Page 31 of Targeted By Temptation
“But—” Reign looked at me, confusion etched on his features.
“Some shifters marry humans for practical reasons and wait for their fated mate to appear.” I hated that practice and hoped it would die out. “Or they never find their fated mate and choose a human marriage partner instead. It's not common in our pack, but it happens.”
“Hawthorn is young.” Viktor poured himself more coffee but didn’t offer us any. “He may never find his fated mate. I wasoffering him a partnership that would benefit the pack while we waited to see if fate had other plans.”
“And I was just... convenient.” Reign’s voice was tinged with bitterness.
“You were necessary.” Viktor twisted his mug around. “When Kalen came to me with his financial problems, I saw an opportunity. I needed a human sharpshooter to deal with Calloway. He needed his debts cleared and protection from his creditors. You were the solution to both problems.”
“A means to an end.” Reign sighed.
“Yes, I manipulated the situation to benefit my pack. That's what Alphas do. We make hard choices to protect our people.”
I was tempted to punch him because of the casual way he talked about using Reign. But Boaz’s glowering face appeared before me. If I survived a fight with Viktor’s wolf, my brother might finish me off for being a fool.
“You could have just asked.” Reign gripped his cup. “If you’d explained the situation, I might have agreed to help.”
Viktor rolled his eyes. “Would you? A college student with no connection to the shifter world, being asked to hunt down a dangerous killer?” He shook his head. “The marriage arrangement gave me control.”
“And now?” I asked. “Now that Reign is my mate and the arrangement is broken?”
“We adapt.” Viktor glanced between us. “I won't pretend I'm happy about how this turned out. But the mate bond is sacred.”
“I still don't like what you did.” Reign studied his hands.
“I don't need you to like it. I need you to understand that if we don't stop him, he'll keep hunting until there's no one left.”
“That's why we're doing this.” I squeezed Reign's hand.
Reign stood. “Okay. We'd better start training.”
16
REIGN
I’d already known Calloway was horrible… evil, even, but hearing that he was a shifter murdering his own? That hadn’t been on my bingo card. And then to find out he was doing it using shifter powers he inherited? How could someone do that?
Being latent had to be hard. Knowing that you were meant to be born a shifter but somehow weren’t, had to be soul crushing. I wasn’t sure if his latency meant he had no wolf or his wolf couldn’t come out. According to Ezra, it could be either. But neither of those sounded any good.
How he went from that to wanting to slaughter his own kind… talk about internalized speciesism. He hated one side of himself so much he was willing to destroy others. I almost felt sorry for him. The only thing stopping me was his murderous tendencies.
And now I was standing outside my temporary home, or more accurately my prison, with my mate, shifters watching us from all angles, ready to strike if we did something they didn’t like. Training was to begin today, and that meant I was going to have weapons. I didn’t have shifter senses, but my human ones were enough to feel their anxiety.
I didn’t blame them. I might not have been able to get out of here alive by force, but I definitely had the shooting skills to take out a few of them trying. Possibly most of them.
“I need you to shoot for me.” My mate’s hand rested on my shoulder, helping me focus on him and not those surrounding us. “I want to see you work your magic.”
Magic. As if. I could line up a shot, that was all. And now I was going to be dealing with someone who had actual magic. They hadn’t called it that, but it was. How could I begin to compare?
The setup they gave us for training sucked. It was a bullseye set up against a bale of hay, similar to what you’d find for archery in someone’s back field because it was fun. It was not the safest way to go, but it was facing into the woods, and it was against a tree, so it could be worse.
It wasn’t like I could argue. I wasn’t here of my own accord, and I’d rather be stuck here with Ezra than alone. Unless something was too dangerous to use, I wasn’t saying a single word.
The pack had set up an array of guns for me, some I knew and had used before, some I hadn’t. I knew my way around a gun, that wasn’t an issue, but when it came to needing to hit a target, I preferred the ones I was most comfortable with. If I had known my life was going to take this turn, I’d have brought my favorite rifle, AKA Casper.
Casper because it was quiet as a ghost. I thought it was clever when my father bought it for me in high school when I was going to be doing skeet championships, and it stuck.
I reached for the one that was closest. The weight and balance of it was off. I set it back down and went down the line until one feltlike it was an extension of my arm. That was what I needed for this first round. After that, I could give them all a go.
