Page 68 of Oakheart

Aleks

The weeks took forever,and also no time at all, because every minute in the city felt like torture, but also... was I ready? Really ready?

No, of course not.

No one was ever truly ready for a thing like what I had to do.

What Viktor and I had to do, because yes, the fight with Grant was for me, but Viktor would always be at my side, no matter what.

Grant didn’t say a word to us the day of the challenge. He and half a dozen of his assholes left the house around noon, leaving Viktor and I alone. Viktor watched them go from the front window, and he turned and gave me an approving nod. “He knows it’s over. That you won’t put up with him being dishonest any longer.”

I wondered if he really understood what he was saying, but who was I kidding? It was Viktor. He, of all of us, was the most painfully honest and realistic. He proved that point a moment later when he turned toward the room we’d been staying in together, speaking as he went. “If he sees you again, he will try to kill you. We should be prepared.”

I followed him, wondering if he was planning some kind of specific preparation.

When we got to the room we’d been staying in, he pulled both of our bags from under the beds and started packing them.

Of course. We had to leave, because if Grant saw me again, he would attack me. It was obvious, really, but I hadn’t thought it through that far.

“Why do you think he didn’t attack before?” I asked. “When I was alone here, or the when I came back from visiting Cash?”

Viktor didn’t even turn from his task to look at me, just answered with his back to me. “He had to convince the others first. He can’t handle you himself, and they know you’re dangerous. Not soft like Cash or his Papa. He needs them to do it for him.” He did turn then, and gave me a wicked grin. “Also, I stayed with you always. Harder to ambush a man who isn’t alone.”

It was true, now that I considered. Viktor had been practically glued to my side for over a month. I wondered how long Grant had been planning my demise.

Maybe since the moment Viktor and I had first gone to demand Evie, and he hadn’t wanted to give up a person he thought of as property.

Funny.

I hadn’t been there for it, but my understanding of the situation was that my father treating Fyse’s sister precisely like that had been what had led to his downfall. First Fyse’s challenge, and then a long downward spiral after he had lost the fight. Perhaps I was lucky, in my disinterest for sex, and women in general, since women seemed to be the downfall of men in my family.

No, not women. Girls. Children.

And that was what shook sense back into me. I wasn’t lucky at all. I just had morals, where my father and uncle had none.

Grant didn’t even want to abuse Evie himself. He wanted to sell her to other men who would do so. Somehow, it was even sicker than merely being a monster who abused children.

I packed my own bag, checking the room over to make sure nothing was left behind, since we would not return, regardless of who won the fight. If Grant somehow beat Fyse, I would kill him and we would return home this very night. If Grant lost, there would be no reason to stay either.

If, by some bizarre happenstance, Grant managed to beat both Fyse and me, Viktor would kill him, and my family and loved ones would still be safe. Viktor was not going to be bested by some pathetic little man with a need to be powerful. My brother was by far the scariest man I knew.

We took the last truck sitting in the drive and headed for the Crescent pack’s territory again. It looked different with the house no longer there—even the burned shell of a place had been demolished, all sign of it gone but a scorched concrete slab and the tiniest hint of debris from where the rest had been cleared away.

I wondered, briefly, if they would rebuild.

How often they used this house, when they had a whole house somewhere else, and all lived in the city anyway.

How many houses did people need?

I thought of my bed in Mama’s house, that I’d never been allowed to sleep in, and my mood was buoyed.

I would never have to go back to Grant’s house. I could fucking knock it right down into the dirt, and no one would ever have to sleep there again. I could do to it what Grant’s plotting had done to this house.

I would never again be bartered off to witches who wanted a healthy young wolf for their experiments and “awakenings,” in hope they could somehow grasp at a wolf’s power.

We left our bags in the truck, climbing out and looking around the area. For a moment, I thought we’d been the first ones to arrive, but then I saw the truck Grant and his goons had taken earlier, hidden in the trees.

Viktor took a deep sniff of the air, and his eyes narrowed. “You should wait in the truck. I’m going to go handle something.”