Page 74 of Fate Unchained

She nodded and adjusted her fork so the tines pointed to her left. “If you look that way, there’s a red door. The people who want to do a bit of gambling will speak to the man leaning next to it, then go in.”

He pretended to be adjusting his chair and twisted to see the door more clearly. A man holding a cup of tea stood near the door exactly as she’d described. “No hint of Boris.”

She took a sip of her tea. “No.”

He also didn’t scent any sulfur, although that didn’t mean anything since he was in human form and this place reeked of tea.

A three-tier tray of plates, each displaying a different selection of foods, was delivered to their table with a flourish. The server pointed out and described the different sandwiches, pastries, and cakes. “Enjoy.”

The plan was to sit here and blend in for about fifteen minutes. Then he’d ask to make a bet. But until then, this was the closest he’d gotten to courting Lilah properly. Although if he was truly courting her as a vulk, he wouldn’t be sitting in a prissy place like this. He’d be in his real form, taking her to his favorite spot deep in his forest, where the trees parted around rocks to reveal a waterfall splashing down from an outcrop. The canopy was so thick that when he sat there, it felt like he was in a separate, enclosed world.

He'd feed her by hand. Take her swimming. And then they’d run together in the real chase of a vulk after his mate.

His mate.

Kyril picked up a sandwich the size of his thumb. “This food is supposed to satisfy your hunger?” He popped it into his mouth. Smoked fish with mustard. His brows lifted. Not bad. “My pack brother Juri would love this, but he’d need about a thousand of these sandwiches to fill him up.”

Lilah nibbled at a pastry. “What is your pack like? Or is that a secret you can’t tell me?”

He wasn’t supposed to tell her anything about the vulk, but right now, he didn’t care. “There are ten of us. Well, twelve now, I suppose, since Hans has twin sons. They’re both vulk.”

“You said you have your own den, but do you all live near each other, so the pack is together? How does that work?”

He described to her the new pack den they’d built over the past year in Rohant, near Hans’s den. It was full of rooms and living spaces so all the vulk could live together when they wanted to. They’d also created a village nearby with human-style houses. “We rotate in and out. Vulk need space, so we don’t live with each other all the time, and we each have our own den in our territory of Ulterra. We keep our territories free of spawn. When we want to, or our Alpha asks, we stay together in the pack den. Most of us have been sticking close because the pack was newly formed a year ago.”

She put her pastry down. “What were you doing before that? You had no pack?”

He growled, and the two people at the neighboring table jerked around in alarm. He stopped. “No, we didn’t have a pack for about a century. I tried to keep us together, but everyone retreated to his own territory. Our Alpha,” he stared out the window, not seeing the people passing by, “he was supposed to lead us, but he didn’t. Zann is his brother, and when he thought Zann was dead, he just sort of … died himself, I guess.” He shrugged. “So, the pack wasn’t together for a while.”

The connection between all the vulk wasn’t something he could describe. It was just there. Then the connection between them was severed for good when Hans didn’t take Alpha. It had felt like there was a void inside him. It was almost unbearable for a while.

Lilah put her hand on his arm, and he relaxed a fraction. “You didn’t get the family you deserved growing up, and your pack family fell apart,” she said. “That’s pretty rough, Kyril.”

“I …” He’d never thought about it like that before. “The pack is back together now. It’s fine.”

Lilah stared up at him. “No, it isn’t. I can understand, at least a little. My family life fell apart too. First, my mother’s death wrecked my father, and he couldn’t take care of himself, let alone take care of me. I love my father but …” She looked down. “That really hurt. I wanted to be with him, you know?”

He swallowed. Yes. He knew.

“Then I found out that the documents my aunt told me were for her will, were really to add me as a guarantor on all her debts. So, she let me down, too.”

Kyril’s vision tinged red. If her aunt were still alive, old woman or no, he wouldn’t hold back on showing exactly how scary it was to anger a vulk. No one messed with Lilah.

She sighed, and her gaze flicked back up to his. “Those kinds of things, you can’t just shrug off. It’s hard to trust anyone ever again. I can really understand why you vulk want to keep to yourselves. Why you don’t want …” She looked at her plate again, but her hand went to her chest where the rune had once lain.

The clawing inside him, finally calming as he’d sat with Lilah, slashed again, the instinct demanding attention. “In our pack, there are the old guard who believe our old ways are best and a new guard who are interested in living another way. Like I said, Hans has a family, and a mate. And now Juri, too. And I trust you. So, I suppose there’s hope that not everyone is total shit.”

He sat back. Trust. He really did trust her.

Another strong lash deep inside him, but this wasn’t clawing. This was centered in his heart, where their bond had been. And it didn’t feel like claws, this was a surge of emotion he couldn’t name. One he didn’t want to ever leave.

She smiled at him. “You’re not shit, so maybe it’s something to think about.” She took another sip of her tea. “What are vulk children like? And you know they’re vulk when they’re born?”

He nodded. “Yeah, you can sense it. Then at some point, they start growling.”

She got a funny expression on her face. “How old are Hans’s kids? Are they big?”

“I dunno, a few months old now?” He held his hands out about two feet apart. “With their legs, they’re about this long.”

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