Page 8 of Oakheart

I didn’t stop glaring, but it was... difficult. Leo had struggled a bit with English when we had first arrived in America, since he had been born and raised in Russia, and he hadn’t grown up withMama teaching him as much English as she could. I still wasn’t sure why she had, but it had proven valuable for me. Perhaps she’d had hope that someday we would return to the States, as we had.

She had likely imagined a better scenario, but the English had an excellent colloquialism for that: beggars can’t be choosers.

And in this, we were definitely beggars.

Things were not good in the Wildwood pack, yes. But they had been far worse in Russia.

“He is very pretty,” Leo said, his voice gone thoughtful, as he came up beside me. “I did not mean to?—”

“He is,” I agreed, tossing him the roll of tape Cash had given us. “Mark the tree behind you. It is perfect.”

He turned, and it said something about how distracted he was that it took him a moment to locate the tree I meant. “You are allowed to want things for yourself, you know,” he said quietly as he taped the tree.

I didn’t have to answer him for him to know that... well, knowing a thing and feeling a thing were very different. I knew that it wasn’t even possible to put every moment into finding Viktor. We weren’t in Russia. I had to eat and sleep and live.

But still, it felt wrong, every moment I put into something other than finding our missing brother. I wanted to say he wouldn’t have rested until he had found me, but it had been six entire years. Viktor had been fifteen when last I’d seen him, and I fourteen. How did I know if he was even the same person anymore?

Some days, I wasn’t even entirely certain he was alive.

I shook it off, though. My faith in my brother could not slip. He was alive. We would find him.

Someday, everyone I loved would be safe and free and happy.

Grant did not care about us leaving to have breakfast somewhere else.

Grant did not care about much, other than being the boss of everyone in the pack. It seemed like a sad goal, but everyone had to have a life goal. It wasn’t Grant’s fault that I found his unadmirable.

Or maybe it was, because his goal was not admirable to most anyone with sense.

I could understand wanting to be in control of yourself. That was one of the things I wanted most in the world, and I couldn’t yet foresee a time when such a thing would happen for me. Yes, I was Grant’s heir and was to one day be leader of the Wildwood pack.

But Grant was barely fifty years old, and without violence, a werewolf could easily live another hundred years.

I didn’t want to wish ill on him. His arrival in Russia to bring us back had been timely, and without it, we would likely all be dead or in government hands. He had even agreed to bring Leo and Viktor, despite them having no blood relation to him, and given us leave to continue searching for Viktor after... after.

But it did not change the fact that Grant was a small, petty man who liked to cause other people pain. A man I would never be able to admire.

“More eggs, Aleks?” Cash’s father, Henry, asked me.

The man seemed downright thrilled to have strangers in his home. Extra mouths to feed. Admittedly, food was one of the only things that had never been a problem for the pack. Henry, for instance, had a chicken coop, and the eggs he was serving were likely from his own hens.

Pack members didn’t have electricity or telephones or other luxuries, but food? We had plenty of that.

“Thank you,” I said, holding up my plate as he dished more scrambled eggs onto it. How the man managed to scramble delicate fluffy eggs over a fire in a cast iron skillet, I would never know.

Especially when Henry was one of the only wolves I knew who could be considered disabled. No one talked about it, but he was literally missing his left leg, from just above the knee. He had a simple prosthetic that worked well enough, but it still seemed to me that it would make standing over a fire twice as hard.

All that combined made me wonder how exactly he was also one of the most pleasant, cheerful wolves I’d ever met. Grant had everything a man could want and was constantly sour and rude and sometimes downright cruel. Henry struggled for everything, and he was almost as uplifting as his beautiful son.

“These eggs are delicious,” Leo said, grinning at the man as he shoveled them into his mouth. “We appreciate the cooking. It’s the best I’ve had since we left Russia.” He glanced over at Mama, who was also there eating, albeit more delicately than either of us. “Since Grant won’t let Mama cook in his house.”

Everyone frowned at that, including me, since I missed Mama’s cooking.

Henry paused, considering, and offered, “Maybe he thinks she shouldn’t have to do that work?”

“That is what he says,” Mama agreed. Then she rolled her eyes. “But he just doesn’t like my cooking. He thinks spices are confusing.”

Cash let out a bark of laughter, but slapped a hand over his mouth, ducking his head and looking as though he couldn’t believe he’d done such a brazen thing. Mama winked at him and went back to her breakfast.