Page 30 of Targeted By Temptation
Not Lake, though. He’d join me in the No Instant Coffee protest. I wondered how Viktor would react if I walked in with that on a flag or handwritten sign on a piece of cardboard.
“Hurry up.” Gods, that damned Beta was back and demanding we come immediately.
“Need to brush teeth.” Reign and I dashed into the bathroom and ran toothpaste around our mouths. It’d have to do.
The Beta, whose name was Archer, opened the door without waiting for permission. “Hurry. Alpha doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
I took Reign’s hand, and our eyes locked on one another. I hoped he could read the empathy in my gaze.
How does he do that?my wolf asked.Is it spelled out?
I couldn’t get into that at the moment, so my mate and I followed Archer out of the building and toward a smaller one. There was a house to our left nestled under some trees and a huge vegetable garden behind it. This pack land was on the edge of town and much more pleasant than the compound I’d visited with the treaty.
Viktor was waiting in what appeared to be a meeting room. There was a large table in the middle and maps on the wall. It was a place to conduct pack business.
He looked up as we entered and told us to sit. But it was the coffee aroma that caught my attention. Oh, he had an old-style mocha pot on a small burner in the corner. Nice. The brew from that would be strong enough to energize me and wake Reign up.
I kept one hand on Reign's knee under the table, letting him know he wasn't alone, but Viktor told me to pour three cups of coffee. When I was seated again, he told us if Reign was to face Calloway, he had to understand what he was dealing with.
“He’s a hunter,” he said. I paused because shifters trembled and spoke in low voices when referring to hunters. “He’s killed many of our kind because he can detect us.”
“But do you know how he does it?” I asked as Viktor leaned back and tossed the coffee down his throat. “How does he identify and track shifters when we're indistinguishable from humans?”
His swivel chair creaked as he twisted it from side to side. “He's latent.”
The way Viktor said the term, it sounded like a curse. And if I was honest, many shifters viewed it that way. But I’d had latent friends growing up, and they were cool and they had a unique perspective on the human and shifter worlds.
“His mother was a healer.” Viktor was talking more to Reign rather than me. “She was powerful and could lay her hands on someone and identify their ailment. He must have inherited something from her, though not a beast of his own.”
This gave us an inkling into his character. If he had been treated as less-than by his community, if his shifter peers had taunted him because he didn’t have a wolf, I understood how anger and resentment might have festered if there was no mentor to explain to him how valuable his skills were.
“Wouldn’t a healer help people?” Reign asked.
“Most do,” I agreed. “They can feel our beasts even when we're in human form. It's how they know where to direct their healing.”
“Exactly.” Viktor took over the explanation. “Calloway inherited that ability. He can identify shifters by sight and scent, and he knows where we're vulnerable.”
“He's built his entire operation around hunting us.” I shivered at the thought of Reign encountering him. “And he does it with what his shifter mother bequeathed him in his DNA.”
Viktor’s grim expression matched what I was feeling. “After he was arrested, we thought we were done with him. But his wily ways got him out from behind bars.”
That scum of the earth was involved in human trafficking. I kept that tidbit to myself.
“Human trafficking was his MO.” Viktor didn’t share my intent to keep quiet about that.
“What?” Reign was paler than when we’d walked in.
“Yeah, he wasn’t fussy. Humans, shifters, he didn’t care.” I added that he wasn’t just a hunter. “Predator is a better description.”
The room was silent, and the tension was claustrophobic.
“I don't understand something.” Reign fiddled with the cloth hanging over the side of the table. “You're a shifter, Vik… Alpha. You understand about fated mates. How could you agree to bond your son to me when I wasn't his mate?”
Viktor shrugged. “I never said you'd be his mate, only that you'd marry him.”
“What's the difference?” Reign’s head swiveled from Viktor to me.
“Marriage is a human contract. It’s a piece of paper that carries huge significance for humans.” Viktor showed no emotion. It was as though he were discussing a grocery list. “Mating is fate.”
