this was not something he’d been planning for. It wasn’t what he wanted. Any tool taken out of his box was a loss to him, and that was how he viewed each of us. A tool, to be used until it broke, then replaced.

Marcus snorted and waved him off. “Please, you wouldn’t even know what to do with a woman. Do you even have a cock?”

Where I might have broken and given Marcus the fight he clearly wanted, Viktor just lifted an unimpressed brow at him. “Are you looking for a measuring contest? If you’d like, I can oblige.” He even lowered a hand to his fly, like he was ready to unzip right there in front of the whole pack, to prove his dick was bigger than Marcus’s.

Given the common wolf lack of care about nudity, I could have told Marcus not to bother. Viktor would definitely beat him, in cock size and every other way.

Grant waved Marcus back, and he went, grumbling all the way. “Have you bitten her?”

“It would be inappropriate to do so before discussing it with her alpha and her family, and then having a mating ceremony,” Viktor answered, rote and calm, like he was reading out of a textbook on the subject of mating.

He and Grant stared at each other, and it reminded me of something in nature. Two predators staring each other down, trying to decide dominance. I could stare Grant down, but Viktor? I thought maybe Viktor could stare down a painting, and it would be the first to look away.

That flat expression and complete disinterest was downright disturbing.

“Well then, consider permission given. No need to worry about Tommy, he’ll do as I say. So bring her out. Bite her.” He leaned back in his chair. “Unless you don’t actually want to.”

Oddly, Viktor hesitated on that.

Not because he wasn’t willing to follow through, I realized. Because Grant wasn’t actually planning on giving him his way. Grant was demanding he produce Evie, so he could have his goons grab her, with no intention of following through on his words.

“Obviously, she isn’t here,” Viktor told him, and his voice was suddenly pitched louder than before. Maybe so the whole pack could hear him, or maybe because he knew where Evie was, and didn’t want her to come out. “But you give permission? Evie will come live with me, at Katya’s home, and not with that woman.”

People were peeking out of their windows, watching and listening, so clearly, Viktor’s raised voice was also for the benefit of the whole pack.

Grant glanced around, his eyes narrowing, and I knew. He was going to refuse. Worse, he was going to do something awful. I’d seen it a hundred times in the years I’d lived in Idaho, thatmoment Grant decided he had been disrespected, and that he was going to take out his anger on someone.

Could Viktor and I handle Grant and three goons at once?

I wasn’t worried about Viktor, but I wasn’t sure how much help I would be. He’d been teaching me, yes, but he was the only person I’d been in a “fight” with as an adult. I had no practical experience since I’d been a teenager, fighting for my life during the government raids, but that was a totally different experience than a one-on-one duel. Not that I wouldn’t fight for my fucking life, but I hated the thought of letting him down and getting us both killed with my incompetence.

I would never hesitate for a second, though. I would stand with Viktor to the end.

I hated what it would do to Mama, but?—

“Alpha,” Tommy’s bright voice rang across the dilapidated, filthy pack courtyard and he came hurrying between two houses, smiling like a fucking crazy person. He was waving something around, like it was the answer to all of our problems.

Unless it was a magic spell to convince people that abusing children was wrong, I had my doubts.

He ran right up between us and the porch, and held the thing out where Grant could see it and not me, but even when I walked around him to look at it, nothing became clearer. It was a couple of guys, one handsome and square-jawed, and the other a beautiful Asian man. They were looking at each other rather than the camera, and it was a sweet picture.

CEO of Crescent Enterprises to Marry Igarashi Heir, the headline proclaimed. So what? Some rich assholes didn’t affect anything about us. Then a subheadline caught my eye. “Ajax Fyse, from rural Idaho to Fortune 500 CEO.”

Rural Idaho.

No.

It wasn’t possible.

That guy was?—

Grant shot up out of his chair so fast that the old sagging porch couldn’t handle it, and one of the rotting boards under his feet gave way. He didn’t even seem to notice, and his eyes never left the picture on the magazine as Marcus caught him, and he started shouting. “Get me my phone. I need to talk to Ermengarde. Fucking now.”

Not that I wasn’t grateful for the reprieve, but... what?

“Next time, we bring Leonid and Mama,” Viktor whispered near my ear, so low no one but me—and maybe Tommy—could have heard it. “Next time he threatens, we fight.”

And maybe . . . maybe he was right.