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Niko was blind, not deaf or stupid.
Sometimes he felt the others had to think he was, though. They never would have said such things around him otherwise. He was blind, and a fledgling, but somewhere beneath his skin he knew Vilhelm still lurked. Twelve years in the Fire’s care and a decade putting his education to use couldn’t be wiped out within a year and a bit, however much he wished it could be.
Unless it was trust, but the Endarkened didn’t trust him. They were amused by him, but Niko knew you didn’t become eight hundred years old by being naive.
They were at war. Niilo’s pride made him angry, and the Endarkened would give back the violence he offered. Blood spilled in the townhouse, wolf blood, and Niko thought he might choke on the smell someday soon. He hid with Aleksi, both too young to fight properly, but he heard it all.
He knew Joel had a sister. A glamorous, fearsome thing she was meant to be; Aleksander’s creation through and through.
He’d even met her, during those long weeks when he was biding his time in the townhouse he’d burnt down, but that hadn’t been the first time he’d laid eyes on her, and betrayal burned in his heart until he longed to kill her too.
Because she’d been in his hometown.
It had been after the carnage, and Aleksander had offered her to choose which destroyed town to ravage. At the time she’d been an angelic beauty in pale blue, and Niko hadn’t seen the cold glint in her eyes. He’d been too scared to approach her all the same, but the townhouse didn’t allow him to keep such a distance from her. She was spiteful and bored and delighted in horrifying flights of fancy, but above all she was inconstant and casually cruel.
She’d also been absent the day he struck, busy currying favour with some foreign noble for her sire. He’d mourned that, unable to stay and to wait for her, but it couldn’t be helped. He hadn’t been ordered to kill her, either, and if he failed his masters wouldn’t appreciate his delay, so he’d returned to the formidable fortress he’d called home for twelve years with Aleksander’s head.
Lady Enni had grown in notoriety and fame since then, a vicious glittering jewel on the European stage, and Niilo had taken her because the Endarkened vampire was also Aleksander’s fledgling. Striking at him by taking one he holds dear. Niko shivered, wondering how awful Niilo was if he just took her.
He’d struck at dusk, just before she had arisen for the night, and he’d gutted her household. Her townhouse lay bloody and abandoned, and the Endarkened had begun plotting to get her back from the very moment they heard about it.
Joel had joined them. Lady Enni was his sister as much as the ancient vampire’s, even though he feared her, and the politics of it made Niko’s head spin.
That left the townhouse vulnerable. The three of them would go to get her and the witches would work to create a distraction, but that would leave Joonas with Niko and Aleksi and the werewolf duo.
So Tommi had called in Samy for help.
Samy had not only brought his little pack, but he’d brought a friend.
Blind as Niko was, he still knew Johnny was big and old. He could smell it on him, smell nothing but wolf, and Johnny’s faint outline filled doorways. Joel told him quietly that the wolf was covered in scars, and that he had a reputation in Jyvaskyla for challenging other wolves for territory until he was the ruler of it all.
What Joel didn’t tell Niko was why Johnny had come, or that he had created Samy.
He didn’t need to. Niko could smell it, and he shivered. Samy wasn’t old, but he was a wildcard, so what sort of creature was Johnny?
Joel curled around him in bed. “You’re scared of Samy,” he said quietly.
An argument rose on Niko’s lips. Samy was young. He was interested in fucking and feeding and little else, but-
“I don’t want him to try again.”
Joe shifted at that, knowing what he meant. “He won’t,” he said. “He didn’t know better back then.”
Now he knows Joel and the Endarkened are brothers, and that the wolf wouldn’t have his back if he tried again, but Joel didn’t need to say that.
“And you’ll be seeing your sister again.” Niko had felt the alarm spiking through their bond when the Endarkened vampire brought her up, after that argument with Arde.
Joel let out a big sigh. “Yes,” he said. Niko could feel the trepidation in him.
“Do you want to?” he asked.
Joel nosed into the crook of his neck. “I feared her. And now I’ve had a century to come and find her, only I never did. She thinks I’m dead. Maybe it’s better to let some things lie in the past, but her home is torn apart. My brother can only bring her here, so if I don’t go and join the rescue then there’ll be more questions.”
Niko gave a shallow nod. He closed his eyes, letting his breathing even out. Sleep swiftly took him.
When he awoke, Joel had already gone.
Niko sat up and stretched before he stood, and then he dressed. He made his way to the kitchen, where Aleksi guided him to the sofa as he fetched some blood for him. “They’ve gone now,” he said. “The Endarkened retrieved the heads they’d delivered to Niilo and had Hannes’s coven put them up on the city gallows. They wrote Niilo’s name out in blood, too, and Joel the witch set a fire going around them. The witches are making illusions so the wolves come, so now Niilo’s townhouse is undefended.”
“Will he attack us in retaliation?” Niko asked. Everything Niilo had done after he’d taken Hannes had been revenge, and now things were getting more and more personal.
It was Johnny who replied. “No,” he said, and he was close enough for Niko to smell the meat on his breath. “He knows I’m here. My pack is outside the city, and if I fall they’ll stop at nothing to kill him. He won’t fight a war on two fronts, so you’re safe.”
Niko didn’t really have anything to say to that.
Aleksi did, though. “I thought that if a pack alpha fell, his vanquisher took the pack?” he said, pushing a mug into Niko’s hands. Niko quietly murmured a ‘thank you’.
Johnny sat down next to Niko, intensifying the smell of raw meat in a way that reminded him awfully of his old base. Niko could feel his gaze upon them, and sipped blood, trying not to cower. “I’m not the sole alpha. If I die, the pack goes to Bess. Niilo will have to kill her too to get the pack, and now the pups are grown she can devote her time fully to fighting if need be. And she’s protected by two hundred wolves. Niilo has half of that in the city. We can overwhelm him, and he can’t call in the rest of his pack in time.”
So that’s why he came, Niko realised. “You don’t have to die to cause a battle. If you liked, you could send your pack in to finish him without waiting for him to strike.” Niko took another sip.
“Yes, I could.” Niko could hear the smile in his voice.
If he chose that path, Johnny was guaranteed to win. If he had some of his wolves with the witches, then the gallows wouldn’t just be a distraction. It would be a battle, and it would leave Niilo vulnerable for Johnny to strike if he so chose.
And when Niilo fell, Johnny would find himself at the head of the biggest wolf pack in Europe.
Niko tried not to shiver, and focused on finishing his blood.