She spun away from the slice of one, and stopped short when she felt the kiss of the other against her throat. She froze, breath catching.
She heard the soft sound of the other knife going into its sheath, and then his hand caught her arm, twisted it around behind her back. His breath rushed hot in her ear, voice tight with anger, but approving. “Better. Needs work.” Then he let her go.
Katya pressed a hand to her throat – not a scratch, only the wildly beating rhythm of her pulse. She sucked in a deep breath and realized, to her shame, that she’d dropped her own knife.
“Pick it up,” Kolya said. “We’ll go again.”
She took another steadying breath, and reached for it.
~*~
Sasha could hear the voices of his human pack members a long ways off, and the sound brought a smile to his face as he hiked the last distance up the hill to the pine-ringed clearing where they’d camped the night before. They’d said they would begin Katya’s combat training today, and clearly that was still in progress, if the barked instructions and sounds of effort were anything to go by.
“Again,” Kolya said. “Lower, there, yes.”
Feliks let out a grunt and Katya murmured something low and pleased with herself.
The wolves started to trot, tongues lolling, happy and relaxed as they started up the hill. All but the alpha female, who stayed close at Sasha’s hip.
Like Sasha, she’d picked up on Monsieur Philippe’s burned-toast smell.
“Bonjour, Monsieur,” Sasha called, and the man stepped out from behind a tree, smiling, small clean hands folded together in front of him. The rest of them were all dirty and bristly and smelly from their trek – Sasha hardly recognized his own wild reflection when he looked into streams and puddles – but Philippe was always tidy and composed, his long fur remarkably clean; there wasn’t even any mud at the hem.
“Good morning,” Philippe said. “I see you had a successful hunt.”
“It’s spring. Game’s plentiful – and not careful this time of year.”
Philippe’s smile twitched at the corners, curling up into a sly smirk. “Love is bewitching. And nothing male is immune to it, I’m afraid.”
Sasha had reached him now, and came to a halt, adjusting the carcass on his shoulders.
The alpha female growled quietly.
“What do you mean?” Sasha asked.
“Nothing, nothing.” The old man waved away the concern. “I’m sure the others will be hungry and ready for venison steaks. They’ve been busy this morning.”
Sasha nodded, his earlier happiness returning. “I can hear them.”
“Don’t let me keep you.”
Once they’d passed him, the female snorted, a clearly derisive sound.
“I know,” Sasha murmured to her. “But I don’t think we have a choice.”
At the top of the rise, the trees thinned, leaving a plane of dry, pine needle-covered ground perfect for pitching tents…and learning how to spar. Sasha lowered the stag to the forest floor and watched a moment.
Feliks had put Katya in a headlock, but it wasn’t a perfect one, and she knew it, too, wriggling and bucking against his hold. She elbowed him in the solar plexus and when his grip spasmed, she bit his hand.
“Ow, damn it!”
She slid out from under his arm, whirled, and aimed a kick at his crotch.
“Hey!” he protested, flailing to cover himself…and leaving his face exposed, her open-handed slap catching his cheek with a satisfying smack. “Fuck,” Feliks said, with feeling, and stepped back, rubbing his face.
Katya was breathless, red-faced, and smiling. Smiling in a way Sasha hadn’t seen yet, and it made him smile too.
“Good,” Kolya said from the sidelines, nodding with approval. “Closed fist with a real opponent, though.”
“Yeah,” Katya said, pushing loose tendrils of hair off her forehead, trying to get her breath back.
“Or stab his eyes out with your fingers. He can’t kill you if he can’t see you.”
“Okay.”
“Are your balls alright?” Ivan asked Feliks with faux concern.
“Fuck you.”
The big man burst out laughing.
Pyotr smiled and shook his head as if to say what can we do with these hopeless idiots?
And Nikita…
Nothing male is immune to it, Monsieur Philippe had said, and smirked, and Sasha understood now. Nikita probably had no idea that his face was full of softness, and fondness, and longing as he watched Katya. It might not have been love he felt toward her, not yet at least, but it wasn’t simple lust. There was too much admiration in his gaze for that.
Sasha smiled, overcome by a sense of good, and right. Nikita was many things, lonely and guilty and miserable chief among them. He loved his brothers-in-arms, Sasha knew, and felt that love turned toward him, too. But some wounds could only be healed by the intimate, hot-blooded love between two people, the kind that lived in the spirit and the body.
No one could ever sneak up on him again, and so he knew that Philippe walked up silently behind him, the burnt smell of him acrid against the clean tang of pine sap.
“If our good captain becomes distracted,” he said, “then it will fall to you to lead us, Sasha.”
A few months ago, Sasha would have protested that he was only nineteen, not even his own man yet. But now he was the pack’s alpha, so he only nodded.
What he didn’t tell Philippe was this: he would gladly accept that burden; it was high time Nikita had a chance to rest.
~*~
Nikita understood the mechanics of gutting and skinning an animal carcass, but he’d never done it himself, and watching Sasha do it now, he didn’t care to. It was nasty business, but one that Sasha conducted with expert movements and no fuss, tossing choice bits to the wolves who sat in a circle around him, drooling and waiting. He’d set his cloak, and jacket, sweater and shirts to the side, skin bone-pale in the spring sunshine, steaming slightly with the effort of moving the dead stag around and carving him into steaks. The scar where Philippe had stabbed him was a thin, angry pink line across his pectoral. A physical reminder that he’d died…and come back different.
“Cold?” Sasha asked, and Nikita realized he’d been drifting.
Sasha stood in front of him now, a haunch of venison in each hand. “You shivered,” he prompted, head tilted to the side, assessing.
“Just a chill,” Nikita said, taking the meat from him. It was heavier than Sasha made it look. “Thanks. I’ll put these on the fire.”
“I’ll bring the rest.”
It was early evening, still light, the spring chill just starting to take hold. The others were ranged around the fire that Kolya had built. Katya sat alone opposite Pyotr and Feliks, tired-looking, but pleasantly-so, sharpening her Army-issue knife with one of Kolya’s whetstones.
Nikita pierced the haunches on the spit above the flames and then sat down beside her.
She acknowledged him with a low, hummed note but didn’t look up from her task.
“Sore?” he asked.
“Mm. Yes. Worse tomorrow, I expect.”
“Yes.”
He watched her fingers, their understated confidence of motion.
“He really was a dancer, wasn’t he?” she asked, voice low.
Nikita let his gaze wander across the fire to Kolya, where he sat with Ivan, drinking vodka and sharpening his already-perfect knives with another whetstone. “I don’t think it’s my place to tell his secrets.”
When he glanced back at her, she smiled softly down at the knife. “I can tell that he was. You don’t have to say.”
She had a smudge of dirt on her cheek, and tired shadows beneath her eyes. He’d never seen anything so lovely. “What he said before,” he started. “He’s a good man. He didn’t mean it, not really. He–”
“I know he didn’t.” She sighed, shoulders lifting and dropping, the motion taking some of her constant tension with it. “I think.”
She set the knife aside on the pine needles at her hip and rolled the stone around in her hand. Wet her lips. “I think maybe all of you are.” Sent a careful, sideways look toward Nikita that punched him straight in the gut. In a small voice: “I want to believe that.”
He swallowed, throat suddenly tight. He wanted a dozen absurd, impossible things, things he had no right to want from her, a girl who’d been raped and dragged into a war. “We’re not like the ones who…who hurt you. That I can promise.”
She nodded and glanced away. “I’m sorry I said that.”
“Maybe you should apologize to Kolya.”
“I will.”
~*~
She was sore, and the deep ache of her muscles intensified as it grew colder, and as dark fell. It was a welcome discomfort, though, the soreness of physical exertion and learning important skills. She felt more capable and less fragile now, more comfortable with the weight of her knife in her hand. As the Germans had proved a few days ago, she couldn’t rely solely on her sharpshooting skills – the enemy might not give her a chance to use them.
On the fire, the venison had turned an appealing deep brown on the outside, crispy at the edges, the savory scent making her stomach growl. Fat dripped off the speared meat and landed in the coals with hisses and splatters.
The wolves sniffed appreciatively, yipping at one another.
The dark closed in around them, an owl hooting in the distance, but she wasn’t afraid. With the warmth of the fire on her face, and the wolves keeping watch, and the men who…who were becoming her friends…and Nikita, who was becoming someone who stirred butterflies in her stomach…she was content for the moment. Sleepy. Hungry. None of this seemed strange or horrible or insurmountable.
Monsieur Philippe was telling a story in response to Pyotr’s hesitant question about other bodarks being nearby.
“Not now, I’m afraid,” he said with a regretful sigh. “The social structure broke down. By the turn of the century, there were only a handful of awake, acknowledged vampires left, and most of them had lost their Familiars – that’s what mages and wolves are, you understand. Familiars.”
“Like a witch’s cat?” Pyotr asked.
Philippe smiled. “I daresay it’s a bit more official than that, but yes, if it helps to think of it that way. In any event, the wolves who are left – if there are any – are hiding. The oldest and most famous wolf abandoned his master in rather spectacular fashion in 1867. He’s the one who sold me the wolf book, interestingly enough.”
Sasha, surrounded by his wolves, perked up visibly, eyes brightening. “He’s like me? Where is he?”
Philippe smiled kindly at him. “He’s a wolf like you, yes, Sasha, but he lacks your sweetness of spirit, to be sure. His name is Fulk le Strange. He’s a baron, actually: The Baron Strange of Blackmere. English, originally. He was always thought of as cold and cruel, very buttoned-up. Heartless, they said. I guess all facades have to crack, eventually, and his did. He turned a human woman, took her as his mate, and fled from America after the end of the Civil War.”
“I thought wolves couldn’t–” Sasha started, frowning.
“They can’t, to my knowledge. They aren’t powerful enough. But Baron Strange did.” He shrugged. “He and his baroness have been globe-trotting for decades, now. It was a stroke of pure luck that I was able to run him down, and that he was willing to sell me the book. I suppose he has no more use for it; what would be the point of keeping it?”
Sasha wasn’t listening anymore, his gaze faraway. “Wow,” he breathed. “He has a mate? Who isn’t…” He gestured to the wolves around him. The rangy omega licked at his hand.
Philippe’s face took on a careful sadness.
“Like him? Who he can…” The hope in Sasha’s face sent a stab of sympathy through Katya’s chest, strong and bitter as grief. She hadn’t thought of it like that before – but Sasha clearly had. He was just a boy, and a happy one at that, content with his wolves and his friends who he clearly loved, his bodark-side as transparent as glass when it came to his affections. But all living things wanted mates, didn’t they? She might not have thought that a few months ago, but right now she was achingly aware of the length of Nikita’s strong thigh pressed against hers as they sat too-close together on the rotted log they used as a bench.
“Even if le Strange hadn’t gone into hiding,” Philippe said with obvious regret, “he would be an outcast. A loose cannon. For wolves – werewolves – it’s unnatural to take a true mate.”
“Please,” Ivan scoffed. “Everybody fucks. That’s the most natural thing in the world.”
Philippe sent him a placating smile. “For mortal humans, yes, of course. But Familiars aren’t entirely human, and the laws of nature don’t apply the same way.
Ivan stared at him, slack-jawed. “You’re telling me superpowered people who live forever don’t fuck? What’s the point of living forever if you can’t get laid? Jesus Christ!” Belatedly, he turned to Katya and said, “Uh, sorry.”
She waved him off.
Philippe’s smile was starting to look strained at the edges. “Of course he can. But we’re talking about mates. That’s an entirely different thing than…fucking.” He said the word with obvious distaste. “Wolves like Sasha aren’t designed to be a part of a pair. It’s not who they are.”
It was silent a long beat after that, only the crackle of the flames and the calling of owls.
Sasha looked down at this lap, fiddling with a hangnail.
“Well.” Kolya stood up and reached to pull the meat off the fire. “Who’s hungry?”
~*~
They ate in hungry silence, the grease on their hands shining in the firelight. Katya was even more ravenous than she thought, choking down unladylike mouthfuls and only stopping when she realized that it would take longer for her stomach to catch up with her mouth, and that if she didn’t stop now, she’d be uncomfortably full later. She passed the rest of her meat off to Ivan, who could eat twice what any of them could and still be hungry, and then sucked the grease from beneath her nails, enjoying the warmth of the fire and of Nikita’s body beside hers.
When Kolya stood up and walked away from the fire, she realized it was her chance to make good on her promise to Nikita, and she stood a few moments after, excusing herself, and followed him.
The cold shocked her a little, when she was clear of the fire, insistent as it closed around her, compressed her lungs. Spring, even on the steppe, was winter’s cruel little sister, and she reminded Katya that she’d forgotten her coat.
Oh well. She didn’t think this would take long.
She kept a good ways back, listening to his rustling footfalls, trying not to make any noise of her own – which was hard, because he walked carefully, quietly. A dancer, yes, for sure.
Two dozen feet ahead of her, he came to a halt beside a tree, braced one naked, white hand against the trunk, and then stood there, breath pluming silver in the moonlight. Belatedly, she thought he might have come out here to take care of necessary business. Soldier though she’d become, she’d rather be spared the indignity of that.
But he stood. Still as a statue, staring off into the shadowy tree trunks.
The moment stretched; she imagined she could see his thoughts arcing and leaping through the dark, tongues of lightning. He was thinking so hard she swore she could feel it, goosebumps rising on her arms.
She should leave. Whatever he’d come out here to dwell on, he’d clearly wanted to be alone. Thoughts too precious for the crackle of the fire and the voices of his brothers.
She turned to go…and stepped right on a twig.
Damn it.
It snapped beneath her boot and Kolya whirled, face seeming too pale in its frame of long, dark hair.
Katya froze.
“What do you want?” He sounded more uncertain than angry.
That bit of rawness in his voice made her feel awful for spying. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude or…” Anxiety bubbled in her c
hest and she tried to let it out with a sigh. She realized she was more frightened of him now, after the sparring session, than before – back before she’d known he could snap her neck without effort. “I wanted to apologize. For what I said earlier. Making it personal. I’m sorry.”
A small voice in the back of her mind told her to walk away, now that she’d said what she needed to. But she waited, rooted to the spot, and so she could see him blink in obvious surprise.
“I called you a whore,” he said, disbelief in his voice. “Why are you apologizing to me?” It was such a vulnerable statement – from any man, but especially from a state-owned thug – that she couldn’t help but read the vulnerability in it. She felt a softening toward him, a touch of warmth in her chest.
“I struck a nerve. And I was trying to. I shouldn’t have done that.”
He shook his head, one strong back-and-forth motion. “Nothing makes it alright to say what I said.” In an undertone: “I was raised better than that.”
The thought of him as a child, a boy with parents who taught him manners, put a smile on her face. He was so cold and stern and unreachable…but he’d been little once. Had sat on his father’s knee and felt his mother’s hand through his hair. Hopefully.
His head lifted and his eyes – a faint glimmer in the dark – found hers. “No one’s ever guessed that I danced. Nikita told you?”
“No. He said it wasn’t his business to tell.”
It was hard to tell, but she thought the shadows on his face shifted, one corner of his mouth flicking up in a quick, humorless smile. A silent thank you to his captain and friend, she thought.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“You glare like a killer…but you move much prettier than that. You’re very light on your feet in a way that most men aren’t.” In a way the Chekists who had come bursting into her home hadn’t been, boots heavy across the floorboards, hands rough as they…
Don’t think about it.
White Wolf (Sons of Rome Book 1) Page 25
