Page 22 of Nightshade

“Yes,” Aleks agreed, matter of fact and not at all hurt, as usual. I thought he still struggled, sometimes, to see that he’d been a victim in the mess Grant had made of the pack. He was Aleks, after all. Alpha and “the strong one” and all that bullshit. He wasn’t allowed to be hurt. “I don’t know why having wolves do their awakenings would lead to witchwolves, but I believe it happened for Dakota, so maybe it would.”

“But he was also bitten, which they don’t allow.” Viktor marched into the water like he was heading off to war, not just taking a bath. It was how he did everything. Solid, strong, serious. With intent. “They will never have a witchwolf if they aren’t willing to risk their lives as Dakota did, by taking the bite.”

Personally, I didn’t think it was worth it. Being magic was fine and being a werewolf was . . . well, I didn’t know another way, and I liked it fine. But having both a wolf and magic by risking death? Seemed a little silly.

Why not just take the gifts you’d been given and use them to their best effect? Why always search for more? Sometimes, I thought people chose not to be happy. Sometimes, life was enough exactly as it was, and you didn’t need more.

Like me, there, with my brothers, taking a chilly bath in a river. A hot bath might be nice, but wasn’t it enough that we were home, safe, and happy? Maybe it was because I knew how much less I could have—that Viktor could be missing and Grant could be plotting to hurt the most vulnerable members of our pack—but in that moment, I felt like there wasn’t a whole lot more I could want in the world.

Except, maybe, the tingle that shot through me every time Altair bit into my skin.

Dammit.

CHAPTER 12

Altair

I should’ve taken another swallow.

Fuck, I should’ve let myself drink as much from Leo as he’d let me. I wasn’t going to kill him, and he hadn’t seemed put out by the idea of keeping me fed.

Maybe he was just worried about his pack, and yes, even the forest creatures surrounding the place. But I didn’t even last until morning before his blood was all that I could think about.

I wanted another mouthful. I wanted to feel sated, yes, but also to feel the warm thump of his pulse beneath my lips and hold his wrist in my palm and⁠—

It wasn’t like I was starved for touch as well as just starved, but what contact I’d had had been . . . transactional. There was a very specific role I was meant to fulfill, and while I tried to maintain that understanding with Leo—he didn’t want what the witches had wanted out of me, my blood and their awakened power and even some charm—I was still using him.

If he was generous and kind, it didn’t matter beyond that it suited my purposes. He’d never consider anything beyond feeding me.

I was a monster. Dead already.

What kind of future did a dead man have? I hoped that it wouldn’t be painful, that I could avoid future degradation. I didn’t want to cease existing entirely.

That was it. I had to keep my feet firmly planted in reality, focus on what was actually possible.

Even if Leo were precisely the kind of sap who wanted to keep me around for a while, for what? All I’d do was bring trouble down on him and his pack. Just to survive, I had to drink his blood. I had to take his life to sustain my own.

So he’d been kind, and he smelled nice, and I liked how warm he was. That was it. There was nothing more to consider.

And if, at four in the morning, all I could think about was his delicious blood, well, that was just because I’d gone without for so long. I was hungry.

He was worried about a raccoon, specifically, but I had an inkling that Leo wouldn’t much like the idea of me chomping my way through any innocent creatures, so when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I went hunting.

For voles.

Damn me for a fool, but I scrambled around in the dirt, digging out little holes with my fingers for creatures barely large enough to pierce with a single fang. It was a droplet and nothing more, but I feared that if I killed a larger creature, he’d find it and know right away that I was responsible.

The voles? They were short lived and little, and before the sun came up, I dug a deeper hole and buried twelve tiny corpses inside. I covered the disturbed soil with leaves and brush before I was satisfied that my secret would be safe.

At least my vole hunt kept me from coming out of my skin, or from doing something as stupid as shuffling my way toward the pack and trying to find Leo himself.

I’d ruin everything. So . . . death to voles.

I’d just finished burying them when a silvery light caught my eye. A raccoon waddled out of the trees like the specter of my own conscience, and I sighed. Maybe this was Leo’s friend, there to say hello or, more likely, to let me know that I had broken the rules and he knew about it.

“Are you Drew?” I asked.

He only looked at me and blinked, but I thought I saw a light of recognition in his eyes. Maybe I was imagining it, or maybe he was too intelligent for my own good.