Page 15 of The Enemy to the Living (The Wild Hunt #2)

Asher

I t takes everything in me not to chase Quinn when he leaves my flat and drag him back inside. Back to bed. He needs more rest than we both got today, but the only thing soothing me and keeping me put is the fact that he still looked better, even though I want him to have more.

Well, that and my own reactions to him.

I know better. Whatever I might feel for Quinn—now or in the future—is irrelevant. I’m too old, too distant. He needs family and pack and healing I can’t give him, even if I can help him realign with his wolf.

None of those thoughts stop me from waiting half an hour before I shower and dress. They don’t stop me from leaving my flat, though I could use more sleep myself, and crossing the city to stand outside Kieran’s pack house.

I ignore the voice in the back of my head that tells me I’m in too deep. It alternately sounds like Maurice or Vlad, and that’s fucking rich.

I’ll worry when it sounds like Paxton. He’s the youngest of all of us, but at least he has his head on straight.

I use my blessing to keep myself hidden when Quinn comes out of the building a couple of hours later.

I could follow him, but I already know where he’s going, and I don’t want to be the reason he loses a fight tonight.

Instead, I watch him walk out of sight, inwardly debating whether his shoulders look a little lighter or if it’s all just in my head.

An hour or so after Quinn leaves, and when I’m finally considering leaving myself, someone else comes out of the building. Sam. His eyes narrow in on the spot where I’m standing, blessing still keeping the shadows around me, and he doesn’t even hesitate as he crosses the road and approaches.

I sigh and push my blessing away. Sam doesn’t smile, doesn’t look welcoming at all.

Is it better that he’s here and Kieran isn’t? Can’t be. They’re both dangerous, but I know how to handle a wolf.

“You’ve been out here for a while,” Sam says, tone conversational. There’s an edge to it. Once upon a time, I’d have been able to pick it up in his scent.

“Just keeping an eye on things.”

“Ah. In trouble, are we?”

“No.”

“No,” Sam repeats, scoffing softly. He leans on the wall next to me, staring up at the building he calls home.

I can feel the wards, of course, something I never would have been able to do before I received the Huntsman’s blessing.

“Quinn didn’t come home at all last night.

Not until this afternoon, and then he left again. ”

“Why are you here? Why not Kieran?”

Sam’s smile is sharp. “We tossed a coin. I won.”

I don’t dislike him. Everything I’ve heard about this pack makes me want to like them. Only, I keep replaying that moment this morning when Quinn grabbed my wrist and asked me to stay and I can’t match up what I’ve heard about this pack with what Quinn is going through.

“What do you want?”

“We just want to know one thing.” We. Specific instructions, then.

“Which is?”

“Are you looking out for him?” Sam’s breath shudders out of him, and I glance over in surprise. Shadows haunt his eyes. He’s still only looking at the building, not me, but there’s a darkness there that I don’t want to reach for.

“Yes.”

“And he’s… opening up to you?”

I hesitate before I reply, “Yes.”

Sam blows out another breath. “Drew said he scented you when Quinn came back. Another wolf, too, but you… Kieran said that at least he’d be safe with you.”

“You haven’t asked him?”

“He’s avoiding us. The past few months, he seemed to be getting better, but then there was that stupid fucking almost-challenge and he’s closed off again. We can’t push too hard. We push too hard, and he’ll run.”

“Know that from experience?”

“Yes.” Sam looks directly at me, and some of the concern I had about his pack fades. “You know I do.”

The mage wars. The fae. More events we couldn’t get involved in but that sat just on the edge of our periphery. Not that I would have been any help, mage against mage and my blessing ever so temperamental, but Maurice… He would have been useful. Paxton even, maybe.

“I’m doing what I can to help him. I want to help him.”

Sam studies me for a moment. I don’t feel the flare of his magic, but I don’t think he needs it to read me. “Okay. I believe you. And wherever he’s sneaking off to?”

“It’s under control.”

“So you were standing here tonight for…”

I shrug. “I wanted to get the measure of his pack.”

“Have you?”

“No, I don’t think so.” I can’t read people as well as Vlad, despite his solitary nature. And I haven’t seen much of this pack at all beyond the little peeks I got while serving as Deacon’s bodyguard.

“We are trying to help him, you know.”

“Drew’s not noticed anything off about him?”

Sam frowns. “No. I mean, aside from the obvious. Is there something we should know?”

That’s real concern in his voice and despite it all, I believe him. This is a young pack, full of young people. Wolves who have been pack-raised, who are wilder than most wolves I meet now, but still don’t know all the things they should.

And I know Quinn doesn’t want me to tell.

That’s the most important part of all. I won’t violate his trust. I’ll help him heal, at least in this way.

And then when he’s ready, he can tell them himself because from what I can see of Sam—and he’s been sent to me to represent his pack—they will rally around him.

Will they feel bad that he didn’t trust them? Probably. But that’s one more thing than I have the capacity to handle.

I want to help Quinn.

“No,” I say. “He’ll be okay. These things just take time.”

Sam nods. He pushes off from the wall and sighs. “Want to come up? We’ve always got extra for dinner, and you look hungry.”

“That’s okay.” I’m starving , now that I think of it, but if I don’t go and see Vlad, he might come get me himself, and he’s sure to be ill-tempered about it. “I’ve got work to do tonight.”

“Quinn will make it back in one piece?”

“I’m sure he will.”

“Okay.” Sam’s not quite happy, but he seems a little less ruffled. He crosses the road without looking back, but despite his wards and his power, I remain where I am until he’s inside the building and the door has closed behind him.

Only then do I leave and head for the base.

Vlad isn’t awake when I arrive, and I find Grant already in the living room. My heart leaps into my throat, but the heavy curtains are drawn, not a flicker of light making its way through.

“You’ve been gone a bit,” he says. He’s on tiptoes, stretching for a book on the higher shelf, and I reach past him to grab it.

“We need to get you some better books,” I say, pushing it into his hands. Something about the occult, but that thing has to be a couple of hundred years old. “How do you even read this shit?”

Grant grins. “Gotta get up to speed.” He rounds the sofa, dropping into his usual position. “Where’ve you been?”

“Have you slept at all?”

“Don’t dodge my question with another question.”

I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling as I go into the kitchen. Grant makes an affronted sound and I hear the pad of his bare feet on the carpet as he follows.

I’m glad Vlad turned him, even if it was chaotic at the time. Even if Vlad’s never told anyone why —and I think that includes the Huntsman and Grant both.

Grant feels like pack in a way the rest of the Hunt don’t. Mostly because, for a human-turned-vampire, I think he wants to. He wants us all to rally together more than we do.

“Didn’t you read this stuff when it was, like, new?” Grant asks, slapping the book on the counter.

“That’s probably when Vlad bought it,” I concede, “but I’m not a big reader.”

“Not for this kind of thing?”

“Generally, I think. I don’t really try anymore.”

No point reading anything about magic. Our blessings don’t work that way, and mine is worse still. Fiction is fun when I have time to sit and read it, which is not often. Non-fiction? By the time I get to those books, they’re horribly out of date.

“So where’ve you been?” Grant asks. I take bacon from the fridge and check the date on the eggs.

They’re fine, but I eye the bread sitting on the side with a healthy dose of scepticism.

Vlad is organised in all things, but he’s terrible with food, being as he hasn’t had to eat it in half a millennium.

Maybe longer.

“At my flat.”

“Oh.” Grant hops onto one of the bar stools and swings his feet. He moves the book closer to him, away from the stovetop. “Alone?”

I give him an amused look. “Is there something you’re trying to ask, pup?”

Delight floods his expression, lips parting on a surprised gasp. I called Quinn that last night, didn’t I? I meant it differently. Even if Grant is technically older than Quinn, he feels younger, like a packmate I still have to guide and not—

I light the burner, focusing on that so I don’t have to follow my own meandering thoughts. Grant doesn’t talk again until the bacon is sizzling; he breathes in deeply and lets out a dreamy sigh.

“I was a vegetarian, you know,” he says.

“I didn’t know.”

“Yeah. Not my whole life. When I was… fourteen, I think. My dad hated it, not because he thought I shouldn’t do it, just he did most of the cooking and it was a pain. So I learnt to cook.”

“The smell?”

He shrugs. “Smells good. Not like I’m a vegetarian anymore either, is it?”

“Have you eaten any since…” I trail off.

We don’t ask about each other. None of us.

I only know Maurice was a witch before he was turned because he’s said it, because we know about his blessing.

I don’t know how Vlad was turned, or Jeremiah.

I don’t know how Rook and Saide were bitten at all.

I don’t know why Paxton was chosen, but then again, neither does he.

“Nah,” Grant says. Dark hair flops into his eyes and he pushes it back from his face. “Seems like too much hassle.”

I snort. “Is sleeping the same?”