Author: Lauren Gilley
Date: 2023-05-07 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Paranormal; Romance
Description: War looms on the horizon for the kingdoms of Aeretoll and Aquitainia, a war they'll fight together, as the allies begin to plan their cooperative marches through missives sent via falcon. But in Aeres, Náli arrives with news of the enemy: he's met the emperor of Seles, Romanus Tyrsbane, beyond the veil in the Between, and the emperor, it seems, is searching for Oliver. With Náli's help, the three Drakes must now learn how to go walking between worlds, guarding their minds and their magic from an enemy who can reach out and touch them from afar. Restless in a way he's never been before, confuse
Publisher: HP Press

The Drake Chronicles

Heart of Winter

Edge of the Wild

Blood of Wolves

Demon of the Dead

Fortunes of War

Avarice of the Empire
(coming soon)

Fortunes of War

The Drake Chronicles Book V

By

Lauren Gilley

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are all the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, is coincidental, or meant to serve as entertainment, rather than fact.

Names and characters are property of the author and may not be duplicated.

FORTUNES OF WAR

ISBN-13: 9798392789818

Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Gilley

Cover design copyright © 2023 by Lauren Gilley

HP Press®
Atlanta, GA

All rights reserved.

Author’s Note:

This book – this series – is rooted heavily in a combination of English, Norse, Swedish, and Danish history and mythology. Names and myths and bits of language have been borrowed liberally – though all are used fictitiously. It’s all just for fun! For historically-accurate fantasy fiction (and vampires), please refer to my Sons of Rome series.

But here…there be dragons.

FORTUNES OF WAR

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

1

Most nights, Oliver was so exhausted after a day of politicking, organizing, strategizing, and going for at least a quick ride on Percy that he barely had the energy to return Erik’s kisses, much less dream once he fell asleep. When he did dream, it was a vision of dragon-sight, sharing the view with Percy from up in the clouds. Sometimes it was through Percy’s eyes, memories or drake imaginings. Other times, like tonight, he was in his own skin, helmeted and armored, astride Percy as they plunged through clouds that shredded around them like damp parchment.

The strangest part was that he knew he was dreaming. The drake dreams were nothing like normal ones, in which he was generally stuck somewhere cold, dark, and unpleasant, surrounded by strangers or monsters, petrified of some formless malevolence that left him startling awake in a cold sweat. Nightmares, truly, and the most frequent of nocturnal wanderings, save the rare, pleasant occurrence he dreamed of strong arms and a deep voice. There’d been a dream lover before a real life one came along, and though he’d not been a Northman with long, braided hair and a mantle of wolf fur, he’d been as stalwart and gruff and big-handed as Erik.

Funny how dreams turned out for the best, sometimes.

Funny, too, that he could feel the sting of cold wind against his face, and feel the working of Percy’s great wings in the muscles along his back.

He could hear something, too, beyond the whistle of air past his ears. A kind of shrieking, distant but growing clearer. A bird? He faced forward and scanned the cloudscape that lay ahead of them, searching for the source of the noise. It sounded again, louder, shriller than it had seemed at first. Perhaps a hawk, then. A messenger falcon?

The stomach-grabbing thought that it might be someone who wished him ill struck the same moment a cloud just ahead tattered to bits. Through it came a sleek, pointed head with backward-curving horns, and a long neck; a pair of flexing wings, white and bat-shaped. A figure lay low along its withers, gripping tight to the spines along the drake’s neck without aid of saddle or bridle.

Oliver recognized the drake and human pair the same moment Percy did, and had his knowledge reinforced by a sharp surge of joy through the bond he shared with his dragon.

Percy bugled a greeting.

Oliver cried, “Náli! Valgrind!”

Valgrind screamed a hello, undulating through the air toward them as he accelerated – and nearly unseated a cursing, wildly-clutching Náli. “Stop! Stop, you – oh, fuck you, you fucking lizard – stop!”

Oliver laughed as Valgrind swung wide behind them and then swept up alongside. But his laughter died as Valgrind settled into a steadier pace and Oliver got a look at Náli’s face. He was nearly as white as his drake, his eyes huge, his expression terror-stricken. It was not, Oliver could tell right away, fear of flying that gripped him, but something much more urgent.

Oliver pressed his knee into Percy’s side so that his wings lifted high and he was able to glide in closer. Father greeted son with a nuzzle of noses.

Oliver fixed his attention on Náli. “What is it? What’s wrong? How,” he said, brows flying up when the weight of what was happening struck, “are you here in my dream right now?”

“It’s not a dream!” Náli was panting, shouting to be heard over the roar of the wind in their ears. “We’re in the Between!” When Oliver started to ask why, he said, “It’s another plane! Where the dead pass through!”

“That’s…alarming!”

Percy gave a trill of warning, and then angled his head down into a graceful dive. Valgrind must have done the same, if Náli’s curse was any indication.

When they’d landed in a field of swaying grey grass, Oliver swung – gracefully, thank you very much – down off Percy’s back to find that the grass was taller than his waist; it crackled, dry and dead beneath his boots.

Náli slid down less gracefully – he fell, really, and landed in a heap at Valgrind’s feet with a loud oof. Valgrind craned around to nose at him with a little bleat of alarm, and Náli batted him away and scrambled hastily to his feet.

Grinning, trying to swallow a laugh, Oliver walked to meet him, trailing a hand up Percy’s sinuous neck as he went.

Pink-faced, tugging at his disordered cloak, and breathing in harsh, ragged pants, Náli came to meet him, pushing his hair back with a frantic spark in his gaze.

He looked panicked, and Oliver felt his smile slip away. “What is it?”

“I’ve just – there was – and Matti is – gods, Matti.” Náli pitched forward at the waist and clutched his knees, fighting for breath.

“Shit.” Oliver laid a hand on his shoulder, and felt the fine tremors moving beneath his skin. “What’s happened? Is Mattias ill?”

“He could be dead, for all I know,” Náli said, roughly, and straightened. “We were on this plane, practicing his magic–”

“His magic?”

“It’s my magic, really, but he has some, now, a portion, and–” He cut himself off, made a face, and gave a sharp wave of dismissal. “I’ll explain later. But.” He gulped down a breath. “He was – and then he was – and Matti threw himself in front of me, and I don’t know if–”

“Who’s the second he? Whoever Mattias threw himself toward,” he said for clarification, when Náli’s face screwed up in a dramatic frown. His eyes were frantic, brimming with fear, and Oliver’s thoughts were racing.

How had Mattias crossed into this plane? Was he using Náli’s magic? How? Who was this other person? How had they become separated? Why was Náli so–

“The bloody – the fucking – Selesee Emperor!”

Oliver blinked. “I’m sorry. It sounded like you said–”

Nali gripped his biceps, hard, fingers digging bruises through his layers of shirts and coats. His pale eyes flashed wildly; the tendons stood out in his throat. “Listen to me. He’s here now, on this plane, and he’s looking for you.”

“The Sel–”

“The emperor of the Sels. The Immortal Emperor Unchallenged, Romanus Tyrsbane.”

Oliver realized that he’d never known the Selesee emperor’s name. He was always referred to simply as “the emperor.” More a looming figurehead than a man, a threat not unlike the monsters from fairy stories that children used to scare one another. But he’d never stopped to consider his name. There was something awful and too-intimate about hearing it, and from Náli, of all people.

His pulse tripped and quickened, Náli’s panic infectious. “You saw him?”

“Yes, and he’s bloody terrifying.”

“Why is he looking for me?”

“I don’t know. He called you a ‘red whore.’ Something about your magic. About how you stole it.”

“I didn’t steal–”

“I know, but he’s huge, and he’s angry, and he’s got this massive fucking sword, and he’s not exactly reasonable!”

Oliver took a deep breath, and then another. He’d been called a whore more than a few times in his life; that wasn’t new or even that insulting, given his current position. Last laugh, and all that. But the slur landed a little differently when huge, angry emperors with  massive fucking swords delivered it – even by proxy.

“All right,” he said.

“What do you mean all right?”

“What do you want me to say?” Oliver asked, voice gone shrill. “I don’t…” Know what to do, he started to say. But held off. Because Náli was very young, and very frightened, and Oliver supposed it was his duty to take the situation in hand.

“All right. Hold on.” He closed his eyes, and willed himself to wake up.

“What are you doing?”

He opened his eyes, and stood still in the field of waving gray grass, their drakes greeting each other with sniffs and blue-tongued licks over their heads. “Thinking.” It wasn’t a complete lie. “Where did you come from?” Still holding the boy’s shoulders, he leaned sideways to peer around him. Low, undulating hills stretched as far as he could see in all directions, the sky a washed-out blue so pale it was nearly white, the faint edgings of shadow all that delineated the clouds.

“The village,” Náli said, without explanation.

There were so many things Oliver didn’t understand about being on a different plane of existence. Truly, he’d thought these visions of his nothing more than dreams; at most, dreams that he shared with his drake, which wouldn’t have been unreasonable given their mental connection. But if he’d transcended into some sort of spirit realm, if they truly walked in the valley of in-between souls, then he had no idea what the laws of this place were. Could Mattias have been killed? Could they be killed? If he faced this emperor now, what would occur?

“Oliver,” Náli prompted, shaking him.

“Right. Yes. The village?”

“The first village. The very beginning of Aeretoll. I’ve been going there since I was little.”

“Ah, so you can walk me through it.”

“We have to go.”

Oliver very much did not want to go. He was full of questions: hadn’t Dreki Hörgr been the first village? Was this Dreki Hörgr? Some flipside, through-the-veil version of it? And he still had no idea what sort of physical limitations they possessed here. He hadn’t brought a sword – nor known such a thing was possible. If he faced an emperor empty-handed, and got cut down for his troubles, could he be killed? Would his body back in the waking world stop breathing? That was an unpleasant image: Erik rolling over beneath their heaps of furs and flinging an arm across a corpse.

But there was Mattias to think of, and Náli’s big-eyed, frantic terror, so he said, “Yes, of course. You two lead the way.”

They remounted – Oliver with the aid of stirrups, Náli scrambling with a firm grip on the spines on Valgrind’s neck – and took to the sky, flying back the way Náli had come. Valgrind, at least, seemed calmer in his father’s presence, neck stretched long, tail whipping behind, his wingbeats sure and quick. Náli’s face, though, was a grim mask of worry, and Oliver didn’t know if the tears winking at the corners of his eyes were the result of the wind, or fear for Mattias.

Eventually, a dark smudge appeared along the horizon. It resolved, as they flew, into the jagged, black silhouette of a mountain range, stamped boldly against the faded sky. The peaks grew larger and more distinct the closer they drew, and then Valgrind swung wide, and angled himself, and dove.

Oliver could hear Náli berating the drake, and chuckled to himself as Percy executed a much more reasonable, swooping descent that spiraled them over what was indeed a village.

From above, Oliver spotted a large, central longhouse surrounded by smaller, sod-roofed dwellings, the whole of it connected with well-trammeled paths. He could see no sign of habitation: no smoke curling up from chimney holes, no children playing in the street; could hear no bark of dogs nor shouts of alarm as the two drakes landed in the yard outside the longhouse.

Oliver held to his reins a moment after Percy folded his wings, scanning the area for threats.

Náli, though, slid down off Valgrind’s back. “Mattias!” he shouted, voice echoing off the timbered fronts of the houses. “Matti!” He let out a shocked cry, and darted around the side of the longhouse.

“Wait!” Oliver jumped to the ground – Percy snorted and made a drake-like sound of protest – and dashed after the Corpse Lord, reaching for a knife that wasn’t there on his hip. “Bollocks.”

Around the front of the longhouse lay the crumpled shape of a man in familiar gray tunic and brown leather armor. He faced away from Oliver’s approach, on his side, long, single braid coiled in the dirt.

Náli choked out his name – “Matti” – and knelt by his head, cupped his face.

As Oliver rounded his booted feet, Mattias groaned. He was alive, at least. Oliver moved to stand at Náli’s side and saw Mattias blink his eyes open and squint up at them, blearily. The front of his tunic was clean, free of blood or any obvious rents. He looked at Náli first, and then, as Náli exclaimed gladly and petted his brow, at Oliver. His glazed eyes sprang open. “Your – your Lordship? How–”

Náli spoke over him. “Where are you wounded? Where is he?” He lifted his head and snapped it side to side, searching for the emperor, hair flashing in the hazy sunlight. To Mattias again, gripping the shoulder of his tunic with white-knuckled fervor: “How bad is it?”

Mattias winced, but sat up, Náli clinging to him and fussing over him. “I’m fine. He didn’t…” He touched the back of his head and then examined his fingers, as if expecting to find blood.

Náli shifted around so he could take his face in both hands and hold him still. “Matti, what happened?”

Oliver thought someone out to be on the lookout for this Immortal Emperor Unchallenged character, and had just turned to do so himself when Mattias’s words snared his attention.

“It’s all right, love.”

Love? Oliver whipped back around in time to see the faintest, gentlest smile touch Mattias’s lips.

When had love happened?

“I was looking right at him,” Mattias went on, Mattias who now called Náli love instead of my lord, “and then there was this sharp pain in the back of my head, and everything went black.”

Oliver again surveyed their surroundings. The doors to several dwellings stood ajar; one swayed on its hinges as a gusty breeze shot down the path. The gates of animal pens were chained back, the yards with the split-rail fences overgrown with weeds. Not so much as a solitary chicken pecked at the ground. Spiders had colonized the windows, and the stretched-thin hide used in place of glass had yellowed and cracked, gone brittle without regular care.

It was a place abandoned, and Oliver was grateful for the looming presence of the drakes behind them.

When he looked, Mattias had gotten to his feet, rubbing at the back of his head, still. Náli held his arm and looked up with him with an unmistakeable sort of worry. A pining child no longer: Náli’s gaze was that of a concerned lover. They’d consummated things, then. Oliver found himself wildly curious about the current political situation in the Fault Lands.

“You didn’t see where he went?” Náli asked, finally turning away from his Guard – Oliver checked, and yes, Mattias still wore the skull badge of Dead Guard Captain, so not everything had changed between them – to search their immediate area.

“No,” Mattias said, dropping his hand with another wince. “On account of being unconscious.”

Náli made a fretful clucking sound, like a nurse fussing over a child, but strode away from the longhouse, head swiveling back and forth as he searched. He walked to the nearest home, pushed the door inward, stuck his head inside, then turned back to them. “He’s had plenty of time to find a good vantage point. He could be anywhere.”

“Perhaps he left this plane once you fled,” Mattias suggested. “He wasn’t interested in me, after all.”

“Well, he wasn’t truly interested in me, either, he was – wait. What do you mean fled?”

Oliver walked toward the door of the longhouse and attempted to read the runes carved into the lintel. They’d been done with hammer and chisel, and looked fresh, the wood still pale where each line had been gouged. The language, though, was very old. An archaic set of runes that he couldn’t quite read. He could interpret individual words – “dragon,” “wolf,” – but not the meaning of the sentence.

“You took off with Valgrind–”

“I was carried away. The beast snatched me up and carried me up into the air! What was I to do?”

“Well,” Mattias said in a subdued tone. “You might have flown back down to check on me.”

“I–! Was–! I had to get Oliver!”

The door was built of worn-smooth wooden boards held together with two cross-pieces, top and bottom. In place of a more modern doorknob, he found a rudimentary latch that could have proved a liability should the villagers want to keep whoever was inside from coming out. He lifted it, and stepped inside.

“How did you know Oliver was here?” Mattias asked, and Oliver grimaced in sympathy. Poor Náli – he’d finally landed his lover, and now could enjoy lovers’ spats.

The interior of the longhouse was dim, but with a sense of space; the dark depths of it felt cavernous, rather than too-close. He smelled a faint whiff of old smoke, and something herbaceous. The central smoke hole had been left open, and grayish sunlight fell through in a single, pale shaft, highlighting the trough of stones where fires had obviously once burned.

Behind him, the door hinges creaked, and a foot landed softly on the hard-packed dirt of the longhouse floor. “He was my ancestor,” Náli said, quietly, all the temper now gone from his voice.

Oliver walked to the center of the room, and reached his fingers into the pale light; watched them turn ghostly white in the glow of it. “Who?”

“The man who lived here. The shaman. He was the first Corpse Lord. Lucian.” His voice was colored with reverence – and his face, when Oliver looked over his shoulder to see, was stamped with melancholy.

As if sensing his attention, Náli’s gaze slid from the hole in the ceiling down to meet Oliver’s, and he looked years older, suddenly, from the teenager Oliver had last seen in person.

“This is your village, then.”

“No.” Náli shook his head, silvery hair rippling over his shoulders. He wore lover’s beads, now, Oliver noted, two in the braids behind each ear, swaying with the movement of his head. “It was his, a very long time ago…before the Sels drove his people out.”

Oliver felt his brows go up. “The Sels?”

“Like I said before: it’s a long story. I’ve learned much about not only my past, but that of Aeretoll as well. The birth – or, rather, the arrival – of magic in this country. It’s–”

A cry of alarm went up outside from both drakes.

“Náli!” Mattias shouted. “Your Lordship!”

Oliver watched Náli’s eyes spring wide, and knew his own did the same. They pelted out the door and into the yard, where Mattias stood with feet braced apart and sword drawn. The drakes had their faces lifted to the sky, hissing and growling low in their throats.

“What?” Náli said. “Did he return?”

“No. But, look.” Mattias gestured upward with his sword, and they looked.

At first, Oliver thought he was looking at birds. The twin, eyebrow arcs of wings, flapping as they propelled themselves toward them. He spotted three.

But then Percy let out an angry roar, and the bird-shapes tilted in the air, banking at a steep angle, and he realized with a jolt that they weren’t birds at all, but something much, much larger, and growing even larger by the moment as they swooped toward them. He saw long tails swaying like rudders, and sinuous, serpentine bodies, necks stretched forward and wedge-shaped heads with long, narrow snouts.

Drakes.

These were dark, and as they changed angles again, the weak sunlight struck the scales of their sides with an iridescent purple sheen.

Percy sent a flood of aggression through their bond, a wave of protective rage that threatened to send Oliver to his knees. He went to his drake’s side and gripped the strap of his girth, willing him to calm.

“He wants to fight,” he said, having to shout to be heard over the growling.

Valgrind did, too, apparently, if his ululating war cries were anything to go by. The younger drake was digging up runnels of earth with his claws, stamping and swishing his tail in agitation.

“No,” Mattias said, voice hard, battle-ready. “There’s only two of ours, and three of theirs. And one of ours is a baby, besides. We have to leave.”

The wind was working in their favor, sweeping the three oncoming drakes off target and giving them a challenge, besides. But they were still coming, and they were – gods, they were big.

“Can we outfly them?” Oliver asked.

Through the bond, Percy was urging him to fight. Bite, claw, kill. Enemies. Rivals.

“They’re too fast!” Náli called. “We have to leave this plane. We have to go back!”

“Brilliant. How the fuck do I do that?”

“Use Percy.” Náli looped an arm around Valgrind’s flexing neck and extended a hand toward Mattias. “That’s how you got here. Make him take you back.”

“How?” Fear was winding his stomach into a knot; he’d broken out into a cold sweat beneath his clothes, and his lungs trembled on his next breath. He’d only been dreaming! Having a pleasant flight! And doom was falling toward him on spread bat wings, and Percy wanted to wrestle with it.

Kill, kill, kill.

No, no, no, Oliver thought back, fiercely. We have to leave! Do you understand? We have to go home! Back to the yard, back to bed!

The drakes were close enough now that Oliver could see the twisted spirals of their horns, and their wicked, curved teeth likes knives. Percy had never turned his guts to ice water like this, nor left his heart throbbing out of his chest.

“Ollie!” Náli shouted. “Go!”

Numb down to his fingers, he turned his head in time to watch Náli, Valgrind, and Mattias vanish. They faded out, slow at first, as though shrouded in mist; then there was a wink of light, and they were gone; nothing left but the deep gouges Valgrind had clawed into the road.

“How?” Oliver murmured. “How did–”

Percy let out an awful, explosive roar, and it shocked him into action. He spared one last look upward – gods, they were bearing down on them – and then scrambled up into the saddle, took up the reins, and pressed both gloved palms to Percy’s neck.

“All right, listen up,” he said, even as Percy stretched his wings and gathered himself, muscles coiling like great springs between Oliver’s calves. “No. Listen to me, Percival. We’re going home. Now.”

He shut his eyes, and thought home with his whole being. Pictured the palace, and his makeshift bedchamber, Erik sprawled across their fur-covered pallet in the corner of the study. Pictured the lean-to that had been constructed for Percy and Alfie, and Alfie curled up at her mate’s side, gleaming like pearl in the moonlight. Take us home.

A roar sounded above, a multiplicity of voices, laced at the edges with the high notes of shrieks.

Home.

He felt Percy acquiesce with an unhappy rumble.

The world lurched, or he did. A bubble of silence, with pressure in his ears and a sense of being squeezed – then nothing.

Then–

Oliver opened his eyes with a ragged gasp to find that he was sitting upright in bed, hair plastered to his face and neck with the sweat that was pouring down his body. His skin tingled, and his fingers, he found, were knotted in the blankets, flexed so hard his knuckles ached. The room was dark save the burnished orange of the coals in the grate; the fire had burned down and the room had grown cold.

Oliver shivered, and his next breath smelled of ink, and parchment, and pipe smoke. Of the pine oil pressed into the pillows, and Erik, specifically, his sleep-warm skin.

It had worked. They were home – though it took him a moment to catch his breath and fully comprehend that.

It had seemed so real, in that place of dreams. It was, he supposed. He could still feel its breeze against his cheeks, and hear the shrill cries of the drakes plunging toward them, black scales lit up like amethyst in the sunlight.

He couldn’t decide, at first, if it truly had been just a dream, if Náli and Matti and Valgrind had been constructs of his imagination, and nothing more.

But why would he imagine the name of the Selesee emperor? That seemed too authentic and specific a detail to have been dreamed up.

Moonlight glowed blue in the diamond panes of the window, and his next breath spilled like white smoke from his lips, drifting up to conceal the view of mountain peaks just visible through the glass. He began to accept it, then, by degrees.

Romanus Tyrsbane, Immortal Emperor Unchallenged of Seles, possessed strong magic, and was searching for Oliver in the Between. Had quite likely sent drakes to attack Oliver and his friends.

Speaking of said friends…Náli had clearly shared his magic with Mattias, enabling him to enter the astral plane. There was most definitely a story there, and one Oliver needed to know, now that he was being hunted, apparently.

Hunted.

And to what end, he knew not.

Overwhelmed, suddenly, he pitched forward and rested his face in his clammy, trembling hands.

The sheets rustled beside him as Erik turned over lazily, drawing in a deep, sleepy breath. Oliver felt him stiffen when he caught sight of him. Heard the change in his breathing, felt the warmth radiating off his body as he sat up beside him.

“Ollie?” His voice was gravelly from sleep. “What’s wrong?”

Oliver’s voice came out a dry croak. “Send a falcon to the Fault Lands. Things have changed.”

2

Leif didn’t like sleeping.

He’d never thought much about it…before. Had spent his days sitting in on council meetings or addressing the peoples’ petitions in the throne room with Erik. Had gone riding, and hawking, and spent hours training in the yard, focusing on footwork and building his strength as a swordsman. He’d stayed up reading by candlelight, poring over maps, and histories of the nation he was to someday inherit. All day he spent trying to become the best heir possible, and when his head hit the pillow each night, sleep came on quick and dreamless.

He had thought, once he turned, to continue in that vein. How could the sleep of a beast be less restful or more complicated than that of a man?

But he was no ordinary beast. Not a true wolf, but no longer truly a man, either; was instead some bewitched abomination, half in one world and half in another, and dreamed of a dim place full of fields of waving grass, and forests full of shadows and whispers. He walked on four legs, in those dreams, nose full of too many competing scents. His ruff would lift, prickling the skin down his back, and he’d bare his fangs without knowing why.

Threat. Danger.

Simple, wolfish thoughts, seemingly without source.

He saw other wolves there, sometimes. Flickers through the black tree trunks; the gleam of gold eyes in the gloaming. He would bark a greeting, and trot toward them…but they always darted away, hackles up, teeth bared. They smelled cold and strange. These were not of his pack. Real wolves, he’d reasoned, in his waking, two-legged hours. His imagination’s way of shunning him? Telling him he didn’t belong? Had his self-loathing followed him into the land of dreams?

Every night that he dreamed, he dreamed as a wolf. Even in his nightmares, when man-shaped figures crowned with branching antlers reared up out of the mist and reached for him with clawed hands. Fear, despair, and empty, gnawing hunger – all of it came to him in his wolf shape. A shape he was trying hard to pretend he did not possess.

And so he hated to sleep. And he sat up most nights with his back pressed to the hard, timber wall of the hay shed while his pack lay flopped all around him, paws jerking as they enjoyed their own dreams, noses twitching; the occasional thin howl pierced the rustle of hay and, in the distance, the low calls of owls.

Tonight, he sat with his arms folded, pinching his own side every so often when his gritty eyelids grew too heavy to hold up any longer. It was too warm in the shed, with the insulting hay and all their combined body heat. Then again, he was over-warm all the time, the wolf burning hot beneath his skin. He’d taken to wearing sleeveless tunics and jerkins, like Ragnar had always favored. He loathed the concession on his part, the way it was yet another similarity they shared.

Just as he loathed the way Ragnar, the only other wolf awake, watched him now from his place reclined across three bales, head propped on his arm. His body was relaxed, utterly still, his expression unguarded; his eyes glowed blue as gemstones, fixed unblinking on Leif.

Leif growled, softly, in warning. But he didn’t mean it, truly, and Ragnar could tell.

Damn the emotional perceptiveness of wolves, himself included.

“What?” Leif asked, when the staring continued.

“An alpha needs his sleep, too, you know. Perhaps even more. How can he be sharp, how can he look after his pack if he’s dead on his feet?”

Leif growled again. “You aren’t asleep.”

“I’m not the alpha.”

The thing that continued to surprise Leif, over and over, was the way Ragnar didn’t seem to resent the fact that he was no longer alpha. He’d been bested, forced to submit, to give up his title and his position in the pack…and though he sometimes growled back, Leif had never caught so much as a whiff of anger or jealousy to have been supplanted. It simply wasn’t possible for Ragnar to lie to him anymore, and of the two of them, it was Leif who struggled most with the idea of an honest Ragnar. It wasn’t right. But it was undeniable.

“Only you,” Leif said bitterly, “could twist subservience into an insult.”

Ragnar cocked his head the opposite way, a portrait of confusion. “How have I insulted you, alpha?”

Leif growled again, more fiercely this time, if only for the pleasure of watching Ragnar’s barely-perceptible flinch. A few of the other wolves twitched in their sleep, ears flicking at the sound of their leader’s reprimand, but none woke, thankfully.

“You know what I mean,” Leif said, and Ragnar’s gaze dropped. He gave a slight nod of acknowledgement.

It was alarming how quickly Leif’s ire cooled at one small gesture. He’d stopped trying to understand or rationalize that part of himself; blamed it on his wolf half and tried not to dwell as much as he once had.

A long moment passed, filled with the snores of wolves and the call of an owl, somewhere distant, beyond the reach of human ears. The bell sounded for the changing of the night guard.

Ragnar said, “I was being sincere, you know.”

Leif’s gaze had slid toward the crack at the top of the door, where sagging hinges had left a strip of indigo sky visible; it slid back, now, to where Ragnar had resettled, flat on his back with his hands folded behind his head.

“I know,” he admitted, reluctantly.

Ragnar didn’t grin – but his mouth twitched, and Leif knew he almost had.

“Is it nightmares?” Ragnar pressed. “Or that infernal Frodeson need to control every aspect of your life and the lives of those around you?”

“I’m not a Frodeson.”

“Pfft. Technicality. You’re Erik through and through – more than you’re your own father, what with him being dead most of your life.”

Leif managed not to growl; swallowed the sound at the last moment so it was more of a cough.

Ragnar chuckled. “Oh, come now. Growl at me. You don’t have to pretend to be civilized. Not with me.”

Leif did growl, then, unable to help it, and Ragnar’s resulting grin was delighted.

I hate you, he thought, but couldn’t say…because it wasn’t true.

“But. Seriously.” Ragnar sobered and sat upright, crossing his legs and resting his forearms on his knees. “Why don’t you sleep? It isn’t because you’re not exhausted – you’ve the ragged face of a wet nurse these days.”

Leif frowned at him.

“You know.” A go on gesture. “Because they don’t get much…you know what I mean. My point is: you want to sleep. You need sleep. So why won’t you?”

Leif clenched his jaw against the urge to respond. He’d not spoken to anyone about his…dream problem. He confided little to nothing to his brother these days, and less to Erik, who gazed on Leif with the weight of disappointment heavy across the ridge of his knitted brows. He looked at Leif as if he was lost to him; gone mad or grievously wounded. Past hope. Mother and Oliver were the most outwardly supportive – and Oliver even possessed his own kind of magic – but he didn’t feel as if he could have an honest discussion with either of them. He could sense their judgement behind their smiles.

But here was Ragnar, seemingly eager to listen.

Ragnar who was also a wolf.

Who was the whole source of Leif’s misery, now, being the one who’d turned him. Still…

The gritty, sand-filled sensation when he blinked, and a massive, jaw-cracking yawn decided for him.

“It’s…” Deciding didn’t make it easy, however. “The dreams.”

Ragnar stared at him with a wolf’s fixed attention, that, in theory, should have made confessing more difficult, but was instead such a reminder of their shared fate – their inhumanity – that it loosened his jaw. “I’m always a wolf in my dreams.”

Clearly puzzled, Ragnar shrugged. “And you don’t like that because…?”

“I’m always a wolf. Shouldn’t I appear as myself sometimes in my dreams?”

Ragnar’s eyes widened, and then his expression slid into lines of infuriating smugness. “Ah.”

“What do you mean, ‘ah’?”

Like flesh parting beneath the slow slice of a knife, Ragnar smiled. “There’s your mistake: you think of it is a wolf, and as myself.”

Leif had learned not to take the bait in these sorts of conversational traps; Ragnar loved being asked questions, having his wisdom sought, or some such.

His smile dimmed a fraction, when Leif didn’t prod him, but he pressed on regardless. “You are only ever yourself. There is no you separate from the wolf. You’re the wolf and the wolf is you.”

Leif stared at him.

Ragnar lifted his hands, half-helpless, half-frustrated. “Were you searching for a more complicated answer? Something earth-shattering? The truth so rarely is, alpha.”

Because staring was proving effective, Leif did it some more.

Ragnar huffed. “You don’t like to shift, and you spend all day trying to force the wolf down deep, where no one will see or hear him. But he wants – no, he needs – to come out, and so he does when you sleep. My educated guess would be that he’ll continue to take control in your dreams until you let him out to play during the daylight.”

The worst part was: he knew Ragnar was correct, in this instance. The more he tried to suppress it, the more insistent the wolf became, until it was an effort not to snarl and snap at his family over the last ham roll at breakfast.

That was another thing: his appetite had increased. His taste for meat, specifically. The North had always been a place where large helpings of venison, or pork, or beef, or lamb were heaped onto plates at every meal. Here, there were no tea cakes, or jellies, or watercress sandwiches that one might have expected in the South, but real food, cut into portions intended for warriors. And still, Leif was hungry.

Was almost desperate for a woman in a way he’d never been before. He’d caught himself eyeing a kitchen girl just the other day, and been appalled to discover he was becoming a letch.

He was boiling inside his own skin, on edge and ready to explode at a moment’s notice. Even if he knew it was the wolf driving all his basic urges now, teeth bared and ears pinned, furious over being restrained, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

Ragnar said, “You’re a fool.”

Leif’s gaze snapped to him, and he let a low, warning growl slip through his teeth.

“You are,” Ragnar insisted, chin tipping back to show his throat, and the flashing silver torq that encircled it. Submissive, but not willing to keep quiet. “Men spend every day of their lives trying to become as strong, as fast, perceptive as us. We can see farther, and hear more keenly, and we can smell when someone’s lying to us. All the training in the kingdom can’t make up for the gift we’ve been given – and it is that. A gift. You think of it as a curse, and so you won’t use it to your best advantage. You were already one of the most promising young warriors in the realm, Leif; if you embraced your wolf, you’d be unbeatable.

“Do you know how many men would kill to be in your position? You’re young, golden, built like an ox and the heir to a kingdom. And you can transform into a wolf at will! There are hundreds of scrawny, spotty-faced lads out there who’d give their right arms to be you. And yet there you sit, pouting and being miserable. Wishing away the gods’ blessings.”

“Blessings.”

“Aye. I said what I said, and I’m right.”

“The responsibility of an entire kingdom is a blessing to you?”

“It is for anyone born in a cave,” Ragnar snapped in return. “Or a tent. For someone who lies down every night on a scrap of old, mildewed blanket, his belly empty, his boots full of holes. You’ve never gone hungry.” A growl edged his words, now, and his pupils had narrowed to slits. “You’ve never wondered how you’ll last through winter, or if your family loves you. You’ve never–” He bit off the last, growl tailing into a frustrated whine. His breathing had picked up, and he opened his hands, flexed them in a way that seemed to be self-soothing.

It was these days rare that Ragnar was the one fighting his anger, and Leif sitting calmly in attendance, so he took a moment to savor it. Then, in icy tones, he said, “Is this your sad attempt to earn my sympathy?”

Ragnar growled again – and Leif silenced him with a growl of his own.

“You arrived at the Yule Festival upon my uncle’s invitation. You entered the hall of his palace as his guest – broke bread at his table. And all the while, you were scheming, setting up your man to kill my brother.”

“I–”

“I am not finished. You stood by while your man was executed, letting him take the fall for a plot that was solely yours. You traveled north with us, had your allies harry us the entire way, and then bundled us off to be eaten by cannibals.

“When we survived all of that, you attacked our camp, turned me into the fucking beast that I am today, and raced your way south to assist in the attempted sacking of our home. If you expect me to feel sorry for your rough, clannish upbringing, you’re even stupider than I thought.”

Ragnar’s mouth plucked sideways. “There’s no need to list my treacheries. I know what I’ve done.”

“And still you challenge me, at every turn, until I wonder why I don’t pin you down to the chopping block, take your head, and be done with it.”

“Then why don’t you?”

Leif bared his teeth rather than answer.

Silence reigned a moment – a silence in which Leif knew that he failed to project any sort of threat, just as Ragnar failed to wallow in contrition. A silence that Ragnar broke, because he was feeling far too comfortable these days (because Leif had grown far too lenient, and, in his weakest moments, something like fond).

“I wasn’t trying to inspire sympathy for me,” he grumbled. “There’s plenty of pathetic young wretches in this kingdom you ought to feel sorry for, instead of feeling sorry for yourself.”

Leif sent him a sharp look.

“I’m trying to help you,” Ragnar said, lip curling. “Not that you’re grateful for it. And I am telling you the truth. If you keep on in this way, pretending you haven’t changed, then you’ll never sleep, you’ll stay miserable, and you’ll end up either taking the head off a messenger, or throwing one of your mother’s maids over a table.”

Gods damn the man, how had he noticed that?

In answer to Leif’s glare, he tapped the end of his own nose. “You stink worse than a stag in rut. Do yourself, and everyone else a favor, and find a willing woman to bed. Honestly, that will drive you crazier than a lack of sleep.”

When Leif didn’t respond, he shrugged, and then laid back down, hands linked over his stomach this time. “Fine. Don’t listen to me. You’re doing so well on your own.” He closed his eyes, took a deep, agitated breath, and from all outward appearances dropped into sleep without effort.

Leif worked his jaw a moment, willing the tension out of his shoulders, trying to relax muscles that had gone tense and knotted during their conversation.

Would it help? Finding a harlot to bed; shifting to his four-legged form and going out with the rest of the pack to hunt in the afternoons? He didn’t go with them, despite their requests and their dejected looks. Bound by his torq, Ragnar was unable to shift, and so Leif had taken to staying behind to monitor him. He might not be able to shift, but he could still bash someone over the head for his purse, or steal a horse, or steal someone’s wife. Thievery, rape, murder, and all manner of human crimes were still available to him, and he didn’t dare ask Erik, Rune, or even Bjorn to watch him in his absence.

You could put him back in his cell, reason intoned at the back of his mind. Put his manacles back on and lock him behind a sturdy door of bars.

He shuddered at the thought. A wolf didn’t belong in a cage.

And a collar didn’t belong around his throat.

Frustrated, the insides of his cheeks bitten raw from all the tooth-grinding, he let out a sharp breath, closed his eyes, and tipped his head back against the hard boards of the wall. He was the alpha, damn it; could he not also command himself?

Go to sleep, he ordered, and felt like the fool Ragnar had called him.

But he did fall asleep. One moment hay was pricking him through his wool trousers, and the next he knew the sensation of falling. A drop, and swoop, and when he opened his eyes, the shed had been replaced by a stretch of hushed, snowy forest.

He recognized it, now, wonderingly. There was the forked tree with a perfect seat in one of its trunks; there was the cluster of boulders that looked like hunched old men in their cloaks of snow. He felt the cold between his toe pads – and, yes, there were four sets of toes. A glance revealed paws instead of feet, and an inhale carried with it the scents of deer, and squirrel, and snow, and pine sap, and the remnants of a recent kill, tang of blood on the breeze that rustled the boughs together overhead. The sky, glimpsed between tall, stately trunks, glowed turquoise, the night illuminated with moonglow. He could see the wink of stars through the branches; heard the stirring of an owl taking flight.

He smelled wolves, also, and, like always, he trotted toward them, high-stepping in the deep snow that had gathered in drifts between the tree trunks.

The breeze changed direction, and brought with it a new scent: that of a familiar wolf. He halted, and turned, and saw the glowing blue gaze of a great, shaggy pale wolf. It peeked around a tree, head held low, shoulders tucked. Questioning, submissive. It didn’t offer a challenge, but whined quietly, asking to approach.

It was Ragnar.

Pack. Beta. Mine.

There was nothing complicated about his thoughts or feelings now, in his wolf shape. Only truth, and simple acknowledgement. Simple happiness: his tail wagged, and his tongue lolled when he opened his mouth to taste the air.

Ragnar whined again, and edged out from behind the tree, head bobbing up, and then back down.

Leif sneezed a greeting, and wagged his tail harder.

Friend. Pack. Come.

Ragnar crept closer, and closer still…and closed the last distance in a crawl, so he wound up belly-down in the snow at Leif’s feet. He smelled eager to please, and giving, and when Leif dropped his head, he rolled over onto his back to show his belly, whining in earnest now.

Mine. Mine, mine, mine, Leif thought, and touched their noses, snuffled at his throat, obediently exposed.

Ragnar licked at his mouth, and his eyes, tail sweeping back and forth in the snow. Glad. Pack. Love.

Leif sat back on his haunches to allow the other wolf to retake his feet. Ragnar shot up, ducked in to lick at Leif’s face again, a rapid flurry of pink tongue, and then ruffed an invitation and took off through the trees; he glanced back over his shoulder, seeking him out. Alpha. Come. Play.

Leif had never before interacted with anyone or anything in these wolf dreams. It took him a long moment – and Ragnar hunkering down in play position, tail wagging high in the air – for him to recognize that the feeling that welled up inside him was simple, animal joy.

He barked, and raced off into the benighted forest with his packmate, the two of them jostling and play-growling.

For the first time, his wolf was happy.

3

Amelia had learned that she shared her mother’s gift of detachment. She woke each morning to the banging of hammers and the milling of feet, the din of voices, and the shouts of a campground. The rumble and cry of dragons, fresh from the hunt, talking to one another, seeking her out through the bond they shared. She bathed with a chipped bowl of cold water, breath steaming, skin prickled with goosebumps, and donned a man’s clothes. Strapped a knife and a sword to her hips and went down to a cold breakfast of hardtack, and a day spent inventorying what new soldiers had trickled in from the small holdfasts, estates, and farms of the east.

By the time she fell back across the dusty mattress she’d taken for her own each night, she felt more defeated than the day before. They had the drakes – for scouting, for security, and she hoped for battle, when it came to that – but they lacked the manpower to launch a forward offensive. What numbers they did have lacked proper fitness and training. They were left with the dregs: those too old, young, or infirm to have marched in the first campaign. Wounded veterans, green boys, a few thieves and cattle rustlers who’d been let out of dungeons.

So full, and dispiriting, were her days that she found herself going for whole stretches of hours without ever thinking of Malcolm. She’d begun to expect Connor or Reginald’s faces when she turned to make a remark. Didn’t almost call Lord Edward by the wrong name anymore when he approached from behind and called her Lia, quietly, out of the hearing of the soldiers. The nickname no longer sent a thrill down her spine; was merely a shorthand way of getting her attention during another busy, fruitless day.

But her dreams betrayed her.

All day, she was able to hold memory at arm’s length, functional, and practical, and not at all emotional. It was Lady Katherine’s detachment she employed in her waking hours, her mother’s stern commitment to what-must-be-done.

But when sleep dragged her under, she stood in sea of waving gray grass, surrounded by her drakes, and Mal was there.

Some nights, they lay down in the grass together, soft as a feather mattress, and made love; on those occasions, she woke to find her heart racing, the sheets twisted around her, damp between her thighs. Other times, they walked, and talked, recalling all that they’d done together, growing up, and all that they’d never do again. She’d tried to take him up on Alpha with her, but he’d shaken his head, smile rueful, and said, “That’s not for me, love.”

Gods, she missed him. Even sitting beside him amidst the rustling of ghost grass, she ached for him. If she had enough magic to bond with dragons, surely that meant some magic existed that would allow her to grip him tight and drag him back across the veil to be with her in the real world once more.

One morning, she’d awoken to the weight of a body behind her in bed, and startled upright, heart slamming toward joy, convinced she’d managed, somehow. Only to turn over and see that it was only Liam, Connor’s son, who’d snuck into bed with her. He slept the innocent sleep of childhood, thumb in his mouth, lashes long as fans on his plump cheeks. She’d flopped back down and allowed herself a moment of quiet grief, eyes stinging. Then it had been cold water, and a heavy sword, and another day just like all the others.

Tonight, she and Mal stood within the loose ring of all five of her drakes, their long tails swish-swishing in the grass. Mal’s hand was warm and strong in hers…but to her horror, she realized it no longer felt familiar. That she was slowly forgetting what it had felt like: the exact breadth of his palm, the pattern of his calluses.

“What?” he asked, and reached to touch her cheek. His thumb, she saw, when he drew back, glittered with moisture.

She was crying.

She wiped at her own cheeks with her free hand and attempted a smile. “Nothing. Only tired.”

He sighed – but fondly. “Lia, you don’t have to do all of this.”

It was a conversation they’d had a few times, now. He was proud of her, and told her so often…but worried, too. Had encouraged her to see to her own happiness. “And how can I – or anyone – be happy if the whole country falls to the Sels?” she’d reasoned, for which he hadn’t had an answer.

“I know,” she said, now, and turned her face away, because it was hard, sometimes, to rectify the Mal she’d known in life with this shade who wanted her to stop trying.

Across the plain, a stand of woods stood dark sentry, its pines tall and crowded, their trunks nearly black. A strip of forest that both beckoned and warned away, not unlike the Inglewood in its sheer formidability. She always swore something watched them from its shadows – but today something truly was watching.

Two wolves stood at the forest’s edge. Large wolves, with oddly light eyes visible even from a distance. Both were a dappled shade of gray that looked nearly golden in this strange, dreamland light. Both watched them with rapt, unblinking attention.

Amelia was so startled to see them there that she gasped.

Alpha had been licking between his claws, a habit all the drakes performed and which reminded her of a cat grooming its paws, but he lifted his head with a sharp inhale at the sound of her surprise. His nostrils flared, and he sniffed noisily. She could tell when he caught sight of the wolves because his tail coiled around her and Malcolm, a protective shield, and he ducked his head and rumbled a warning growl that would have sent any animal running for the hills.

But the paler of the two wolves cocked his head to the side and regarded them curiously. His companion nosed at him, turned, finally, and slipped back beneath the shade of the trees. After a beat, the curious one whirled and raced after, a flick of his bushy tail-tip the last glimpse of him.

“That was…odd,” Amelia said.

“I wonder–” Mal began.

Her vision filled with a rush of red, and the world seemed to tilt sideways in a now-familiar sequence that meant Alpha was – rather rudely – barging into her consciousness.

Yes, what is it? she thought, as her vision cleared into that odd, fuzzy-edged view he sometimes offered her. In those moments, she instinctively knew that she was seeing the world through his eyes – but that her own eyes weren’t built like a drake’s, and so everything was a little off and bowed-out looking on her end.

He responded with a growl.

There at the edge of the woods where the two wolves had stood, she saw one wolf and a man. A tall, strong-looking man in brown leather belted tight at his waist. His tunic was sleeveless, and his arms were heavily muscled. He was blond, and his hair fell well past his shoulders, lay in rippling plenty on his chest. Ornaments winked from the waves of it, small bits of silver or gems. She noted a strong jaw beneath a close-cropped beard, and the handle of a longsword sprouting over his shoulder. His blue eyes were glowing.

He was…strikingly handsome. Not that it mattered; Drakewell was full of handsome men. But the sight of him, Alpha’s growl echoing in the back of her mind, sent a frisson of awareness through her. A tingling at the back of her neck, a tug in her gut.

The vision flickered: a man and a wolf, and then two wolves, man and then wolves. Amelia knew, somehow, that they were both. Men who could become wolves. Then one was a man again, and solid. He swatted at the wolf’s side, turned, and trotted off into the forest. The wolf lingered a moment, and when he opened his mouth, he looked as though he was smiling. He turned, then, and darted after the man, the flick of his tail the last she saw before he was gone from sight.

Red again, and she was back in her own mind, Mal beside her, Alpha’s tail warm and solid across her knees. She blinked at the forest, at the place where the wolves – the men – had stood. Nothing stirred there, now.

She turned a glance up to Alpha, and he met it, great red-gold eyes narrowed. He sent her a warning, a sense of danger.

“Who were they?” she asked aloud.

“I don’t know,” Mal said.

Through their bond, Alpha again signaled danger, and something else: skinwalkers.

~*~

She was startled awake by the blare of trumpets, somewhere out in the yard. She rolled over and blinked at the water-spotted ceiling a moment while her vision cleared.

It wasn’t yet dawn, the light hinting at silver, its glow beginning to fill the room so that she could make out the hulking shape of the armoire, the washstand, the bed posts.

The trumpets repeated: two long blasts, unhurried, rote. New arrivals, then.

Amelia closed her eyes again, chasing the remnants of the dream. Usually when she did that, it was to recall Malcolm’s last smile, before he’d faded out. The feel of his hand on her face. But this time, it was the wolves that filled her mind. The man she’d seen one become. Alpha’s warning.

Who were they?

Why did she care?

She sighed, threw off the covers, and sat up to start her day.

4

The worst part of war was camp life.

Well, not truly. The worst was getting raped, and hanged, and surviving both, and then voluntarily landing yourself back into the war effort after a short, attempted return to one’s former foppish ways.

But after that, it was camp.

Temporary camps weren’t so bad. Sometimes, there was a certain charm in the campfire bonhomie of them, passing bottles and flasks around while a deer roasted on the spit. But stationary, dug-in encampments were nothing but cesspools of flies, waste – human and horse – and whoring. It reeked, the ground was nothing but churned-up mud, and if they weren’t practicing drills, most of the soldiers – such as they were – spent their days drinking and gambling, camp followers perched on their knees.

Over the weeks since Inglewood had been retaken, and the manor house turned into their motley army’s headquarters, Reggie had found himself drawn night after night to the field where the drakes bedded down for the night. Away from the campfires, and the shouted laughter; the drunken brawls and the overly loud exclamations of whores in the throes. At some point during every night watch, he found reason to visit Amelia’s beasts – one in particular.

“You musn’t tell anyone,” he whispered, in the dark chill just before dawn. He pulled a hunk of dried ham from his cloak pocket and offered it on a flat palm as he would when offering a horse a carrot. “They’d be jealous.”

Given that drakes could communicate with Amelia telepathically, keeping these nightly treats a secret was probably impossible. But Valencia – in his estimation the loveliest of the creatures – took the ham daintily between her teeth and swallowed it in a few efficient movements.

“You’re only humoring me, aren’t you?” he asked, wryly, and gave her a scritch behind the horns. Her eyes slitted shut and she leaned into the touch, crooning a low, pleased sound not unlike a purr. “That’s all right. If I’m to be humored, I’d rather it be by you than anyone else.”

She leaned in close, which would have once sent him stumbling back to land on his backside in the dirt. Now, he welcomed the warmth of her breath on his face, and her gentle nuzzling of his shoulder.

“Who’s a lovely girl? Who’s the prettiest?” When she cracked her eyes open and warbled happily, he was stunned all over again by their color, that brilliant amber backlit from within.

A dozen yards away, Alpha lifted his head and gave a rumble of greeting. Someone was coming, someone the drakes knew and didn’t fear. Reggie’s stomach tightened, though, and he smoothed his cloak and pushed back his hair; steeled himself as he turned to meet someone who would expect him to play the commanding general.

Tall grass shifted and waved in the last of the moonlight, and a small shape emerged in the clearing where the drakes had flattened the grass down into a bower. Reggie’s gut unclenched when he saw that it was only Liam Dale, Connor’s son.

“Reggie! Reggie! Reggie!” He ran into Reggie’s legs, nearly knocking him down in the process, and gripped the front of his tunic in both hands, tugging excitedly. “Reggie!”

“Yes, yes, I see you. What is it?”

“There’s people coming! The carriage is covered in jewels!” There was just enough light to make out the way the boy’s eyes shone. “It must be a princess!”

The sentry trumpets rang out across the estate, two long blasts to signal a friendly arrival.

Reggie lifted his brows. “Now, how would you know a princess was coming before the guards did, hm?”

Demonstrating a bit more social grace than his father, Liam dropped to his heels and wiped at his nose, chagrined. “I guessed?” he tried.

“You guessed the carriage was covered in jewels?”

“Well…” He knotted his fingers together, fidgeting where he stood. Reggie was quietly horrified to note that he was barefoot, especially considering his own breath and that of the drakes curled as white steam in the chill air. “I…saw it,” Liam admitted, and then sighed, because he knew he was to be lectured.

“Mmhm.” Reggie steered him around by the shoulder so they both faced the manor and offered his hand. Liam sighed again, deflating with comic seriousness, but clapped his small, grubby hand into Reggie’s and held on tight. Reggie had never wanted to hold the child’s hand – nor carry him on a hip, which he’d now done more than once – but had found it was the best way to keep him from pelting off mid-conversation because he’d seen a butterfly or a toad or some such. “And how might you have seen it if you were tucked away warm and snug in your bed?”

Liam brightened, as they began making their way down the path of crushed grass. He reached to pat at Valencia’s nose, in parting, and Reggie lifted a wave toward her with his free hand; perhaps drakes understood a good wave; he was ridiculous, truly. “I saw it out the window,” he said, excitement mounting again. “And–”

“Nice try, but you can’t fool me, old chap. There’s mud up to your ankles.”

“But–”

“You might attempt to be truthful,” Reggie said, lightly. “It carries more weight than you’d expect.”

With a noisy sigh, Liam admitted defeat. “I was out past the guard lines.”

Reggie chose not to examine the way his insides lurched and turned cold when he thought of this small boy, mop of hair gleaming in the light of the torches they passed through, out on his own in the dark of night, at the mercy of wolves, at best, and enemy scouts, at worst. There were soldiers that would ransom a child; he didn’t believe the Sels were of that ilk.

“All the way to the tree line?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“Past it.”

“Gods, Liam, you could have–” He cut himself off, and attempted, unsuccessfully, to choke back the worry that boiled in his chest and up his throat.

Liam said, “But nothing happened! I can be quick as a hare, and quiet as a mouse. No one even saw me!”

“Yes, but someone might have.”

“But they didn’t. It’s not fair.” He kicked a good-sized pebble off the path – it went skittering off into the grass, not at all mouse-quiet – and Reggie wondered how callused his toes must be for it not to smart them. “I’ve always been able to go off into the wood. Why can’t I now?”

“Things are different now.”

“Because of the war,” Liam said with contempt. He spent half his time thrilled by the array of soldiers in their armor, sword practice, the collection of sleek horses on the picket lines…and the other half grumbling about the new rules by which he was forced to live. The boy had been born and lived his first years in the deeps of the Inglewood, and now suddenly found himself a lord’s son, his mother dead, the crumbling ducal estate the center of a war camp. That was a lot of change for a very young person, Reggie could allow.

“Yes, because of the war,” he said, patiently. They’d reached the fringes of camp, now, and passed through another pair of torches onto trampled, bare ground, the path now lined with tents, some of which were dark, some of which blazed with lantern light. He heard singing, and conversation, and someone snoring like a wild boar. “In peace time, things would be different – though I shudder to think of your father allowing you to run wild in that forest. There’s bears, and boars, and wolves, and lions. Given there were drakes slumbering in caverns, who’s to say what else might be lurking in the shadows?”

“I’m not afraid of bears, and boars, and wolves, and lions.” With his free hand, he mimed a sword thrust. “And the drakes all like me,” he said, small chest puffing out with pride.

“Yes, they do all like you,” Reggie had to admit. “My point remains about the war, however. A Sel in gold armor won’t be as easy to frighten off or bewitch as a woodland beast. Everyone has to take precautions, now, adults included.”

The tent flap to their right lifted, suddenly, light spilling forth across the path, and Reggie reacted on instinct: he tugged Liam close and then behind him, so he stood between the boy and…

His own father, it turned out.

Connor stood loose-limbed and unbothered in unlaced trousers and an open shirt that revealed a trim waist, lightly-furred chest, and an array of ugly scars that Reggie tried not to stare at. His hair was wild, his eyes half-lidded, and a dark love-bite was blooming on the side of his throat, too high to be hidden by any collar. The source of said bite must have been one of the two naked camp followers sprawled on a bedroll behind him, a tangle of bare limbs and tousled hair, snoring softly.

“What sort of nonsense are you scaring him with now, Lord Priss?” Connor asked, scratching at his stomach and smirking.

Slowly, as the days crawled past, Reggie was gaining some skill in ignoring the baited lines the man insisted on dropping. The first night on the estate had helped with that: seeing him drunk and pathetic after finding his dead wife’s corpse. Sheer dint of will had carried him the rest of the way.

Still, the sight of him disheveled and half-naked, and so casual about it, the scent of sex wafting off of him…it did things to Reggie’s insides better not thought of.

“Speaking of precautions…” Reggie drawled, gaze sliding purposefully to the naked women and then back. “You might want to take some of your own unless it’s your intent to give Liam a brother or sister.”

Connor snorted, dark gaze sparkling with amusement.

Hateful man.

“Daddy!” Liam exclaimed, and tugged loose from Reggie to launch himself at his father.

Connor stepped out onto the path, tent flap shutting behind him, and bent to catch his son and scoop him up into his arms. Liam flung his arms around Connor’s neck, and even if Reggie didn’t approve of the man’s lackadaisical parenting style, there was no doubt that his son loved him, and was loved in return.

Barefoot as the boy, Connor fell into step beside Reggie and nodded them along down the path. “Where are we off to at this horrid hour of the morning, gentlemen?”

Liam recalled his original, thrilling news with a gasp. “Daddy, there’s a princess!”

“A princess, really?”

“Yes, coming up the road in a jeweled carriage. I saw her!”

Reggie noted, with a pulse of melancholy, the difference in the way Liam spoke with his father. Around Reggie, and all the other men and women of the camp, Stranger and Aquitainian alike, Liam tried to play the little grownup. Still the boy, yes, but it was easy to forget that he was only five, until he launched himself full-bore at Connor with a squeal of “Daddy!”

“The trumpets just sounded,” Reggie said, voice dropping to the frosty register he preferred to use with Connor. “We’ve a new arrival.”

“One who likes to show up unfashionably early, eh?”

“A princess, I said,” Liam insisted.

“Oh, of course. Perhaps a Northern one?” He twisted slightly, as they walked; Reggie could see and sense his attention, at his periphery. “Did young Oliver finally get his king down here, do you think?”

“We’ll find out, I suppose.” Reggie nodded ahead, where a crowd was beginning to gather in what had once been the manor’s circular front drive, but was now the place where the camp blacksmiths had set up their mobile forges. Guards in light armor and men fresh from their bedrolls in nightshirt and robe were gathering beneath the glow of a dozen torches. Above their murmurs, Reggie could make out the creak and groan of a vehicle, and the thunder of many hooves.

A young lad wearing what looked to be his mother’s fur-lined robe turned and spotted the two of them. “My Lords General,” he said, eyes popping wide. He sketched a quick bow which, frankly, embarrassed Reggie, and stepped aside to motion them forward.

They were my lords general, though, so Reggie nodded in response and stepped through. The crowd gave ground for them, a ripple of attention and then steps aside, until Reggie and Connor, the latter still holding Liam, stood at the head of the gathering.

“Look, look!” Liam said, wriggling in Connor’s arms, half-climbing onto his father’s shoulders for a better view.

Reggie did not want to examine the way that picture of smiling father and excited son made him feel, and so he trained his gaze on the head of the driveway where it emerged from the forest road.

Mounted bannermen came first, in full plate and helm, surcoats fluttering and horses trimmed out in their tourney day best. An ostentatious display fit for a king – but not a Northern one, Reggie knew straight off. This was pure Southern pageantry. The first two of the four riders carried streaming torches; the rear two carried the blue field of stars of Aquitaine, and the white, winged horse on deep plum that belonged to the Duchy of Astoria.

Reggie’s stomach soured.

Beside him, in a laughing voice, Connor said, “Gods, it’s House Primrose.”

The murmurs around them swelled as the banners were recognized. Some laughter, like Connor’s; some snide grumbles; some lascivious remarks best ignored.

Next came the outriders, four ahead and four behind a carriage that resembled a cottage on wheels. Dome-shaped, and obscenely large, it lurched along on its four, gold-painted wheels, its body bleached white and edged with hammered metal. Jewels did indeed wink along its roofline and at its windows, covered from the inside with curtains. Pulled by six matched gray geldings, the whole procession was like something from a fairy story.

Connor whistled as it circled around and halted before them with a kicked-up spray of gravel and much snorting and jigging from the horses. He leaned in close – close enough for Reggie to smell sweat, and sex, and for his heartbeat to elevate, slightly – and whispered, “L’Espoir, I take back all the fop jabs. Even you couldn’t concoct something this extravagant.”

“Thank you,” Reggie drawled, while his toes curled and flexed inside his boots.

A footman swung down off the back of the carriage, unfolded a complicated sequence of steps, opened the door and stepped aside, hand held out in offering for his mistress. A mistress who took great care and an annoying amount of time making a grand exit from the conveyance.

First, a soft, slender hand emerged, smooth as fine china in the glow of the torches; rings winked on her fingers, and around her wrist, where a bracelet had slipped past the white fox-fur trim of her cuff. A hand that floated out, slow and soft, and finally deigned to land in the offered palm. She’d practiced the next bit, Reggie could tell: the way she rose slowly from the shadows of the carriage and leaned out onto the step, voluminous skirts of fur and wool and silk falling around her in an artful spill.

Lady Leda had been a Primrose since she was seventeen, and a widow since she was twenty. She’d never remarried; had instead devoted herself to rearing her stepson to be the heir, and crafting a certain…aura about herself. She’d used her dead husband’s wealth to drape herself in the finest clothes and jewels of the land; had turned his ancestral home into a frosted confection, all white plaster and gleaming gems, gold and silver gilt on everything. She had also, if rumor – and a few eyewitness accounts at balls over the years on Reggie’s part – had it right, devoted herself to sleeping with every halfway handsome man in Aquitainia. She was reportedly a voracious and creative lover, open in her enjoyment of sex; a notorious flirt and favorite among married men whose wives were more uptight.

At forty, she was still splendid, her pale hair mounded on top of her head, her dress cut so low her breasts threatened to come tumbling out of her bodice on each breath. She stood at the top of the carriage steps a long moment, surveying them all, a giant sapphire winking at the center of her throat.

Her gaze swept Reggie – and then locked onto Connor. Her lips curved, and there was no mistaking the spark in her eyes for a trick of the torches.

Reggie didn’t know why that left him faintly nauseated, but it was a feeling that only intensified as Lady Leda descended and made straight for them – for Connor, really – and Connor set Liam down.

Head tipped back, truly in awe of the glamorous lady, Liam backed up until he bumped into Reggie’s knees; Reggie gripped the boy’s shoulders in both hands and held him still. It felt a bit like he was using him as a human shield, but so be it. He thought it might keep him from doing something even more embarrassing.

Connor bowed first, somehow elegant with his messy, too-long hair and his open shirt, his chest on flagrant display. “My Lady Leda,” he said, warmly. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

She offered the slightest of curtsies…and a very thorough perusal of all the male skin on visual offering. Her smirk said she liked what she saw. “Lord Connor Dale. I do believe I’ve seen a ghost.”

He smirked back, and Reggie felt the need to swallow, the nausea teasing at the back of his throat, now. He felt the ghost of the noose, a faint pressure across his windpipe.

“Only almost.” He took the halves of his shirt in his hands and spread them, better revealing the old, puckered arrow wounds.

The torchlight danced in her eyes. She was a statuesque woman, nearly of a height with Connor – whose invitation she took readily and without fanfare, stepping in close to press a hand to the scar between his pectorals.

Everything inside of Reggie tensed, a full-body flinch that went unnoticed, as Leda raked her nails slowly down the trail of hair that narrowed to a fine point just beneath Connor’s navel. Her nails teased, briefly, along the waistband of his trousers, and then withdrew with obvious reluctance.

Reggie’s face was aflame. In Aquitainia, ladies didn’t touch men like that in front of an audience, much less half-clothed men. Around them, soldiers shifted, uncomfortable to have been witness to such a scene. A few chuckles rippled at the edges of the crowd, and Reggie knew the whispers were ribald jokes and unsubtle innuendos. Across from him, two young men had gone goggle-eyed and pale-faced, their hastily-pulled-up trousers doing little to conceal the sudden rush of excitement Leda’s bold touch had inspired.

Leda smiled, teeth bared like fangs, gaze full of fire. “Some might say,” she purred, “that a little tarnish only enhances an object’s natural beauty.”

The ground seemed to tilt beneath Reggie’s feet, and he realized he was clutching Liam’s shoulders tight enough that the boy was trying to wriggle away. He released him, and forced himself to take a few measured, open-mouthed breaths. He tried – less than successfully – to take himself firmly, figuratively, in hand.

There was no accounting for his reaction. None. There were strumpets aplenty about, in all states of dress and undress, camp followers hawking their wares like any tinsmith at market. He himself had done lots of rolling in lots of hay. He wasn’t a blushing virgin, and yet he was blushing now, so badly that he feared he might swoon, and something dark and ugly was coiling in the pit of his stomach as Lady Leda finally deigned to glance his direction.

Her look was sly, and said he wasn’t doing a very good job of schooling his features. “Lord Reginald, I do believe you’ve gone a touch green, my dear.”

There was no reason, no reason whatsoever…and yet his lungs didn’t want to work, and the crack of his knuckles proved his hands had curled to fists.

Leda looked nearly victorious, for some inexplicable reason.

“Lady Leda,” he began, tongue sand-dry, all too conscious of the sudden, crushing weight of Connor’s regard, as well.

Her grin widened an impossible fraction, sharp as a knife in the corners of her painted lips.

“Lady Leda,” another voice rang out from the terraced steps leading down from the manor. A woman’s voice.

Amelia.

Reggie exhaled in a rush, relief spilling through him. All the nonsense would stop now that Amelia was here.

Before he turned his head toward his general – it was funny how that didn’t feel strange to think of Amelia Drake as his general – he saw Leda wipe her face clean of wickedness and stand up straight, chin lifted, expression cool and composed.

“Lady Amelia,” she called. “I must thank all of your boys here for their warm welcome.”

Amelia walked down the wide, paved path, between the rows of torches, with the quiet but startling bearing of a soldier. Clad in men’s breeches and tall riding boots, a fitted black tunic and lightweight leather armor, hair tightly braided, she offered striking contrast to Leda’s finery. The sword at her hip threw a long shadow across the flags, and her gaze, in the light of the torches, was firm and less than friendly as she drew to a halt five steps above Leda and looked down at her.

Then her gaze slid toward Connor, and hardened further. “Yes,” she drawled. “It appears some of my boys are most welcoming.”

Connor smirked – but pulled the halves of his shirt together, thankfully, and began lacing it.

There was simply no accounting for the added relief that action brought Reggie.

“Hm,” Leda hummed, and stepped forward. One of the young soldiers scrambled forward to offer an arm, and she wrapped hers snugly through it, leaning into the boy more than necessary as they mounted the five steps up to Amelia’s level.

Leda was taller. Worlds more regal. But she ducked her head, and curtsied deep, and said, in a mild voice leagues from the one she’d used with Connor, “I hear congratulations are in order, Commander.”

Amelia’s brows twitched, fractionally, before she wrangled her surprise. She inclined her head, as Leda lifted hers. “Perhaps condolences would have been more appropriate,” she said, mouth giving a wry twist. She gestured to the crowd around them, and Leda smiled again. Chuckled, even.

“Come, my lady.” She stepped forward and, in one smooth movement, captured Amelia’s arm in her own, turned her, and set the two of them walking back toward the manor. Reggie caught a glimpse of Amelia’s bewildered expression before both women’s backs were to them. “You can give me the grand tour.”

Reggie watched them depart, still reeling a bit, but mostly grateful for Amelia’s intercession – and the way it had allowed his galloping heart to settle.

But, then–

Someone let out a low whistle.

Another said, “Gods, what I wouldn’t give–”

“As if you’d bloody have a chance.”

“I dunno. I hear she’s very generous with her favors.”

“No one’s that generous. Besides, she only had eyes for our dear General Dale.”

“Lucky bastard.”

Reggie turned his head and came face to face with said lucky bastard.

By some miracle, he didn’t startle…outwardly, at least. Inwardly, his head was nothing but alarm bells.

Connor wasn’t wearing the expected smirk. Rather, he almost looked concerned, which, it turned out, was also intolerable. “All right?” he asked, too knowingly.

“Fine,” Reggie said, turned, and began shouldering his way through the crowd. It didn’t take much effort; the lady gone inside, the men were dispersing, now, off to seek their bedrolls, or whores, or bottles.

Connor gave chase with ease, and drew up alongside him. He was a fraction taller, his legs that much longer, and so it was no effort to keep pace with Reggie’s hurried steps. “She’s harmless, really,” he said, as if trying to console him.

“Speaking from experience?” Reggie snapped. He didn’t mean for his voice to crack like a whip – or like something broken, more like. But it did. And it led Connor to grip his upper arm.

He halted, and twisted out of Connor’s grasp; squared off from him with a snarl ready on his lips.

Connor looked disbelieving, brows lifted, forehead creased with sun lines. “You’re not….you’re not actually jealous, are you?”

“No, I–”

“Because if you’ll recall, I propositioned you. And you told me no.”

With a tiny little snap, something broke in Reggie’s mind. It all clicked into place, then: his reaction, internal and external, the strong surge of emotion that had left him off-balance and fighting for breath.

Jealousy. It had been jealousy.

And that was the most intolerable thing of all.

“The answer’s still no,” he growled, and stalked past, before the awful, cold shakes that had begun in the pit of his stomach could spread outward. He knocked their shoulders together as he went, and behind him, as he strode away, heard Connor mutter something that sounded like, “It’s not bloody worth it, honestly.”

~*~

A scrape of boots across the flags drew Amelia’s glance over her shoulder. The footman was following – and had been joined by four of his fellows. Though dressed in fine livery, all had the shoulders of warriors, and rather than showy rapiers wore serviceable swords at their hips. Not merely helping hands, then, but bodyguards.

She approved.

Then, with something of a start, she realized she hadn’t had occasion to draw upon anything like ladylike manners in weeks. She hadn’t been very good at that sort of thing to begin with. She faced forward, toward the manor house’s yawning door flanked by her own Drakewell guardsmen.

“Not that it isn’t lovely to see you, as always,” she said, carefully, “but we weren’t looking to the Primroses for manpower.”

Lady Leda had a low, throaty chuckle that must have been completely out of place among the restrained titters of fashionable drawing rooms. She patted the back of Amelia’s hand where it lay along her arm. “Oh, my dear. There’s no need to mince words with me of all people. We haven’t got the numbers.”

Amelia glanced over at her, startled.

Leda looked ahead, and nodded toward the doors. “I don’t suppose you have anything in the way of wine in this heap, do you?”

“Quite a lot, actually. There were hidden wine cellars behind the one the Sels raided.”

She snorted. “Wonderful. Leave it to the Dales to protect the alcohol.” She said no more, and so they went inside – where things were slightly cleaner and warmer and less revolting than they’d been at first – and Amelia led her to the library, and the bottles lined up on the table there.

Amelia truly wasn’t unhappy to see Leda. She’d sat on the sidelines at parties in which the matrons gossiped disapprovingly behind their fans about the woman, scandalized by her nocturnal activities and the brazen way she winked at the single young men over the punch bowl. Shameless was a word tossed frequently about. Inappropriate. Unbecoming. Disgraceful. Never mind the fact that she was widowed, and free to sleep with whoever she pleased, nor the fact that many married women were carrying out affairs of their own, Leda’s open flirting and enjoyment of her own figure, and the way men admired it, was the antithesis of polite behavior, and therefore shunned. No doubt many of the whey-faced biddies seethed with jealousy over her flamboyant beauty besides.

Amelia, with her own scandalous secret affair, and a loathing of musicale afternoons, had cheered Leda silently on from the fringes. Why shouldn’t she do as she pleased? Why should she give a single fuck what a flock of pastel hens with teacake crumbs on their lips had to say about her carryings on? Now, with no desire for any sort of affair, and a war to worry about besides, she still harbored no jealousy for the way the gathered crowd had gone goggle-eyed over Leda – which was to say nothing of Connor being an absolute slut with that little open-shirt display. Leda could do as she wanted.

But this was an army camp. They couldn’t afford a distraction of Leda’s scale and flash.

Amelia poured a cup of wine for her guest, and made a quick cup of tea for herself with hot water from the kettle they’d rigged up over the fire; Connor’s deceased first bride would have died all over again to see an iron armature retrofitted to her fine fireplace for something as pedestrian as heating tea and soup. Then she settled in the armchair across from Leda, where she’d propped her feet up on a mismatched stool and ensconced herself like a queen on a throne, eyes glittering with something like mischief and expectation.

Amelia felt very young and out of her depth, suddenly; hoped to disguise the fact with a sip of tea.

The sky was lightening beyond the windows, the glass glowing periwinkle.

Leda took a long, graceful swallow of wine and fixed her in place with a look. All pretense dropped from her voice, her tone brisk and businesslike when she said, “How bad is it?”

Amelia lowered her cup with a frown. “Pardon?”

“My carriage has pulled up to this manor countless times, but never before has it looked positively haunted. And that’s to say nothing of the scruffy, half-dressed masses of unwashed men who met me in the drive. You’re completely outnumbered, darling. How do you stand it?”

Amelia blinked at her, surprised. “I don’t think about it, mostly. It’s a war.”

“A doomed second effort at one, some might say.”

Amelia went cold. She set her tea aside and drew herself upright.

Leda spoke before she could voice any indignation. “Come on, darling, this is me. There’s no need to put on a show. I don’t mean to be insulting: gods know I’ve weathered my share of insults, and thick skin or no, it’s never fun to hear someone say you’re a lost cause. But…”

Amelia exhaled, some of her pique bleeding out. “Well. There’s insults, and then there’s doomed.”

Leda grinned. But only for a moment. “Each duchy in this kingdom threw its heirs and its strongest, most strapping lads at the capital to defend it…and we failed. You’re a brave girl for trying, but if this is our nation’s rallying second effort…” She gestured toward the fields beyond with a grimace. “It’s not your fault, but you lack the numbers necessary. You know that, don’t you?”

Something in her tone was almost gentle, and so the words didn’t carry the same sting they might have coming from someone else. They weren’t a judgement against Amelia’s efforts, but a lamentation.

Amelia sighed and slumped back in her chair; reached for her tea, which she’d heavily sugared and desperately needed, still gripped by the night’s chill and now prickling all over with doubt and despair. “I know, I know. Why do you think we haven’t organized a proper march yet?”

“Are more expected to come?”

“We’ve sent falcons to all the major houses.” She glanced down into her tea, wishing it was wine, suddenly. “And” – a rallying thought – “we have my drakes.”

Leda’s gaze sparked with interest. “Yes. I can’t wait to see them – once it’s properly light, of course. And once they’ve had breakfast.”

Amelia snorted.

“They don’t eat people, do they?”

“Only if I tell them to.”

“What a delightful advantage.” She sounded sincere. “But, my dear…how many do you have? An army’s worth?”

“No,” Amelia said, collapsing back into sullenness. “I have five.”

“Hm. A boon to be sure. And I’ve heard tale of what happened here on this very lawn – how their appearance saved you and decimated an entire company of the enemy.” Her gaze and her voice softened. “I also heard about–”

“Yes,” Amelia said, throat tightening suddenly. She could tell just looking at the woman’s face that she was about to offer condolences about Mal. The whole bloody east knew about that by now, it seemed. “Thank you.”

Leda gazed at her another moment, painfully sympathetic, and, in that sympathy, terribly human in a way she hadn’t seemed outside, in front of the men. It was easy, here in the flickering firelight, as dawn crept in at the windows, to see past the hair, and jewels, and fine clothes to the thinking, feeling, relatable woman beneath. It was both a comfort, and, in the case of missing Mal, an unwelcome swerve toward the personal.

As if she’d decided something, Leda nodded, stood, and went to the sideboard. “I’ve brought what able-bodied, battle-ready men remained in Astoria, though I’m afraid they won’t bolster your numbers much.” Sound of wine pouring, and then the light skim of fine slippers over floorboards. “I’ve even brought my dear sweet step-son, though I told him not to come.” She appeared before Amelia, sighing, and offered a glass of wine that Amelia gladly accepted with a murmured thanks. “You remember Colum, I take it? He’s a scholar not a fighter, that one, but he was insistent.”

She settled back into her chair with another sigh, legs crossing, hand lifting her glass as her gaze went to the fire. “Sometimes I wonder if anyone in this bloody kingdom will come out the other side of this all right.”

“Statistically speaking, some will.” Amelia sipped her wine, the warm, berry notes of it welcome over her tongue. “Of course: it depends on one’s definition of ‘all right.’”

A wry grin plucked at one corner of Leda’s mouth. “Quite. Some might even thrive. The ones who are quick to prostrate themselves before their new masters.” The grin fell away, replaced by a moue of contempt. “The traitors who lead them into our back gates and offer up the juiciest bits of treasure. Those who house, and feed, and clothe them. Who turn over their own people for them.” She took a long swallow, and grimaced afterward. “Some, I’m sure – the lovely young girls and boys with soft, fine faces – will be kept as pleasure slaves. The elderly and infirm will make for good cooks and washers. The sycophants will enjoy their share of the spoils – for a time, until feeding them becomes inconvenient.”

Her gaze slid over, then, startling in its hardness. “That’s why I’ve come, Lady Amelia. I don’t think Aquitainia can win this war, honestly…but I want to be on the side that tried to win it, scrabbling until the last, rather than on the side that rolled over and let the bastards take the victory without a fight.”

Amelia felt her brows go up. “That’s a noble sentiment.”

“I have those, from time to time, despite gossip to the contrary.”

“No–”

“Oh, I know what they say about me. And gods knows I know a thing or two about making a man happy – making him a slave to me, if I want it,” she said, with a lofty sniff. “I could be one of those pleasure slaves; could march up to any of those pale, gilded generals right now, flash a little leg, squish my tits together, and have him eating out of my hand in five minutes flat. All the kingdom thinks I’m a great whore anyway.” The wry grin reappeared, sharper this time. “But the way I see it, a girl’s got to have a little fun amongst all the tea parties and corsets and child-birthing. Why shouldn’t we?” Her look said she knew that Amelia understood. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not a patriot.

“I’m here to offer my help, is what I’m getting at,” she concluded. “Such as it is. My men. My money. My counsel, if you’ll take it. You’re doing a bang-up job so far, darling, but if you’re to make a real go of this, you’ll need sharper minds at the table than that lout Dale and the pretty little lordling whose trousers he wants to get inside.”

Amelia had, unfortunately, taken an ill-timed sip of wine, and spluttered in surprise at the last remark. She laughed and coughed, wiped her nose on her sleeve and thumped her own chest to clear her throat.

Across from her, Leda said, “I mean, honestly. If anyone here is to be accused of flagrant whoredom, it’s that Connor Dale.”

Amelia wiped her streaming eyes. “Do you know” – her voice was hoarse from choking – “that he made a pass at me?”

“I don’t doubt it, darling, look at yourself. Which is why I hope you won’t take it as an insult when I say, should you run out of pretty people in camp, someone will have to be set to guard the horse lines.”

Amelia cackled.

When she could, she stood, and offered a tear-damp hand into the space between them. “Welcome to Inglewood, Lady Leda, and the war effort. Any help you can provide would be most welcome.”

Leda smiled a wide, roguish smile that struck Amelia as masculine, not unlike one of Connor’s devious grins. She accepted the offered handshake with a firm grip of her own. “It shall be an honor.”

5

“I don’t understand,” Bjorn said, frowning. “What do you mean he’s going to war? He can’t be away from that bloody mountain for more than a few weeks at a time.”

Leif’s day had begun with a headlong tumble from deep sleep to full wakefulness following a light scratch at the hay shed door. He’d blinked the vestiges of the wolf dream from his eyes, quietly, rather fearfully marveling that the best sleep he’d had in weeks could be attributed to Ragnar, and watched a faint crack of pale light appear as the door was eased open. Wolves had lifted their heads, and the young runner standing at the gap had visibly shivered with fear. He’d come bearing a message, though: a meeting was gathering in the King’s study. There was news from the Fault Lands.

The royal family was gathered now around a steaming tray of tea.

Leif hadn’t brought Ragnar…but he nearly had, only hadn’t because it was too early, and he was still too sleepy to deal with Erik’s disapproval. He’d perched in what he’d come to think of as his usual window ledge, apart from the loose circle of the others so he could observe them better.

Oliver made a face. “I won’t claim to understand the mechanics of it myself, not to mention Náli’s explanation was rather hampered by a not-small amount of panic, but apparently he’s been able to harness and learn to control his magic in a new, more perfect way. He’s shared his power over the dead with his Dead Guard, for one.”

Revna, seated by the desk and slowly sipping herbal tea, pale-faced and a little unsteady with early pregnancy, (Gods, Leif wasn’t sure what to think about that; didn’t in fact think much about it all, in contrast to Rune’s fretting) lifted her brows. “He’s what?”

Oliver nodded. “I met his captain, Mattias, myself in the Between.”

Birger’s mouth was a thin, flat line of worry. “That’s an old tale, lad: that of the Between.” He emphasized it in a way that Leif took to mean he didn’t believe in its existence.

Rune said, “What is it?”

Birger said, “Legend has it–”

And Oliver cut across him, brows drawn together. “It might star in a legend or two, but I can assure you that it’s a very real place.”

Birger puffed up his chest a bit, beard rustling as he exhaled, but he didn’t comment further.

Oliver continued, “A realm exists between the mortal world and the Halls of the Ancestors: a plane that is populated by the restless dead who have yet to move on, and which can apparently be entered by magic users.”

Leif thought of a dark, chill forest, gleaming eyes flashing between tree trunks. The smell of pack and mine and a tail wagging in invitation. “What sorts of magic users?” he asked, and watched the way his voice struck the others as a surprise. They hadn’t expected him to ask any questions.

Oliver’s brow smoothed, and he straightened from his position leaning against the desk. “I don’t know. We were both there: Náli with his necromancy, and me with my drake bond. I’d reason anyone magical could enter there.” His gaze said he’d marked Leif as such; as magical.

Was that ever going to stop feeling strange?

“Regardless,” Oliver continued, sweeping a look around the room. “It doesn’t matter how fervently any of us believe in the Between. Náli is going to settle things at Naus Keep and join us here before we march.”

“And he told you this,” Erik said in a careful voice, “in the realm between the living and the dead.”

“Gods,” Revna murmured against the rim of her cup. “The world’s dumbest king.”

Oliver blinked, and a muscle in his cheek twitched before he slowly turned his head so that he faced Erik. He braced a hand on the desk and slouched in a way that made him appear, though a head-and-a-half shorter, dangerous.

Bjorn coughed in a way that sounded like suppressed laughter.

“Darling,” Oliver said, saccharine and deceptively light; Rune made a quiet retching sound. “Do you remember, when Percy first began communicating with me, and you thought I was going mad?”

Erik’s brows gave a little jump, and Leif could smell the first stirrings of apprehension in his uncle. The poor sod was never going to stop sticking his giant boot into his mouth, but he’d at least begun to recognize when he was doing it. “I don’t–”

“Perhaps,” Oliver said sweetly, “you’ve learned to believe me since then, rather than assuming I’m hallucinating.”

Erik frowned. Started to say something – thought better of it – and sighed. “Very well. Náli is coming to join us. What of this emperor?”

Revna nodded her approval.

Oliver studied Erik a moment longer, then his jaw visibly loosened. He shook his head. “Náli says he’s tall, and strong. Not yet forty, to look at, with pale skin, and white hair, and near-colorless eyes. Beautiful, he said, but terrible.”

Birger dropped down into a chair with a wince and a crack from both knees. “They all look like that: the Sels, I mean. They’re inbred in about seven different ways. Brothers marrying sisters, uncles marrying nieces. They want to keep their bloodlines pure.” He rolled his eyes. “But no Selesee emperor’s ever crossed the sea.”

“They never had to,” Bjorn said. “They have massive armies and loyal generals. Not to mention,” he sneered, “what pasty coward would be brave enough to come and fight real warriors?” He lifted a massive arm and flexed in demonstration, which set his tattoos leaping impressively.

Leif worked to ignore his mother’s little appreciative smirk.

“Yes, well,” Oliver said, “this emperor seems to have a personal motive, which happens to be personal to me.” His throat jumped as he swallowed, and he couldn’t hide the fear in his gaze. “I don’t think we should take this elevated threat lightly.”

“Neither do I,” Erik said, stronger now, sliding back into his kingliness. “I’d hoped to wait until the thaw, but I think it’s time to accelerate our march.”

“That’s a risk,” Birger cautioned. “The Phalanx is depleted: with so many dead and injured, and the green lads still in need of training–”

Erik stayed him with a raised hand. “I know, I know. But I don’t see that we have a choice. If this emperor is as furious as Náli claims, and searching for Oliver besides, he won’t take the decimation of his brigade here lying down. We need to move before another force amasses on our doorstep. Strike first.”

“And leave Aeres unprotected?” Rune asked.

Erik sighed. “What would you have me do? Sit here and allow the enemy to come to us again? No. If it’s Oliver he wants, they won’t bother the skeleton crew left behind here.”

Rune frowned. “You mean to leave me here, don’t you?”

“I–”

“We can move up the timeline, yes,” Birger interrupted, and Erik looked relieved. “But it will still take weeks to gather the necessary supplies, work out the logistics–”

“And we must wait for Náli,” Oliver reminded.

Rune stood from his chair. “Uncle.” He’d adopted a determined expression that, despite his efforts, made him look even younger. Leif felt decades older than his brother, suddenly; in truth, Rune didn’t feel like his brother much at all these days, but like a friend from whom he’d been separated years ago, their bond faded and tenuous. He wanted to grieve that sense of loss, but found that he couldn’t. “You aren’t going to take me, are you?”

Erik sighed. “Rune, you’re newly wed–”

“But I’m not newly a prince! I should be with you, at your side as your second heir. How can a Northern prince sit at home with his wife while his kin march to war?”

“And what if you have an heir, Rune?” Leif asked, and watched as, once more, all gazes snapped his direction, everyone startled that he’d spoken. Somewhere beneath wolfish disinterest, it rankled to be looked at as a foreign thing in his own home.

Rune’s eyes widened when he met Leif’s gaze, his surprise the greatest and most visible of all.

“What if Tessa is expected a child already?” Leif pressed.

“She…” Rune trailed off, frowning, because of course the poor dolt wouldn’t have the faintest idea until she started showing.

“What if you march to war, and die on a muddy field, and your babe is born here without ever having known you? Someone must hold the throne for Uncle while he’s gone, and it makes the most sense for that someone to be you.”

Rune’s frown deepened. “I’m the spare. My one purpose is to go to war.”

“Rune,” Revna admonished. “War is no one’s purpose in this family. It’s merely a trial we all must face.”

He ignored her, gaze still clashing with Leif’s. “I would make a horrible king, Leif, and you know it. Let me march, and you stay here, guarding our bloodline.”

He allowed himself a moment to envision it. Erik’s carved wooden throne atop its dais; the newly-reconstructed great hall with its stag and wolf banners. The crackle of the fire and the swish of the broom and the low murmurs of the maids and kitchen boys and runners as they moved about, doing useful things, keeping the palace running. The petitioners coming to him, those sad, elderly, feeble folk too old or infirm to travel with the Phalanx to war. His days filled with ruined crops, and downed fences, and the price of wool exported to the South, which probably couldn’t even be exported in war times.

He envisioned all that, and ground his teeth, his wolf stirring restlessly beneath the idea. To stay here was to stagnate, and to stagnate was to die in all the ways that mattered.

He’d been silent too long. Rune took a step toward him across the rug, and then another, expression something like hopefully. “Leif,” he said, entreating, hand lifting as if to reach for him. “You know that–”

“No.”

Rune froze. His hand fell, and his face, too, mouth still open.

Revna’s chair creaked as she turned more fully toward him.

“I’m not staying,” Leif continued, and noted the way Bjorn’s brows lifted in response to his tone. He could hear the heartbeats of everyone in the room, the way they skipped and accelerated, scents infused with uncertainty. Not fear…not yet.

He turned to Erik. “I told you before, Uncle, that you should send the Úlfheðnar ahead. To scout and assess what awaits us in the South, and send report back. We can move quickly, and silently; we can see and hear what men cannot.” Recklessly, rudely: “You’d be a fool not to take advantage of us – and a bigger one to leave a skinwalker behind on your throne to frighten your people.”

Silence. Heavy silence bristling with thorns ready to slice the first who dared to breach it.

Rune’s jaw worked. He looked devastated – but he didn’t speak.

Revna, by contrast, became gradually furious, dark spots of color coming up in her cheeks and blue eyes flashing. She sipped her tea, though, and pressed her lips tight together until they were bloodless.

Bjorn shifted his weight and snuffed and snorted a bit, like a bull held back against his will.

Oliver was quietly shocked – and dismayed, too. Disappointed as though he were a true uncle, and not one simply by bedroom habits.

(An uncharitable thought he could never have conjured months before. Pre-turning.)

It was Erik who spoke, as was only right. He was, after all, the only one who could enforce or forbid Leif – not merely as his nephew, but as his lawful heir. A notch formed between his brows, and his jaw worked side to side.

“Leif,” he said, formally, which was a surprise given Leif’s absolute lack of respect. “You know that you are one of my most promising warriors. Save Bjorn, there’s no one stronger, no one more capable with a sword. As your uncle, I’ve always hoped that your sword was one that need never be bloodied.”

He inclined his head, gazing out from beneath his black brows, stern and serious. “But as your king, there’s never been any question that I want you by my side in war. It has all along been my intention to take you. I can acknowledge that your new…skills,” he stumbled over the word, “will be of great benefit on the battlefield, and during scouting as well.”

Leif’s worry eased…but he found that his muscles remained tense. He nodded his acknowledgement, and silent thanks – sensed his mother’s worry, and Bjorn’s approval – but found that he couldn’t remain silent on one point. “They aren’t skills.”

Erik’s expression flickered, a fast glimpse of doubt before he adopted his too-formal kingly visage again. “What?”

“You called them skills. They’re instincts. They’re a part of me, now. My nature. Because I am no longer a man.”

More silence.

Then: “Leif,” Revna said, pained.

Of all of them, only Oliver seemed sympathetic.

Erik said, firmly, “Whatever else you are now, you are also the man you’ve always been. Leif Torstansson is my nephew and the most honorable man I know. What’s happened to you doesn’t change that.”

But it had changed it, had changed everything, and every person in the room knew it, no matter what Erik said.

With their shifting uneasiness wafting on the air like the smoke from extinguished candles, Leif ignored the assertion. He said, “I’ll say again that you should send us ahead of the main party.” He didn’t say that if he didn’t get out of this palace soon, he thought he might start literally chasing his tail.

“And I still say no,” Erik said.

It was difficult to quell the frustrated growl that built in his throat. A little of it slipped out, raising eyebrows. “Why not?” The growl laced his voice, too. “I’m accomplishing nothing here, waiting.”

Erik’s gaze hardened, from firm to flinty. “And who would you take with you, on your advanced departure?”

“My pack. I’ve told you.”

“And who is in this pack? The Úlfheðnar skinwalkers, yes. But what of Ragnar? Would you take him?”

He understood, then, with awful clarity, why Erik had been hesitating about this all along. Knew his reservations – and resented them.

He swallowed another growl – something that was getting harder and harder to do, the wolf wanting to slip to the surface in dozens of routine, nonverbal ways – and forced himself to consider it: leaving Ragnar behind. Taking him down into the dungeon from which he’d raised him, because no one left here would want him aboveground; thought about putting heavy manacles on his wrists, and chaining him to the wall. Instructing the guards to carry him a pail of meat every day, and maybe a wineskin, if he howled and pulled at his bonds until his skin chafed. Because he would do that, if left behind by his pack. And Leif’s other wolves would feel the loss of a packmate keenly.

Just as Leif would feel it, as if a part of his soul had been scooped out; an itch under his skin, and a fuzziness in his thoughts.

It was unthinkable.

Which meant…

“Yes,” he said, sliding down off the window ledge to stand upright, at his full height. He realized, absently, that Bjorn was the only person in the room taller than him, now. Somehow, unnoticed, he’d caught up with and then edged out Erik by a half-inch. “I would take him.”

Erik looked disappointed. He sighed. “Leif, we’ve talked about–”

“No. You have told me you don’t like or trust him, and I have heard you. But you still don’t understand what it means to be a wolf. To be a pack.”

“Leif.” A teacup thumped down on the desk. “The disrespect you’re showing your uncle and king is unacceptable,” Revna admonished. “This isn’t like you. You aren’t–” She fell silent when he shifted his gaze to her, and it was an ugly, squirming feeling in the pit of his stomach to realize that he frightened his mother these days.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” he said, stiffly, “but I’m behaving exactly like myself. Myself as I am now.” Back to Erik, while Revna gaped at him, he said, “Understood, Your Majesty.” Although nothing was understood between them. He pressed his fist over his heart, and gave a quick bow, before striding from the room.

“Wait a moment, lad,” Birger said.

Bjorn tried to grip his sleeve – but Leif was too fast, and was through the door and out into the corridor before any of them could take a proper hold of him. The last face he glimpsed was Oliver’s, writ with a worry unlike that of his blood relatives: the worry of someone standing on the shore watching a ship founder at sea. An observer of a disaster.

Leif found that left another growl bubbling in his chest.

He’d nearly reached the stairs when he heard rushed footsteps trying to catch up to him. Had it been the thump of a man’s heavy, booted tread, he would have kept going. But he recognized the whisper of his mother’s soft, lambskin indoor booties, and he halted, and turned, reluctantly. “Mother,” he began…and then caught sight of her face as she drew up before him.

She was breathing hard from the jog down the corridor, gripping her skirts in one ringed hand, and her face was pale, and drawn, expression nauseated. Tears glimmered in her eyes, ready to spill over at any moment.

“Wait,” she said, breathless, and lifted her free hand in an attempt to stay him. “Leif, darling, just – wait. A moment. Please.” She bent forward and braced both hands on her knees, gasping.

“Are you all right?” He reached to touch her, but hesitated, unsure if it would be welcome. “What’s–”

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” she said in a strained voice. “Only…trying not to be sick all over your boots.”

“Oh.”

He could sense the babe; a slight shift in her scent, a slow-blooming sweetness that hadn’t been there before. A tiny heartbeat that could have been dismissed as a distant fluttering of moth’s wings, if he hadn’t known better. He found it disconcerting, this evidence that his and Rune’s mother was about to become someone else’s mother, too.

Finally, she blew out a last vocal breath and straightened, even paler, sweat shining on her brow. She smoothed her hair back and gazed at him with a forced sternness that quickly melted into desperation.

“Leif. Sweetheart.” She took one of his hands between both of hers, her palms clammy. He’d thought her touch would be hesitant, but it was as sure and firm as ever. He didn’t expect to find any comfort in it, now that everything was different, but found that he did. At least a little. “I know,” she started, and shook her head, squeezing his fingers in her cool, damp ones. “No, that’s not right, I don’t know what it feels like to be you right now. I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to be able to shift into a wolf. You’ve changed, and I don’t blame you. Anyone would have.”

“Mother–”

“No, let me say this. Please.” Another squeeze of his hand; she clung to him as if afraid he’d slip away. He couldn’t say it was a fear unfounded.

She looked down at their linked fingers a long moment, and drew an unsteady breath. When she lifted her face again, her tears had receded, and her jaw had set at a stubborn angle very like her brother’s. “Erik loves you dearly – never doubt that he does – but he doesn’t have children of his own. There are layers to the bond between a parent and an offspring that he cannot fathom. He held you and Rune as babes, yes, but always with the knowledge that you weren’t his. Not in the most immediate and intimate way.

“I know it isn’t the same, the bond that you and Ragnar share.”

All the air left his lungs in a rush, surprise like a shove against his breastbone.

“But I know that…the way you’ve been acting…the way you want him kept close and won’t cast him aside the way Erik wants you to…there is some sort of…” She made a face. “Ownership there. He bit you, and birthed you into this new life that you lead–”

“He’s not my father,” Leif rushed to say, perhaps too quickly. “I don’t see him that way.”

“I know.” She smiled, small and sad. “But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s yours.” She lifted her brows in silent question, and Leif could only swallow, which was answer enough. “Erik doesn’t understand that, but I think I do. It doesn’t mean I like it – but sometimes things like that are unchangeable. We all must grow used to the idea.”

His throat and face felt warm. In truth, he wasn’t sure he wanted her acceptance. It seemed better, somehow, to remain an outcast amongst his family, rather than be loved for the eccentric, pitied fool ruled by the changing of the moon and the pull of scents from the forest.

“But Erik isn’t wrong that you should be careful,” Revna continued. “Bond or no bond, Ragnar is and will always be a liar and a trickster. Betrayal is woven into the very fabric of him. Erik’s also not wrong when he says he wants you to wait and march with the army. This is no border skirmish or clan war: this is the most powerful, terrible enemy anyone on this continent has ever faced. If we’re to go to war, we must do so wisely.”

She tucked her chin and looked up at him through her lashes, trying to drive her point home.

He let out a slow breath, and squeezed her hand in return. “I understand, Mum.”

Mum. Had he called her that, fond and familiar, since his turning?

The way tears immediately filled her eyes once more told him no. She dropped his hands and flung her arms around his neck instead, hugging him tightly.

A beat too late, Leif draped his arms carefully around her in return. Pressed flush like this, he could feel the babe’s hummingbird pulse against his stomach, and he counted the seconds until he could turn loose without insulting her.

~*~

From the corridor outside Erik’s study, he went straight to the room he’d been given while repairs were finishing up in the royal apartments. A small, plain chamber where his various trunks had been stored alongside a narrow bed he hadn’t slept in once. He stuffed a satchel full of clothes, knives, a map, and a few other human essentials. Gathered up his longsword and shortsword both, and strapped them to his person.

In the kitchens he stopped for two heaping sacks of cheese, bread, and slightly shriveled apples, before making his way to the hay shed, across a yard full of dazzling sunlight, the snow thin and slushy. The days were lengthening and warming – not warm enough to go without sleeves, as he did now, but warm enough that the lads shoveling hay into the sheep pens had doffed cloaks and hats and sweat steamed through their clothes, rising into the morning as faint vapor.

The shed was empty, as expected, but he stashed his things there and was able to follow his pack’s scent trail across the yard, down past the orchard, along the wall and to a gate that let out onto a broad expanse of empty, snow-covered field. He scented Ragnar long before he reached him, and arrived to find the gate standing open, Ragnar leaning against the stone post, arms folded, one foot crossed over the other, staring wistfully out across the plain.

Leif hung back a moment to observe him. The defeated slump of his shoulders, and the melancholy stamped on his face. The breeze lifted a bone-studded braid toward his chin and he flicked it back over his shoulder with a toss of his head. He smelled of longing; wanted to shift and go sprinting across the snow to join his packmates, off hunting in their wolf skins.

He didn’t speak, but Leif joined him, bracing a shoulder against the opposite post. After a moment, Ragnar said, “You smell like a man who’s made a decision.”

Here was the thing that he hadn’t told any of the rest of his family – the family not currently standing here with a torq around his neck, guilty of a dozen betrayals against his own blood. He didn’t dare admit to any of them that, since his turning, talking with them had become difficult, almost painful; that a wall existed between them which they could never breach, because their senses were human and human alone. But that, when he approached Ragnar, he was met, always, with a knowing look, with an understanding that he didn’t want, but which was both undeniable…and craveable. It was so much easier with Ragnar, even in the moments – fewer and farther between – that he hated him. Hate paired with knowledge was more acceptable than hopeful, unknowing hesitancy and ignorance.

“That’s because I have made a decision,” he said, and took his first deep breath of the past hour. He smelled snow, and his pack; pine needles and Ragnar’s musk, unique from that of all the other wolves. “As soon as the others return, we’re leaving.”

A beat passed. “Leaving to go where?”

“To the land bridge Oliver spotted while scouting.” He turned to meet the other wolf’s gaze. “To war.”

Ragnar’s eyes – the same ice water blue as Erik’s, and Revna’s, and his own – widened as understanding dawned. Slowly, his lips parted in an incredulous, delighted smile.

“You don’t have permission.” It wasn’t a guess. “You haven’t been sent.”

Leif was careful to keep his expression smooth, but gods knew what his scent was conveying. He knew his pulse had quickened, and that Ragnar could hear it. “What of it?”

“Ha ha!” Ragnar turned away, beaming, and clapped his hands. “Shit. I love it. Fuck!” Before Leif could chastise him, he cupped both hands around his mouth, tipped his head back, and howled. Even in his human shape, it wasn’t a human sound, not a child’s awooo imitation. This was a real wolf’s howl, shiver-inducing and far-reaching; it echoed across the field, dying away slowly in the pines like the wail of a ghost. He was calling the pack to return. It lifted all the fine hairs on Leif’s body, and rippled pleasantly across his skin. An echoing sound built, and was tamped down deep in his chest.

Afterward, Ragnar turned to him, still smiling. “That,” he said, with great conviction, “is why you’re the alpha.”

6

The sting of the wind lessened as the days grew longer, spring creeping toward them on slow cat’s feet. It always stung up in the clouds, though, as Alpha’s wings propelled them forward faster than any horse could run, or any sailing ship could glide. Her eyes streamed, and her lips cracked, and it wouldn’t stop being the most exhilarating sensation anytime soon.

Lord Edward had reasoned, and everyone else had agreed, that a headlong march toward the capital would be nothing but folly. They didn’t have the numbers for a proper siege, nor the war engines the Sels would have in place around Aquitaine. The first order of business, then, was securing their own headquarters, while they waited for reply from the North and those as-of-yet-unresponsive remaining Southern duchies who hadn’t bothered committing to the first war effort (a fat lot of good those troops would do, Reggie had said with a sneer). The fastest, cleanest way to scout was from above, which meant Amelia spent her days on dragonback.

In the manor’s dining room, now war council room, they’d sketched a grid over the map of the Inglewood. Methodically, working back and forth and spreading ever-outward, she was able to mark these sections of the wood as clear of the enemy.

If it hadn’t been for her love of flying, the strong flex of Alpha’s back beneath her, the thrill of the wind tearing her eyes, it would have been dull beyond reason. Even so, she wanted to grind her teeth over the sense that this was all a massive waste of time. Caution where boldness would serve them better.

Today, it was Lancet who accompanied them. Slender and sharp as a blade, she cut through the air with long, efficient strokes of her wings that resembled the fast slash of a knife, surging ahead of the larger, more methodical Alpha again and again, until one of his bugling cries brought her back, or, interesting to observe, sent her farther out, so that they might cover more territory at once. She was a quiet, serious drake, her independence unlike the young Marigold’s, who loved to play in the air, attention snagging on every bird and trembling bush. Amelia had a sense of ruthlessness and cunning from her, and when she’d telepathically urged the female to snatch up anything that so much as resembled golden armor beneath the tree canopy, she’d earned an unsentimental pulse of agreement. She was, in truth, Amelia’s favorite partner for this activity.

As expected, they flushed nothing more than a herd of deer and a few foxes. She allowed both drakes to dive and snare a buck each in their talons, and then urged them home, as the sun began to sink toward the tree tops.

Strange to think of Inglewood as home, now. Even with her mounting frustration and sense of hopelessness, it was funny that a war camp felt like the place she’d always been meant to be.

Trumpets sounded as they approached the manor grounds, and the three remaining drakes sent up a welcome, mental and vocal, glad cries for their sister and alpha. Amelia had them deposit the dead deer at the cook’s tent, with instructions to portion one amongst the drakes, and stretch the other for the men.

“I’ll make a stew of it, m’lady,” the cook promised.

When she returned Alpha and Lancet to the pasture beneath the hemlocks that had become the drakes’ den, she was surprised to find two silhouettes framed by the large copper brazier there, black figures by the firelight, as the day faded into dusk. One was man-sized, the other only little. A man and a boy. And the man was stroking Valencia’s muzzle and crooning softly to her.

“…you are. Yes, you are. Who’s the prettiest scaly girl in the land?”

Amelia bit her lip to keep from laughing and tried to approach as quietly as possible. The crunch of dead, brown grass gave her way. The child, crouched down to poke at something on the ground with a stick, sprang up and whirled to face her. She recognized Liam’s cute, perpetually smudged face in the glow of the brazier. “Lia!”

She braced herself and had her arms open to receive his tackling hug before he reached her. “Oof!” she said, playing it up as his arms crushed around her waist. “You’re getting too strong for this.” He smelled of grass, and mud, and sweaty little boy; like the wild thing he was, a wriggling forest creature lured out into civilization by the promise of a warm fire and a sweet held out on a flat palm.

He giggled and twisted away from her, attention returning to the man who’d turned away from Valencia, and who was trying to quickly school his features from caught-out shock into something haughtier.

“We were feeding Lenny treats,” Liam said. “She likes ham.”

Reginald scowled at the boy as he smoothed his golden hair back. “Traitor,” he hissed.

Unbothered, Liam flitted around them and went to greet Alpha, whose rumbling purr Amelia could both hear and feel, like a welcome massage at the back of her mind.

“It’s ‘Lenny,’ is it?” she asked, no longer able to suppress her grin.

“Well, no, obviously it’s Valencia, the boy’s only–”

“Lord Reginald,” she drawled, “have you given my dragon a nickname?”

Despite the gathering shadows, the firelight lay full on his face, a rippling spotlight that revealed the way he flushed. “No.”

“Will you deny giving her treats, then, too?”

“I–” A muscle leaped in his jaw as he cut himself off.

“Gracious,” she said, in a rather good imitation of her mother that Tessa and Oliver would have loved. “The great bachelor Reginald L’Espoir minding children and dragons. What will all the randy footmen think?”

She knew the words were a mistake the moment they left her lips. His gaze shuttered, but not before she saw the brief flare of something wild and terrified in its blue depths.

Firelight licked over the shadow of the scar around his throat, exposed by the loosened neck of his tunic, and she recalled the haunted look in his eyes on the balcony in Drakewell, that first night she’d glimpsed Reginald the man, separate from the fop she’d called Lord Prance.

Shit. Her sister, she thought, would have gone soft and said something polite and appealing that would have cracked those emotional shutters open a fraction; would have coaxed him back toward good humor with skill and aplomb.

But Amelia wasn’t her sister, so she said, “What’s going on with you?” Blunt, yes, unfeeling also, but it left him rocking physically back on his heels in a way she hadn’t expected.

“Nothing,” he said, tersely, but could no longer pretend to be unaffected.

She thought of what Leda had insinuated, before, and wasn’t sure she could see Connor wanting anything to do with Reginald in an amorous way. All they did was snipe with one another.

Then again, that was foreplay for certain couples.

She didn’t know what they were, and it wasn’t her business, so she said, “Don’t be so defensive.”

He folded his arms, defensively.

“I don’t have the slightest interest in mucking about in your personal, private business. But this is a war – and not one I’m sure we can win.”

His brows jumped in surprise.

“Yes, I have my doubts, no need to look shocked about it,” she grumbled. “My point stands: I’m not some gossip at a ball looking for a scandal. I’m concerned about your concentration and your head.”

“My head?”

“Yes. About your ability to pull it out of your ass and focus on the tasks at hand.”

He snorted and shook said head, glanced out across the ever-darkening pasture. The shadows were already deep here beneath the shaggy hemlocks. Stars were beginning to appear, bright pinpricks in a periwinkle sky.

Valencia shifted, her breath a regular, soothing bellows sound, and rested her chin on Reginald’s shoulder. He reached, immediately and absently, to stroke the smooth, dark skin of her muzzle, the touch familiar and automatic, as if he’d done it dozens of times before. Because he had, Amelia realized with a start. She’d missed this, somehow: Reginald developing a special bond with one of the drakes, when she’d thought him the last person likely to do so.

“Gods,” she breathed, unable to help it.

His head snapped back around, hand flattening on top of Valencia’s nose, just above her nostrils. He held her like he would a horse, keeping her there, against him, behind him, almost as if he was protecting her. “What?”

She smoothed her expression – but then thought better of it, and let him see her smile. “You really like her, don’t you?” She nodded toward the drake who’d angled her head so that each breath stirred the golden hair around Reginald’s ear.

He frowned. “Yes?” Said it like a question. “What of it?”

“Nothing. I think it’s sweet.”

He made a face, but began to stroke the dragon’s face, the sharp bones along her jaw. “I can’t hear her, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not like you can.”

“You’re not a Drake.”

“And thank the gods for that. You’re crazy, the lot of you.” He sighed. “But…I don’t know.” His gaze flitted away again, and he looked self-conscious. “I’ve always found it peaceful to be at the stables, around the horses. This isn’t too different. Except…I don’t know,” he repeated, turning his head so he was gazing into one of Valencia’s red-gold eyes, glowing like a banked fire in the dark, half-lidded with pleasure as he scratched beneath her chin. “It’s different.” His voice had gone quiet. Vulnerable. “They’re more intelligent, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” she said, though it felt disloyal toward her stallion, Shadow.

“It’s like she knows things about me. Horses pick up on your moods, yes, but…” Another sigh, this one fond. “I can’t explain it.”

“Neither can I,” Amelia said.

It was quiet a moment, save the whooshing in-and-out of Valencia’s breath, the distant, usual murmur of the camp, and, nearer, Liam excitedly recounting the day’s bug search to Alpha, who’d curled up around the boy and provided a seat for him of his tail.

“Reggie,” Amelia said, and his gaze had softened when he turned to her this time. “I’m not prying.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” he said, a wry twist to his lips.

“I’m not,” she insisted, “but I know you well enough by now to know that something is weighing on you. You don’t have to confide in me, or ask for my advice – though it would undoubtedly be the best advice.”

“Undoubtedly,” he said with a snort.

“But I think you should talk to someone. Maybe Connor–”

And just like that, the shutters snapped closed again. His face became a smooth, expressionless mask.

“What?” she asked, thinking of Leda’s words again. “What’s going on with you and Connor?”

His hand fell away from Valencia’s face. She made a low, concerned crooning sound, but he strode away from her. “Nothing,” he said, without turning around.

“Reginald.”

He lifted a hand over his shoulder, but didn’t stop, and didn’t acknowledge her further. Continued on at a ground-covering walk. He called something she couldn’t hear to Liam, and the boy patted Alpha on the nose, scrambled down off his tail, and went scampering off after Reginald. He took the lord’s hand, just before they slipped out of sight into the shadows, and Amelia was left wondering at the strangeness of men.

She shook it off, and went to see that Alpha was thoroughly unsaddled and ready for sleep.

The butchered deer arrived as she departed for the house, and she heard the low, hungry rumbling of the drakes as they moved in around the boys who’d brought the meat, their faces pale and knees quaking. She smiled to herself; perhaps one day she’d stop enjoying the way the drakes frightened others, but it wasn’t to be this night.

As she mounted the steps to the manor’s side entrance, amidst the long-dead terrace garden, helmet tucked under her arm, she was greeted by Lady Leda and her step-son, Colum.

Leda wore a high-necked wool gown that would have been modest, save the deep slit in the chest that flashed a startling amount of cleavage when she lifted her arms to pull her cloak more tightly around herself.

Colum, by contrast, was dressed in his usual dour browns and blues, buttoned up to the throat, cloaked with a wool nearly as heavy as the frown that marred his young forehead. He was tall, but willowy; shoulders broad, but hands soft from handling books rather than swords. The bookish boy she’d met years ago had grown up into a joyless young man, pale from lack of sun, his hair a limp and uninspiring brown, cut closer than was fashionable so that his ears seemed to stick out like mug handles. His devotion to his stepmother was an outward, obvious thing; at times it seemed to swell and fill a room, pressing its other occupants up against the wall where they traded raised-brow looks of surprise.

They made for an odd pair, and yet never strayed far from one another, save the occasions when Leda shooed him away so that she and Amelia might have a glass of wine and confer in private. On those occasions, war stratagem quickly turned to friendly lamentation of the lack of further feminine influence at camp.

“Anything of interest?” Leda asked.

Amelia reached the top of the stairs, and lady and stepson did an about face to fall into step beside her. “No. As usual.” She didn’t know if yet another fruitless search, or Reginald’s bad attitude was to blame for her grumpy tone.

“Well, I have something interesting to share. Two somethings, in fact.” A darted glance as they moved up the walk toward the door proved that Leda looked pleased with herself.

“Oh?” Amelia asked, because she knew the woman liked to have an attentive audience.

“A letter arrived while you were out. From your mother. It seems she’s had word from your sister in Aeretoll.”

Just as they reached the door, Colum surged forward to hold it open for them. Amelia gave him a nod of thanks, which he returned with a stiff half-bow. He followed them in, and Amelia noted the air was warmer than it had been upon their initial arrival at the estate. While she was off scouting or dealing with her generals, Leda was taking the manor itself in hand: having hearths scrubbed, filled with logs, and lighting fires that chased back the early spring chill. The place looked tidier, too: fewer cobwebs, more suitable chairs dragged out from upstairs roomed and polished to a shine.

“Lady Tessa – pardon me, Princess Tessa,” Leda continued, leading them down the hall toward the library, “writes that the Northern King has decided on a march South to lend assistance to our efforts.”

Relief hit Amelia like a sucker punch. “Thank the gods.”

“Indeed. They’re awaiting one final lord, apparently, and then they’ll move in formation. The full Great Northern Phalanx – or what’s left of it after the siege,” she added in an undertone. “He expects it won’t be more than two or three weeks until departure.”

“Good.” Amelia went to the sideboard, pulled off her gauntlets, set them aside, and reached for the decanter of red, glowing like rubies in the radiance of fire and candlelight. She poured a glass and passed it to Leda before pouring one for herself.

“She also said,” Leda continued, voice becoming conspiratorial, “that the prince – not the one she married, but the other one.”

“Leif?”

“That’s it. Has left early, without permission, with a band of clansmen. She says the king is livid.” She sounded delighted.

Amelia frowned to herself as they moved to the chairs on either side of the hearth. “You’re sure? Leif?”

Leda settled across from her and fished a folded parchment from her prodigious bosom. “Here. See for yourself.”

Amelia had to set her wine aside and lean sideways in her chair so she could angle the parchment toward the fire. Light danced over it, and her mother’s tidy, faint script was cause for squinting in the golden dimness.

Yes. There in Katherine’s hand: Leif had – against his uncle the king’s orders – taken a troop of “clansmen” and “slunk off in the middle of the night.” Headed South, apparently, given he’d expressed displeasure in the last council meeting with the prospect of waiting any longer.

“Shit.” She picked her wine back up. “That doesn’t seem like him.”

“You know him?”

“Don’t sound so eager,” Amelia admonished, smiling briefly and earning a face in return. Then, frowning again, troubled in a way she hadn’t expected: “I feel as though I do – him and his whole family, thanks to Tess and Ollie’s letters. From what they’ve both said, Leif is one of the most level-headed, even-keeled people in all of Aeres. Calm, rational, thoughtful. He considers a problem from every angle and doesn’t behave rashly.”

Leda leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other, slippered foot swinging. “Perhaps he’s turned over a new, much more interesting – no pun intended – leaf.”

Amelia chuckled. Thank the gods for Leda Primrose; she hadn’t laughed this much since Mal…

Best not to think of him now. She firmly shut that door in her mind and said, “Perhaps. I know that something happened. Neither Ollie nor Tessa would say what exactly, just ‘Leif’s been through a difficult time.’”

“Injured in the war most likely,” Leda said, nodding. “That can change a man. Take young Reginald L’Espoir for instance.”

“Hm. I’m worried about him.”

“He was such a frivolous thing before. An empty-headed tit with a pretty face and far too much charm than was healthy.”

A shadow shifted behind Leda’s chair, and with a small, quickly-suppressed start, Amelia realized it was Colum. He stepped to the edge of the firelight’s reach, a hollow-cheeked wraith with a stern, disapproving expression.

“To be fair to Reggie,” Amelia said, “I think that was always an act. He wanted to fool us – all of us – and he did. He’s more himself, now…but also much more troubled than he ever was before.”

“Listen to you and your sweet concern.” Leda grinned wickedly over the rim of her glass. “Do I detect a soft spot in your warrior-maiden’s heart for the Lord of Hope Hall?”

Amelia rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. I don’t have a soft spot – not in the way you’re thinking – for anyone.”

Leda held her wine aside in one ringed hand, and leaned forward as though confiding vital information. “Darling.” Gaze and tone both firm. “You should always be open to a soft spot. Or. Well.” She winked. “Something a little harder.”

Amelia snorted wine down the front of her tunic which sent Leda into peals of elegant laughter.

“Okay, okay,” she said, once she’d stopped choking and mopped her chin with her sleeve. Her mother would have died to see her thus. “As I was saying. Prince Leif is behaving out of character.”

“And marching our way, apparently.” Leda sipped her wine, gaze narrowing as she considered the fire. “I don’t like hearing that there’s a rift in the king’s family. A disunited ally isn’t a consistent or focused one.”

“We don’t know that they’re disunited,” Amelia cautioned, uneasy, now. She sipped more wine, but its warmth failed to soothe anything besides her tired, aching muscles. Her mind was spinning off into unpleasant directions.

If the royal family was fracturing from within – if – that could spell chaos. An emotional distraction none of them could afford.

“Perhaps,” Leda said, drawing her attention once more, “Oliver will enlighten you further.” She sat forward, and offered another parchment – this one still sealed with a blob of crimson wax bearing the complexly woven stag and wolf seal of King Erik of Aeretoll.

Amelia took it, passed her thumb across the thick, finely-crafted parchment, traced her nail at the edge of the wax. “You opened one and not the other.” It wasn’t an accusation…at least not all of one.

Leda’s brows quirked, her smile rueful and knowing. “Turn it over.”

She did, and saw that an extra line had been added beneath her name.

For the Lady Amelia Drake

(Not to be opened by anyone BUT Lady Amelia Drake)

She could hear the words in Oliver’s voice as she read them, and smiled to herself. She made to stand. “I’ll–”

“No, you stay.” Leda stood, taking her glass with her. “I’m off to see about a hot bath. Or.” She frowned. “At least a warm one.”

Colum followed at her heels like a sullen puppy as she left.

Amelia shook her head over the strangeness of them, then broke the seal and unfolded Oliver’s letter.

The address alone kicked her pulse into a faster pace.

Lia–

She recognized Oliver’s handwriting, but it was slanted and hard-pressed, as though he’d written in a hurry.

Tessa wrote to your mother to tell her of our impending march. We’re coming, all of us, drakes included. The land bridge I told you of before will afford us passage directly into the Inglewood, and we’ll make our way through the forest to you. We’re taking falcons, so I should still be able to write in transit. I’ll be flying, of course, Náli and I both –

She recalled the necromancer Oliver had befriended, the at-first-unbelievable tales of his communion with and animation of the dead. Given she’d spent the day on dragon back, however, there wasn’t much she found unbelievable anymore.

–so we should arrive a little ahead of the Phalanx.

But, Lia, harken: Tessa will have written that Prince Leif has departed early. I don’t know if she will have conveyed that this was very much NOT PART OF THE PLAN. He and Erik argued – or, well, they disagreed. Leif doesn’t speak to any of us enough these days to warrant an ARGUMENT. He and Erik’s cousin are leading a small band of Úlfheðnar – the Waste clan from which Erik’s family is originally descended – toward Inglewood. They travel light, and are quick besides, and they’ll likely arrive at least two weeks before us. It seemed only right that I warn you what to expect should you cross paths with him.

He wanted to warn her. Gods. Dread and curiosity mounting in equal measure, she took a long swallow of wine and read on.

I told you in a previous letter that he’d been through a difficult time. That the battle had changed him…but I wasn’t entirely truthful. In person I would try to say this delicately, but, well, one can only be so delicate in writing, and I must hurry before Erik catches me and grows morose all over again about his favorite nephew’s “betrayal.”

On the journey from Dreki Hörgr to Aeres, the one that I undertook in the air while the rest of Erik’s people marched on foot, the party was set upon by wolves one night. They weren’t regular wolves, but skinwalkers: men who’ve been permanently cursed so that they may change from man to wolf and back again at will. Shapeshifters. Their leader was Erik’s cousin, the one who tried to have Rune killed and who betrayed us all to the Fangs up in the high mountain passes. He left us all for dead and then led his pack, for they are literally a pack, just as real wolves are, against Erik while they sat vulnerable round their campfires.

Leif was bitten. Leif was turned. He himself is a skinwalker, more wolf than man now, even when he walks on two legs.

He is changed. Not only can he howl, and growl, and smell a man from a mile away…he’s angry, Lia. Broody, and silent, and nothing like the boy I met and grew to love as my own nephew when I arrived. Rune despairs, and Erik does too, though more quietly. Each of us feel as though we’ve lost him. No one knows what he’s thinking, or how to reach him, how to make him feel included in the family. With enough time, with enough love, I think that we could break through to him, draw him back to us.

But he has his pack. Sleeps with them in a hay shed rather than his own room in the palace.

And then there’s Ragnar. The real traitor. The cousin who turned Leif and remains, inexplicably, alive still.

Because Ragnar was of the clans – the former chief of the Úlfheðnar, to be precise – Erik handed down the old laws. He gave Ragnar to Leif, to mete punishment as he would, thinking, just as I did, that Leif would take up an axe and strike off his head. But he didn’t. He kept him. As a thrall, he said. To serve him. A flesh war prize.

Amelia let her eyes lift from the paper and drift toward the fire, going unfocused. Her breathing had elevated, she realized; sweat prickled at her hairline. She wasn’t sure what to make of that; she’d only ever read of such a thing in a dusty old history tome. Tried and failed to rectify all that she’d been told of Leif Torstansson with the sudden, shocking mental picture of a man who’d kept his attacker as a slave. A flesh war prize.

She blinked, took another slug of wine, and read on.

At first he kept him in the dungeons, chained up as he should be. But then – and here I wonder just how long Leif had been planning to leave us; perhaps it wasn’t spontaneous at all – he said he wanted to bring him aboveground. That he wanted him to be loose. Erik refused, at first. What was to keep him from snatching up a bread knife and skewering his way through the guards? He’s not a normal man anymore – neither of them are. They could fight a dozen regular guards at once and come out the victor.

Náli first suggested – damn him – a magicked torq, one worn round the neck like in the old stories. Leif leaped on the idea, and so Tessa and I helped to infuse it with magic. It cannot be removed by Ragnar himself. Can in fact only be removed, thanks to Náli’s direction, by love.

“Love,” she said aloud, startling herself. “It’s like a bloody fairy story.”

Then again, she rode a dragon, so…

Thanks to the torq, he’s unable to shift. He’s stuck on two legs. And Leif, as alpha now, claims to have total control over him. I’ve watched him cow the man with a growl, and it’s both an alarming and impressive sight.

But the thing I wanted to warn you about is this: He might not be able to transform into a wolf now, but Ragnar is still very dangerous. Most especially, perhaps, to Leif. He has influence there. As Leif draws away from us, he spends more and more time with Ragnar, who is doubtless filling his head with nonsense of the wolf and man variety.

If anything good can be said to come of Leif’s insubordination, I think it will be arriving in Inglewood and meeting you. Your men and your forces. Joining the war will distract him from whatever rot Ragnar feeds him.

He is, at his heart, a good boy. I believe that still, despite the changes to his behavior.

Be careful, Lia, be on guard. But see if you can make friends with Leif. He was a capable warrior before all of this. He’ll be a devastating one now.

And he is my nephew, whom I love. Don’t judge him too harshly.

All my love.

See you soon,

Ollie

Amelia went back to the top and read the entire letter over again, without stopping. Then she set the parchment aside, slumped back in her chair, and drained the last of her wine.

Leda had been right: this was interesting.

7

Because of its unique design, and, given the dangers of flying, the necessity of its maintenance, the tack for the drakes was kept not in the stable, but in a spare grain shed, under lock and key. The stableboys had offered to keep it oiled and polished, but Oliver had politely declined and saw to it himself, before and after each ride. This morning, door standing half-open to let in silvery dawn light, he sat on a low stool, saddle spread out across two hay bales in front of the brazier he’d lit to warm the leather and keep it supple, working oil into the straps with a greasy rag. He'd always enjoyed cleaning tack; it was a good, mindless task during which his thoughts could wander. Sometimes to daydreams. Sometimes to whatever sticky problem plagued him and needed puzzling over.

This morning, lower back twinging and bruises yelping each time he leaned forward, his thoughts were consumed by the scene that had played out two hours ago, in the moon-gilded dark of the study, and the fur-heaped pallet that served as makeshift bed for a king and his consort.

Oliver had swum lazily up from muddy dreams to the cold, clear cry of a wolf shivering across the open land around the palace. He’d tensed, briefly, thinking of Leif. He’s returned. But, no. It was only a normal wolf, celebrating a fresh kill.

Oliver stretched, and rolled over – and awakened fully when he caught a glimpse through slitted eyes of his lover.

Erik lay on his side, facing him – facing the window, rather. He’d gone rigid at sound of the howl, craned his head back, tendons in his neck stark and straining as he stared fixedly toward the diamond panes of glass. He wasn’t breathing; quivered all over with held tension, fingers gripping the pillow, one knee cocked up and foot braced on the mattress. He looked like a man ready to spring to his feet and go running, a shout poised on his lips. The covers had slipped down, or been thrown off, nightshirt half unlaced and gaping open across his chest; in the faint gleam of last moonlight, Oliver could see the rapid flutter of his pulse in the hollow of his throat.

He looked tortured. It was eating him, day and night, in every moment sleeping or waking: Leif’s leave-taking.

Oliver saw it as a young man wanting to make his own decisions, wrestling with his life’s upheaval, struggling with a deep bond with a man he thought he hated, but which he didn’t, and which none of them were capable of understanding.

Erik saw it as betrayal. Abandonment. In his wort moments, flush with wine, alone just the two of them, his mouth had twisted cruelly and he’d sworn that he was going to disinherit “the ungrateful bastard.”

“Don’t say that,” Oliver had snapped. “Don’t you dare say that about him just because you’re hurting.”

Erik’s gaze had flared like the blue heart of a flame…and then died, doused with a shame so heavy it rounded his shoulders.

Oliver had thought about confiding his worries to Revna – especially when she gripped his shoulder, squeezed, and said, “Sorry, lamb,” without prompt – but that had felt like another kind of betrayal…and unnecessary besides. Revna and Erik shared a special bond, yes, but it was different from his bond with Oliver; a sister could slap and reprimand, while a lover needed to take a softer approach.

“Darling,” he said, in the moonglow, while Erik’s held breath strained his chest. He reached out, and laid a hand in the deep groove between Erik’s pectorals; felt the hard thud of his heart beneath his palm. “It’s only–”

One-two heartbeats filled his hand, and then the room filled with a low, rough growl, and spun all around them.

No, around him. Oliver landed on his back, the air knocked from his lungs, and looked up to see Erik looming over him, face made harsh by the curtain of snarled hair falling on either side of it. He had Oliver by the biceps, gripping so tight it hurt, pinning him down to the mattress. Oliver flexed his forearms and there was no doubt that he’d never be able to dislodge him.

The position, even the harsh fingertips digging in, were not unwelcome. He liked it a little rough; liked to be reminded how big and strong Erik was; reveled in all the contrasts between them.

But Erik’s eyes were all wrong.

The sky lightened by the second, its wan diffusion highlighting a pair of blue eyes gone foreign. Pupils the size of pin heads, rolling side to side, scanning Oliver’s face without really seeing him. Erik bared his teeth, and the growl repeated.

For one awful moment, stomach flipping, Oliver wanted to pull his collar wide and search for a bite. Had Leif turned his own uncle? Had he…?

But no, no. This was a human sound. The growl of a man full of anger, and frustration, hurting and worried and helpless, caught in the grips of a nightmare, straining toward the call of a wolf and all that it might mean.

“Erik,” Oliver snapped. “It’s me.”

Confusion. And then recognition. And then horror, as he realized what he’d done. His grip slackened, and he started to draw away.

Oliver’s stomach flipped again, this time because the idea of Erik withdrawing into himself, burdening himself with yet more shame, was intolerable. Oliver needed him to understand that he was here, that he saw Erik’s anguish; to know that, even if he stood up for Leif, because someone ought to remind Erik that he did still love his nephew, he was ultimately on Erik’s side. That he was his shoulder to lean on, no matter how small, and that Erik didn’t have to hide all that he was thinking and feeling. Not in the dark hours that were theirs and theirs alone.

Oliver reached up to take two fistfuls of Erik’s hair and dragged him, unresisting, down into a kiss.

Erik made a low, hurt sound against his mouth, and then kissed him ferociously. His grip tightened, and shifted, hands petting roughly over Oliver’s chest, stomach, throat.

Oliver wound up on his knees, one big hand pressing his face into the pillow. It had become a race, desperation evident in every grab and shove, in the sloppy, hurried way Erik stretched him with too much oil and not enough time.

Oliver shifted now with a wince, sore. Not unpleasantly so, but he had finger-shaped bruises coming up on the side of his throat, and his scalp was tender where Erik had gripped his hair, long enough now to gather up in one hand and tip his head back until his neck strained. Thankfully, his clothes covered the rather deep, distinct bite mark on the point of his shoulder.

He felt well-used, thoroughly-fucked, more than a little bow-legged…and would have loved it if not for the fact that, after, while Erik clutched him desperately to his chest and breathed like a lathered horse, nothing seemed to have eased.

“I’m sorry,” Erik had murmured, finally, and kissed his forehead, and then rolled away and gone to the washstand.

Oliver frowned as he buffed the saddle’s breastplate strap, recalled the splendid sight of Erik standing at the basin, passing a wet cloth over his chest, stomach, shoulders. Pink lines from his own nails had scored that broad back, and the insides of his thighs throbbed to the shape of those narrow hips. But Erik had still been tense – far too tense for a man who’d just come like a bull.

Oliver had a sinking suspicion that it was going to be a long, fraught march South, filled with stares off into the distance, and weighted silences, and many sighs.

He could wring Leif’s dumb neck for that alone.

Beyond the door, he heard the drakes warble a greeting to someone, and Percy sent him an image of Tessa, hair braided elaborately and slender form wrapped head to toe in a fox fur that matched it. He lifted his head as she stepped through, old, stale grain crackling under her boots.

“Good morning.” She came to the brazier straight off and held her gloved hands before it.

“Morning.” Oliver returned her smile.

She froze, fingers outstretched, eyes widening. “Ollie, are you well?”

He resisted the urge to pull his shirt collar up higher around his throat. “Yes. Fine.” And he was, truly. Minus the worry.

Her head titled fractionally, and her gaze dropped to his neck; he knew she was seeing the marks there, but she didn’t comment on them. She was married, now; it was likely she had a little better understanding of the sorts of bruises a person wanted to carry, that they’d all but begged for and leaned into.

(How depressing to think of his little cousin in that light. Damn. She really was all grown up now.)

“What brings you out here this early?” he asked, and returned to oiling. “Off for a ride?”

She hesitated long enough that he lifted his head again, and found her standing in a formal pose, linked hands resting before her, head held high. “I hope so,” she said, and her tone was formal as well.

“If you need me to check your saddle for you–”

She stepped closer, moving around the brazier so she stood right beside him, and he saw, at this distance, the firm resolve in her gaze. It rocked him back on the stool, which left him biting on a wince and a hiss as Erik’s attentions made themselves suddenly, painfully known.

“You’re flying out to meet Náli this morning,” she said. “And I’m coming with you.” Her voice quavered a bit at the end, not as sure as Amelia or their mother would have been, but it was a statement rather than a request.

He lifted his brows. “Are you now?” He made the mistake of grinning, just a little.

She frowned, and for a moment he had a glimpse of what Katherine must have looked like at eighteen. “I’m not joking, Oliver.”

He smoothed his expression. “Clearly not.”

She folded her arms, now a portrait of Amelia.

Or perhaps, he thought, acknowledging that he wasn’t being charitable, a portrait of herself, as she’d always been, deep down, a chrysalis waiting to burst open, wings unfurled.

“You and Náli intend to take Percy and Valgrind to war, yes?”

“That is the plan, yes.”

“And you expect to leave Alfie and me behind, is that it?”

He winced. “Don’t think of it like that.”

“How am I supposed to think of it? How could Alfie possibly he content to stay here while her mate and her son fly thousands of miles away? How can she manage alone?”

“She won’t be alone: she’ll have you.”

Her gaze narrowed. “That isn’t the same thing and you know it.”

“Tessa–”

“Oliver. The drakes are the only reason we aren’t all dead and buried under two feet of snow right now. Or, worse, chained up in the hold of a Selesee ship, bound for a life of enslavement. Percy, Alfie, and Valgrind all three made the difference. Given our enemy, given these new developments, are you willing to leave one of those drakes behind?”

He started to protest – and sighed. In truth, he’d considered this very thing. There would always be a part of him that hesitated to include Tessa, out of simple protectiveness. He didn’t want to endanger her.

“We could take Alfie,” he began, and her eyes flashed.

“I’m her rider. If she goes, I go.”

He bit back another sigh. “You’re newly married. What about Rune?”

She shrugged. “Rune can come with us.”

Oh, to be young and optimistic.

“Tessa–”

“I know what you’re going to say.” Her chin clenched at a stubborn angle. “I know that you think I’m young” – hopefully she couldn’t read his mind the way she could her drake’s – “and too hopeful. That I’m over-confident after the siege. Everything worked out and now I think I’m a shieldmaiden.”

“Well…”

“No.”

His jaw snapped shut.

“I don’t think I’m a shieldmaiden and I don’t want to be one! I won’t have to be, from Alfie’s back. I don’t want to sword fight. I won’t need to.”

He offered a sympathetic smile. “That isn’t how war works, love. You never know what you might be called upon to do.”

She shook her head. “Then I shall face those challenges when they arise. But don’t march foolishly to war with only two drakes when there are three.”

“Amelia has drakes,” he said, a lame, last-ditch effort to stay her. “Five of them.”

“Then we shall have eight all told.”

There would be no swaying her, he saw. Her toe was even tapping the sawdust floor of the shed, muscle ticking in her jaw as she clenched her teeth and braced herself for further argument.

Oliver felt a slow smile overtake his face.

In turn, her face smoothed with surprise. “What?”

“In case I don’t say it enough in the days and weeks to come, I want you to know how very proud I am of you.”

She frowned – but her cheeks pinked. She folded her arms even tighter – but she scuffed her toe across the floor. Her gaze flicked away, and she said, in a bitter undertone, “Everyone always trusts Lia. Send her off to war, no questions, but oh no, Tessa has to be locked up in a tower.”

“Tessa,” he said, seriously. When her gaze returned, he said, “You’re right: we need all three drakes. We need a whole flock of them – but we’ll take the three brave ones we have. And their riders.

“You should expect arguments from the others, though. Rune will want you to be safe, and Erik will want the same, only he’ll be much sourer about it.”

A smile touched the corners of her mouth. “All I ever do these days is argue my case. I’m well-prepared.”

He nodded. “Aye,” he said, in a poor imitation of Bjorn’s broad, Northern accent, and startled a laugh from her.

Oliver leaned down toward the wooden caddy at his feet and withdrew a second rag and pot of beeswax. “Here, then.” He held them out to her. “Check your tack and give it a good oiling.”

She flashed him a girlish grin straight out of their childhood, snatched up the items, and whirled away. A few minutes later, she was humming under her breath…

And Oliver was dreading yet another argument with his king. He might as well bang his head directly against the wall now and save himself half the trouble.

~*~

Percy and Alfie circled one another in lazy, swooping turns high above the main road, in a cerulean sky brushed with faint white clouds. To one direction, the palace seemed no more than a child’s play castle of wood and papier-mâché, the guardsmen down on the road nothing more than ants. And in the other, the snaking brown ribbon of the road, exposed, now, as the snow began its long, slow spring melt, the fields and forest around it still white with snow, but drippy and soggy. The snow sounded like the sloshing of water in a jug when you walked in it, these days. From above, Oliver could only hear the whistle of the wind in his ears, and the steady rush of Percy’s wing-flaps and breath; the little sounds he traded with Alfie when they passed one another.

Oliver was anticipating Náli’s arrival, but thanks to their bond, Percy knew that his son was coming; his anticipation was like a tightly-coiled spring, brimming with an eager fondness that had infected Oliver, until his fingers were buzzing on the reins.

The sun had turned the tree tops to a scattering of loose diamonds when a high shriek pierced the clear morning. Oliver turned his head, and Percy was already angling his wings, tucking and banking so they were headed down the road. Alfie let out a shriek of her own and swooped in to fly just beneath them. Oliver caught a glimpse of Tessa’s bright hair, uncovered where her hood had slipped down. She leaned low and easy over Alfie’s withers, smiling in a way that Oliver felt himself echoing. The drake family was to be reunited again, and it was impossible not to share in the dragons’ excitement.

A silhouette appeared, backlit by the midmorning sun. A shape of gleaming pearl, the arch and flex of wings and the backward whip of a tail. Valgrind didn’t fly as straight nor as elegantly as his parents. When he was near enough to be very clearly a drake, and not simply a vast bird, he gave another bugling cry and rushed on toward them, flapping furiously, head darting snakelike.

Rather than swing wide so they could all spiral down to the ground in formation, he shot the gap between his parents, and as he did, Oliver could hear Náli aboard him.

“…stupid fucking…no! No, do not!”

Oliver laughed aloud, and craned his neck to see as the pair darted beneath them. He caught a glimpse of gleaming silver harness and bridle, reins winking diamonds, a saddle of bleached-white leather.

“…absolutely not – will you listen?” Náli fumed, before they were too far and the wind snatched away the words.

Oliver straightened in the saddle, and saw more ants marching down the road toward them: a great many. Náli’s Guard, and the men he’d brought for the war.

Oliver’s laughter faded. Though the drakes’ joy at reunion washed through him, it was far from a joyous occasion that brought them back together.

~*~

Wine, hot cider, and trays of cold meats and fresh breads were laid out in the royal family’s dining room, so they might all meet and converse without the whole palace listening in in the great hall. Oliver’s first thought, when they were inside, cloaks flung off in the warmth from the hearth, was that Náli must have been feeling poorly from the first moment he met him, at the Yule festival, because he was a young man transformed, now.

He was naturally pale, with his nearly-white hair, and fine-grained skin, but there was color in his cheeks not merely the result of flying, and he’d lost some of his hollow look: still wasp-waisted and lean as a blade of grass, but not gaunt or hunched. He stood tall and strong, vital, and his eyes had a new sparkle to them.

Some of that was thanks to his new balance of magic – which he explained to them in great detail over lunch – but most of it, Oliver thought, secretly, was down to Mattias, who stood closer than was proper for a guard captain, and who shifted food from his own plate to Náli’s; who touched his arm to get his attention. A dozen small, unremarkable signs of intimacy that had been lacking before, but which he felt comfortable displaying now.

“Doubt Oliver all you want,” he said, peeling a slightly-wrinkly pear with a knife from his belt, words addressed to Erik.

“Hey,” Oliver protested, and was ignored.

“But you’d be a fool to doubt me.”

A muscle twitched in Erik’s jaw, but it looked more like amusement than offense. Náli, brat that he was, could get away with the sort of insubordination that would land older, more serious men in shackles.

“I’ve been visiting the plane between worlds since my infancy,” he went on. “It isn’t a trick and it isn’t a hallucination. Whether he’s truly the emperor or not remains to be seen – he might be a powerful Selesee shaman peddling lies – but he is Selesee and he is powerful. And he is” – his gaze slid one chair over to Oliver, shrewd in a way it hadn’t been the last time they’d met; he seemed so very alive, now – “for whatever reason, fixated on finding Oliver.”

Erik traced the heavy pedestal of his cup with a ringed thumb, frowning. “But Ollie isn’t–” He cut himself off, expression turning guilty.

Oliver laid a hand on his sleeve. “It’s all right, darling, you can say I’m not very important.”

Erik’s frown deepened. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

“Oliver’s not known of his own magic for very long,” Revna said, more tactfully. “He’s not been walking in other planes as you have your whole life,” she said to Náli, who shrugged.

“As I said: I don’t know his reasons. Only that he wants you.” His gaze came to Oliver, and Oliver glimpsed the quick, animal sheen of fear in it. For a know-it-all boy prone to bluster, his interactions with the so-called emperor had been rattling – and that in turn rattled Oliver, though he tried not to show it.

The other four members of the Dead Guard had taken refreshments standing up against the wall, formal and silent, but Mattias was seated at the table beside his master. Revna’s brows had gone up when they’d first sat down, but no one had said anything, silently accepting this shift in the captain’s role. For his part, Mattias seemed to be settling into it rather well. He spoke up now, when he never would have before: “Are there not records here of the Sel emperors? A way to verify that he is who he says he is?”

“In the library, yes,” Erik said. “We’ve been over them, but they’re wildly outdated, and the illustrations are crude.”

“The last four emperors were named Romanus Tyrsbane,” Birger said.

Náli’s brows went up. “The last four? Or the same one all this time? ‘Immortal’ is a part of his title, after all.”

Birger shook his head. “Men are mortal. It’s a title, only. Immortality isn’t possible.”

Náli titled his head, so his hair glimmered like a snow fox pelt in the firelight. “More than you know is, in fact, quite possible.”

Birger made a sour face, and Revna cleared her throat neatly, drawing everyone’s attention. “Well, it will take weeks to prepare the march, so all of you magical lads have time to research before you depart.” She sounded brisk and falsely cheerful; Oliver wondered how she’d sound once Tessa told her she intended to march – or fly, rather – along with them.

“Yes,” Erik said, “and it won’t change our travel besides. The most urgent business is joining the Aquitainian forces amassing in Inglewood. We’ll worry about the emperor after we’ve smashed through his lines at the Crownlands,” he said, firmly, in a clear dispersal of the meeting.

As they broke apart, Tessa went to urge a protesting Revna to go and lie down. Bjorn wanted Erik to go and inspect the walls with him, because the masons had questions. Birger went off with Magnus and Lars to see about settling the Fault Lands men in the barracks with their own forces. Rune, feeling the pressures of princedom no doubt, had taken it upon himself to work with the young lads not yet old enough to march to war, working on their archery skills; Tessa sent him a proud look when he announced he was holding a practice in the training yard.

Oliver slipped his arm through Náli’s and said, “Come and take a walk with me.”

Náli sent him an amused look. “If it’s a tryst you’re after, Your Lordship, I must warn you that Mattias will cave your face in.”

“Not to worry, Mattias is much more my type than you.”

Náli laughed, and it was a marvel to hear that it was a real, true laugh, not colored with derision or bitterness. He sounded happy.

Mattias did come along, a pace behind them, and though he made a face, initially, when he spotted their linked arms, he soon settled. Oliver cast a glance over his shoulder at him as they entered a garden alive with the dripping of melting icicles, and found that he was staring off across the grounds, hands loose at his sides, unworried. Secure in his master’s affections and not afraid that Oliver might be trying to woo him away.

“So,” Oliver said, as they started down the path. With the snow thinned, the gravel shifted audibly underfoot.

“So,” Náli echoed. His boots looked new on the path, a gray leather with intricate white stitching along the tops. His whole gray ensemble was elegant and fresh; he’d dressed up for this trip, this meeting, and Oliver found it unbearably cute. “I don’t know what a book can tell us about this bastard, but–”

Oliver squeezed his arm. “Enough about the emperor for now. He’ll keep a bit longer. I want to know” – when he turned a grin on the boy, he had the pleasure of watching his eyes widen and his ears pink as he anticipated the question to come – “who made the first move.” He tilted his head pointedly toward Mattias, and Náli groaned.

“Oh, don’t be a gossip.”

“Don’t you be a bore. Bastards in Drakewell don’t get to gossip: it’s nothing but coat closet trysts and standing quietly up against a wall during parties.”

“Well that certainly isn’t my fault.”

“Humor me, Corpse Lord. It’s been nothing but war, and death, and betrayal, and cannibals, and…” He’d started jokingly, but trailed off when the truth of it all fell over them like a stone-weighted net.

Náli’s step faltered beside him, and they walked on in silence a moment, both regarding the toes of their riding boots.

When Oliver lifted his head, he found Náli glancing over his shoulder, and he glanced, too. Mattias strode behind them, brow knitted. When Náli met his gaze, he nodded, and Náli turned back with a sigh.

“It was both of us. It was…” The blush suffused his cheeks, crept down his throat into the high collar of his tunic. “When I arrived home, Mother informed me she was hosting another of her dreadful matchmaking balls.”

“Ugh.”

“Yes. There have been plenty over the years – I believe I was five for the first one.”

“Gods.”

“But this time…I’d never stretched myself so thin. Never used up so much magic before.

“When I went down into the well this time, though, I didn’t go alone.”

“Mattias?”

Náli snorted. “No. Valgrind. The impertinent beast.”

Oliver felt his brows shoot up. “Valgrind?”

“Mmhm. Mother didn’t want him out chasing sheep and terrifying the crofters, apparently, so Mattias and the others smuggled him down into the catacombs. When I went into the well, he jumped in after me, and he managed to cross over…” He went on to tell Oliver a wild, impossible story of long-dead ancestors, and the birth of magic in the North.

By the end, Oliver realized he was faintly dizzy from holding his breath, and plopped down onto a cleared section of bench where the sun had melted the snow from its seat. “Gods,” he murmured.

Náli joined him. “Quite.

“As for Erik’s belief in it all – magic may be new to you, but it isn’t to me, nor to my bloodline. I believe what I saw and heard and felt beyond this plane. All of it’s true.” He turned to face Oliver, suddenly grave. “This isn’t a war that’s purely sword against sword. We’ll have to fight on two fronts: the mortal, and the immortal.”

Oliver attempted a laugh, a sad and choked thing. “Oh, is that all?” He didn’t enjoy the uncharacteristic trace of sympathy in Náli’s responding smile.

He turned away. “Well, then. War aside: at least you’ve solved your dilemma, yes? There’s no more need to produce an heir.”

“Hm,” Náli hummed, and then hesitated, expression squashing down in boyish fashion.

It was Mattias who answered. He stood a few feet away, arms folded, not unhappy, exactly, but serious. Like always. Oliver didn’t know the man well, granted, but he’d yet to see him truly smile.

“There’s no longer a rush to produce an heir. And his lordship may leave the Fault Lands at will. The fire mountain is properly settled. But though the other Guards and I possess magic, now…” He lifted a hand and stared at it, gaped at it, really, a reflexive moment of awe. “We weren’t born with it. There’s no way to know that a child fathered by Klemens, or any of us, would possess Náli’s inherited powers.”

“Fatherhood might still be in my future,” Náli said, wincing. “Joy.”

Oliver looked to Mattias…

Who scuffed his toe through the slushy snow on the path and cleared his throat, awkward, suddenly. “There is a young woman who is…willing. A friend of Náli’s, even.”

“She and Klemens,” Náli began, and Oliver stayed him with a raised hand.

“You know what? I don’t think I need all the dirty details.”

Náli snorted and waggled his brows.

Mattias’s cheeks went very pink.

Oliver said, “So how is Valgrind?”

8

If they were all being honest, it was a shock something like this hadn’t happened sooner. It had been too quiet for too long; even knowing this, they’d let their guard down, and so the crumpled bit of parchment, when it arrived in the fist of a pale, panting scout with a fist-shaped bruise on his face, still landed like a gut-punch.

It had been written in Continental, their language, though the grammar was a little off: that of a translator and not an Aquitainian citizen, the handwriting loopy and flourishing in a way that brough to mind the musical language of Seles.

Your men are clumsy, slow, and breathe too loud. You send children to do the job of a man. One we return to you as a show of goodwill, the rest we keep, until you surrender.

A map had been included, startlingly detailed and accurate. A place west of their current location had been circled, at the very edge of the duchy. A crumbling old tower surrounded by flat fields: impossible to approach with anything like caution. They would be forced to ride up with white flags waving, unarmed, and even then it seemed likelier they’d all be slaughtered than allowed to sue for peace.

Night had just fallen, and Reggie had entered the manor – ablaze with candles and warm from the many fires burning – sweaty, sore, fresh from his own fruitless patrol, to find everyone gathered in the dining room, faces grave. His stomach had twisted painfully when Edward read the brief missive aloud. The scout – the lone one of his party allowed to return – sat against the wall, nursing a brimming cup of wine that someone had pressed into his hand and which he nearly spilled thanks to his shaking.

Amelia stood at the head of the table, hands gripping the back of a chair, head bowed. She appeared to be taking it the hardest. The room was quiet, now, save the crackle of the fire and her harsh, open-mouthed breathing.

Halfway down the table, seated sideways in a chair with her legs crossed to the side, in a gown of clinging peach velvet, Lady Leda asked, “How many boys were in the party?”

“Fifteen,” Connor said, unusually sober from his place leaning against the mantelpiece. “They have fourteen hostages.”

There had been more than fourteen when Reggie was in their hands; his whole battalion. But he’d been the lord, the one with the brightest sword and most elaborate armor. Their captain. And why bother with torturing a runner or a manservant when you could toy with an heir? One with golden hair who cried easy, when–

Reggie throttled the thought forcefully, turned, and started pacing the width of the room. It was that or find a bottle and drink himself into oblivion.

“They’re still holding hostages in the Crownlands,” he heard Amelia say. “Royal hostages. They have the queen for gods’ sakes. Why waste their time with…” She trailed off. “Shit. It’s not a waste of time. We’re getting them back.”

“They’re testing you,” Edward said. “After their loss in the North, they’ll want to gauge your strength as a leader. See if they can manipulate your emotions.”

“Why?” she snapped. “Because I’m a woman, and I’m weak? Because I’ll make a stupid, rash decision and get us all killed?”

“Do you expect them to be respectful?” he countered. “Women don’t fight in Seles. They aren’t generals, and they don’t muster forces. They assume they can crush you.”

“But we have the drakes,” Leda said. “There’s no need to ride out in force to meet them, nor to surrender. Why can’t Amelia simply fly in, burn the tower to the ground, and fly back out with her men?”

“That might work,” Edward said, though he didn’t sound convinced. “But it would require reconnaissance, first. The Selesee trebuchets are notorious; if they have a large and accurate scorpion, they could shoot the drakes from the sky.”

Amelia made a half-furious, half-distressed sound.

Reggie knew that he should contribute in some fashion – even a bad idea, if that was all he could concoct. But his pulse was growing quicker and quicker, fresh sweat prickling against the cold dampness of the day’s dirty clothes, and he had to let their words wash over him, background murmurs. He couldn’t draw a deep breath, and that was making him dizzy. The fire was too hot, his collar too stifling.

He touched his throat as he paced, and he felt the noose, tightening, tightening, tightening.

Felt hands on his shoulders, his wrists, his ankles, his hips, bruising, crushing, holding him down. Laughter, and the lilting strains of Selesee taunts, their meaning harsh and crude, without need of translation.

He hit the wall, and turned–

And was pulled up short. Halted in his tracks.

His head snatched back so sharply it sent a spike of pain down his neck. His visioned had tunneled down to a narrow span between two dancing curves of black spots. But he could see Connor clearly enough, brows furrowed, hand wrapped firmly around his biceps as he held him in place.

His lips moved as he said something that Reggie couldn’t hear. His panic tripled; a live flock of birds in his chest desperate to get out.

“Let go of me.”

But Connor didn’t. His lips compressed into a flat, unimpressed line, and when Reggie tried to get away, he had his wrist twisted, arm wrenched behind his back, and, despite his gasp, found himself being forcefully marched out through the French doors onto the private terrace that overlooked the playing courts.

The cold night air slapped him across the face, cleared his vision, filled his lungs with the first deep breath he’d had in five minutes. It gave him the strength to twist free, finally, turn, and clock Connor in the face.

He made the attempt, at least. Connor dodged, quicker than Reggie expected – all that time slinking around dressed like a shadow in the forest – and he caught him with only a glancing blow on the outer edge of his cheekbone.

They both cursed afterward, Reggie clutching his knuckles and Connor his face.

“Damn.” Connor checked his fingertips for blood, and then worked his jaw side to side. “You done?” He sounded unimpressed, which turned Reggie’s too-hot panic to anger. “Did you get it out of your system?”

“Out of my–” He snarled. Stepped forward and jabbed a finger into his face. “How dare – don’t you ever – in front of everyone–”

A light tap struck his cheek, accompanied by a faint smack of skin on skin. There was no pain, only a faint tingling, and it took him a long moment to realize that Connor had slapped him.

His mouth fell open, but he found he couldn’t form any sort of coherent objection.

Connor snorted. “Gods. Don’t look so appalled. I barely touched you.”

“You–”

“You were making a scene,” Connor said, adopting a stern tone, expression hardening so the dim torchlight deepened the shadows beneath his jaw, and cheekbones. He might have adopted the role of lord once more, for the war, for their survival, but he looked like nothing but a Stranger, now; a wraith outlaw from the forest, chin dark with stubble, eyes deep black wells of remembered horror and suffering. His gaze, in that moment, snapped Reggie’s teeth together with an audible click; his sanity was not the only casualty of the past year.

“I may play the fool,” Connor continued, “but I’m not, in fact, stupid.” He edged in closer, and thrust his face into Reggie’s personal space. “I know where your head went the moment that letter arrived. You got stuck in your own memories and you couldn’t even breathe, could you?”

“I wasn’t…” But denial got stuck in his throat.

Grimly victorious, Connor said, “I dragged you out before you could fall apart completely.”

“Oh, well, then, I suppose I owe you a great debt of gratitude.” But though he aimed for a mocking tone, he missed his mark, still dizzy, still swinging wild as he’d done with his fist moments before.

Connor sighed. “Reggie–”

“Do not suppose you have the right to call me that. We are not friends. There is no intimacy between us, just because you see fit to proposition everything that walks upright–”

He saw the next slap coming, and ducked it; scuttled backward until he bumped up against the balustrade. “What in the gods’ names–”

Two hands fisted the front of his tunic and bore him back against the railing. Connor gave him a light shake. “Would you please just stop being such a stuck-up, entitled prick?” he growled. “I know it was terrible what happened to you – what those bastards did to you. They’ve ruined the lives of everyone here in some fashion. This war’s touched everyone.” His knuckles ground into Reggie’s chest through his clothes. “I know you have nightmares. I know you wake up nights thinking the rope’s still around your neck. Your face inside just now, it was awful. You were crumbling in front of everyone, and so I brought you out here, so you could collect yourself. So you can be a general, and contribute, and not fall apart in front of a scared boy who was forced to leave all his friends behind at the Sels’ mercy.”

Oh. He’d not considered that.

“We few stand poised at the head of an army unfit to launch an assault on a child’s birthday party, much less the Devouring Empire. Our men are young, and untrained; all those unfit to fight in the first wave, now handed spears and swords and told to march to their doom. A smile and a lie that they won’t all be killed the moment the fighting starts is the only thing that keeps them here, and on their feet. You can’t go to pieces in front of any of them without your panic spreading through the entire camp like a disease.”

“I…” He swallowed with difficulty. “Yes. You’re right.”

“I usually am,” Connor said, and for once it wasn’t a joke; his expression was grave, his voice tinged with regret. “It’s not much fun, that: being right, when the world’s gone to shit.”

He released Reggie’s tunic; flattened his hands over his chest, smoothing the fabric…resting there, after, heat of his hands bleeding through the weave. Reggie still breathed harshly, and each inhale swelled his chest forward, deeper into Connor’s cupped palms. They stood close enough for the moonlight to pick out all the laugh lines and little scars in the skin of Connor’s face; to edge his swollen pupils, his gaze fixed on Reggie’s face in a way that pierced him straight through. His hands weighed heavy as stones. His touch burned, and Reggie wanted to lean into it with a sudden, familiar fierceness.

Visions of coat closet trysts filled his head, a tumble of electrifying memories: hands groping in the dark, wet slide of mouths together, fast and frantic; working himself against a strong thigh, pulling at fine fabric until buttons scattered and threads snapped. Trysts in which he’d always led, always been the one steering, but the glint of moonlight in Connor’s hungry eyes made it abundantly clear that there would no leading here, with him.

A part of him wanted that so badly that he ached with it. To give himself over to someone; stop worrying, stop trying, and just be; let himself go where he was told, and just feel. No ulterior motive, no strategy, no fear. Only feeling.

But the panic boiled up in his throat anyway. Laughing white faces in the firelight, his fingernails breaking off as he scrabbled in the dirt. No, no, please, and a ringing slap to his face so he saw stars.

He started to pull back –

Quick as a blink, Connor shifted a hand to his nape, gripped him tight by the hair. “Come here, lad.”

“No, I–” But he went…and then found that Connor only intended to pull his head down to his shoulder; to pull him in close, chest to chest, so he could put his other arm around his waist and hold him even closer. The hand at his nape spread, cupping him there, and on his next inhale, his ribs pushed against Reggie’s.

“Breathe,” he said.

And Reggie breathed. Painfully, at first, but then he found himself matching the steady rhythm of Connor’s breaths, and the tension bled out of him, by degrees. In its absence, exhaustion swamped him. His knees buckled, but Connor held up him, sure and strong.

“You’re all right,” Connor said, squeezing him tight – squeezing all the poisonous thoughts from him, so there was only room for the cold of the wind on his skin, and the heat of another strong body against his own. “Breathe, and it’ll pass.”

And it did pass, that old terror. Memory all too often put him on his knees, gasping for breath, sweating through his clothes. But here, now, Connor had seen, and Connor had stopped the process.

Reggie wanted to cry from relief. He wanted to kiss him even more, less frantic, more sticky-slow, dreamlike desire, the indulgent sort that led to bedrooms, and fine linen, that he’d never had before, locked in coat closets and ducked behind hedges.

He turned his head, and ghosted his lips against Connor’s neck. He tasted of salt and dirt, the contrast to the perfumed and powdered Sels a reassurance, as his tongue darted out, and he lapped over a pulse that skipped.

But Connor murmured, “No, darling.” He gripped Reggie’s shoulders and pushed him back, putting an inch between them that the cold rushed to fill, shocking after the warmth of contact. His smile was a sideways crook, nearly sad. “You’re not ready for that. Just…” He patted Reggie’s cheek, fond. “I’m not gonna do anything while you’re…not sure. Yeah?”

Reggie’s stomach plummeted. Shame, regret, unanswered want. But he was too tired to throw a fit. He sighed, scrubbed at his face, and cleared his throat. “They’re expecting us in there.”

Connor’s head tilted. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Another moment of watching him, and then an approving nod. A friendly clap to the shoulder that didn’t so much as hint at the gleam in his eyes before. “Good lad.”

Back inside they went.

9

This place smelled of green things. Of shoots pushing up through soil, and buds fattening on bare branches. Of the musk of foxes and lions as they shook off the drudgery of winter and started thinking of the finding and claiming of mates, the production of offspring. As a man, spring had always smelled to Leif of a damp sort of freshness, and felt like a new beginning.

Now, his wolf was restless. Itchy under his skin. Wanting something he couldn’t put a finger on. Each time he caught Ragnar’s gaze, Ragnar seemed to know, and sent him a smirk that left Leif’s teeth grinding. The rest of the pack felt the same, if the way they snapped and fussed was any indication. Just last night, he’d had to pull two of them apart and order them to shift back; they’d sulked like children, muttering their “sorry, alpha”s while still sneaking glares at one another.

The land bridge made with Selesee magic was within sight, just a mile down the river, but Leif had decided to wait out the night here, on the Northern bank. Villages had dotted the way on their journey, hardy plank and shale homes and inns and shops built beside the river to make use of trade routes – when trade routes were run. Leif had expected to find them all burnt-out shells after the Sels had passed through, but they seemed untouched. Too small, he supposed, for an enemy such as theirs to bother with.

They had made camp this night just beyond the reach of one such village’s torchlight, settling down in the leaves in their wolf shapes, curled up against the cold, hearing distant human voices and twitching and fussing as the mustiness of spring teased their noses.

Restless, restless. Hungry.

Leif sensed Ragnar’s approach before he caught his scent. Brother. Pack. Mine. That grab of possession deep in his gut, the urge to growl caught in his throat. All of it made blurrier and harder to resist in this form.

Leif’s feelings about his cousin were complicated. The wolf’s were not. He refused to name the surge of gladness that welled in his chest as twigs snaps and the familiar scent grew stronger. Refused to accept that an animal could love like that.

He lifted his head from his paws, and the grayscale branches parted to emit Ragnar, in his forced-constant human form, stepping into their clearing. A few of the others flicked their ears, but didn’t bother looking; they’d known it was Ragnar from a distance, same as Leif.

Ragnar was grinning, a knife-edge gleam of teeth in the dark that boded trouble. He crouched down in front of Leif, and said, “I want to show you something.”

Leif shifted into his human shape, blinked the dizziness it caused, and rubbed at a cramp in his left leg. On two legs, he wasn’t built to be curled up into a tight ball. “What?”

Ragnar stood. “Can’t tell you. You need to see it for yourself.”

Leif frowned. He wanted to argue – but that would get everyone else stirred up, circling, wondering who might next grow bold enough to challenge the alpha.

He could have grabbed Ragnar by the scruff and pressed his face down into the mud, bent his arm back until he squealed and submitted. That would serve dual purposes: putting him in his place, and showing the others they ought to remain obedient.

Leif did neither. He rolled his eyes, but stood, and followed.

They ducked under branches and stepped over old logs, the forest stunted and scrubby from the wind whipping off the water. Wind that, when Leif halted and turned Ragnar around with a snap of fingers, he hoped would cover most of their conversation. There were no secrets among wolves…but he found himself still craving a human sort of privacy at times.

“What?” he said again, and folded his arms, feet braced apart, so Ragnar would know he wasn’t going any farther until he’d had an explanation.

Ragnar braced himself on a tree trunk, bouncy on the balls of his feet, eager to keep moving. “I told you: you need to see for yourself.”

“Why?”

He heaved a deep, long-suffering sigh. “Because I know that if I tell you where we’re going, you’ll drag me back by the collar, because fun is no longer a part of your vocabulary. But” – he held up a hand when Leif tried to interrupt – “if you come with me, and catch a whiff for yourself, I think you’ll see the wisdom in my idea.”

“Speaking of vocabulary,” Leif drawled, “wisdom doesn’t enter into yours.”

Ragnar huffed a sharp breath through his nose and snapped his teeth together, frustrated. “Don’t tell me you don’t feel it. I feel that you can feel it, same as the others.”

Leif smoothed his expression, but his pulse gave a traitorous leap.

One that Ragnar could hear, could sense in this awful, wonderful, prickling bond between them. Leif’s wolf eyes were sharp enough to see his smirk in the dark.

Ragnar let go of the tree and stepped back toward him, old dead leaves and snow slush crackling underfoot. “Ah,” he murmured, low, in a tone that raised all the hairs on the back of Leif’s neck; too close, too…knowing. “You feel it. But maybe you don’t want to.” His head cocked, a completely lupine gesture. “Is that it?”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

“Am I? Or are you ready to claw your own skin off if you don’t get a little relief?”

“If I don’t get a little relief from you, I’ll claw your skin off,” Leif snarled. He felt petulant as a child…unmoored as a ship cut from its ropes. Adrift.

Ragnar chuckled, but his eyes gleamed, intense and humorless. “To be such a smart, book-learned lad, you sure are thick sometimes.”

Leif growled a warning that went ignored.

“I think you’re being thick on purpose this time, though. Fighting your nature again. Repressing yourself.”

Leif pushed his growl louder, let it spill up from his chest and out through his bared teeth.

Ragnar backed off – somewhat. He tipped his head back, exposing his throat, torq winking in the scattered shafts of moonlight through the branches. But he still grinned, and though his voice had gone soft and subservient, the words he spoke were anything but. “You defied your uncle, stirred us all up and marched us South, without a care for Erik’s wishes. Told us we were off to war, off to join a Dragon Duchess or some such. Got our blood up. Got us all boiling in our skins, and no way to let off the steam.”

Leif’s pulse beat an erratic tattoo against his breastbone, but still, he tried to cling to propriety – to the idea that Ragnar didn’t know what was happening beneath his skin, though he himself could sense Ragnar’s throbbing heartbeat, as quick and wild as his own. “We hunted just this morning.” He could still taste stag blood on the back of his tongue each time he swallowed; it had dried black beneath his nails and he hadn’t yet bothered to clean them with a knife.

“Yes, but there’s different kinds of hunting. Some prey we kill…some we don’t.”

The itchy, twitchy, restless feeling that had plagued him for days rose up in a drowning swell. His skin was hot and too-tight, his human clothes stifling. A heat kindled low in his gut, as Ragnar matched him, stare for stare.

With an effort, he unclenched his jaw and said, “You’re talking of women.”

“See? Not so thick after all.”

Leif massaged at the back of his neck, for all the good it did; he’d begun to sweat, hair sticking to the skin there, suffocating. “Ragnar, we can’t–”

“But we can, we can! See, that’s what I wanted to show you.” He surged in closer, shrunk down into himself to appear small, supplicating. His voice was pinched and pleading. “I’ve been into the village – no, don’t growl at me, I didn’t betray us. But this is a harbor town. This is a trade route.”

“You found a brothel, then.”

“Yes.” His eyes flared, pupils going wolf-narrow for a moment. “Yes, I found a brothel, and some of the girls aren’t even ugly. There’s enough of them, at least, and business has been slow, with the war on. The madam would only love to have a few gold marks to rub together. I’ve told her I work for a wealthy lord who can–”

Leif snatched him by the jaw, and squeezed until he earned a whimper of pain. “What did you do?” he snarled, and put the full force of his growl behind it.

Ragnar’s whimper became a whine. “Leif. Alpha. Please.”

Three words that reached straight into his chest and squeezed him back.

His growl cut off abruptly, unbidden, and for a moment he feared he might actually release the reassuring chuff that built in his throat. He shoved Ragnar roughly away instead.

The other wolf caught himself against a tree, and rubbed at his jaw, working it side to side. “You’re stronger than you realize, you know,” he muttered, and then ducked his head with a murmured, “Sorry, alpha.”

Leif wanted to scream.

He swallowed hard, and gritted out, “The brothel. Show me.”

Ragnar’s head snatched up, face slack with shock. Then, slowly, a grin sliced across it like the opening of a knife wound. A wound Leif felt echoed in his gut, a painful, sharp slice too much like desire.

~*~

The building proved to be a rambling jumble of timber, leaning out over the cliff face, boards scrubbed pale, and an actual tree growing in one of the gutters, a bent sapling struggling toward the ink-black sky.

Leif could smell the promise of sex outside; could smell the tang of wind-scraped wood, and, beyond, the heat of skin, of women, of prey. His breath hitched in his chest, and he curled his hands to fists and felt the prick of claws in his palm. This was a terrible idea.

“It’s not fancy whorehouse like your Southerners would like,” Ragnar said, and Leif was too muddled to question the use of your Southerners. “But it’ll get the job done.” He sounded eager. “What?” he said a beat later, when Leif only stood rooted, and made no move toward the door.

Leif managed to move – to take a step backward. “We shouldn’t.”

Ragnar made an incredulous sound. “Gods, man. They’re whores. We’ll be paying them.” When Leif didn’t respond, he scoffed: “You’re not going to let some sort of honor get the best of you, are you?” He squeezed at Leif’s bicep until Leif finally turned to regard him: tangled hair threaded with bone in the moonlight, jaw working beneath the short bristles of his beard, throwing tendon shadows of aggravation up his cheeks. He was too thin, still; bore the marks of dungeon confinement that were taking too long to fade. The torq gleamed, an obvious display of wealth on an otherwise shabbily-attired man.

“Come now,” Ragnar said, still scoffing, but with a note of pleading, now. “I know Erik prefers the lads, but that big man – the one your mother’s…” Leif took a slow breath and he thought better of whatever he’d been going to say. “Bjorn, yeah? Now there’s a man who likes a good fuck. I know he took you to the brothels in the city. You’re no blushing maid.”

Bjorn had taken him, the moment he deemed him old enough. It had been…pleasant enough. Pleasurable enough. But that wasn’t the problem.

He nodded, reluctantly, and faced the building again. Lantern light glowed unsteadily in the windows; a silhouette passed in front of one of the second story ones, a feminine shape draped in light clothes; his cock stirred with interest just at that simple sight.

The truth was, those treks to the brothel with the lads had never done much for him. He was as healthy and hot-blooded as any other young man, but going into a close, overwarm room with a girl whose time he’d paid for had always felt uncomfortably transactional. He wasn’t clumsy by nature, but he’d fumbled a bit, unsure of where he should or shouldn’t touch, what he was allowed to want. He hadn’t been able to run on instinct, the way he could while sparring, or hunting, or truly fighting. A guessing game, one in which he’d received no help from the slumbrous, disengaged gazes of the girls whose job it was to pretend they loved sitting on his cock. Oh, it had felt good – supple skin, and body heat, and the warm, wet, tight grip around him like a fist…but more often than not, he preferred his own fist. He woke up mornings hard, rolled over, took himself in hand, and got it over with. Just another bodily function, a part of his morning ablutions. He hadn’t been salivating and heaving for it, the way some of the men always seemed to be. He hadn’t had sex with anyone since before Oliver and Tessa arrived, he realized now with a jolt of surprise.

He'd even wondered, at times, if his tastes swung the other way, as Erik’s did; like uncle like nephew. But he’d never found himself swaying toward a pretty kitchen lad; never felt a tug toward one of the lordlings at Yule festivals. Surely, if he favored men, he’d have felt something the night a drunk Náli slid into his lap and tried to wriggle him into taking action.

Maybe sex just wasn’t important to him, and never would be. When it was his duty, he’d marry a nice girl, produce some nice heirs, and he could live in bland, unexciting happiness that way. It was the reason he’d agreed when Erik said he should wed Tessa. Tessa was beautiful, and sweet; the perfect blushing maid. It had only made sense.

But a part of him had felt relieved when he realized that Tessa was mad for Rune. He’d felt as if he’d been spared; dodged a thrown spear. And he hadn’t been able to make sense of that.

Now, though, the pounding, insistent urge to mount someone and fuck their brains out was so strong it left his knees weak. He was half-hard already, from the touch of the wind, and the glimpse of a shadow. When Ragnar squeezed his arm again, violent lust ripped through him, and it was an effort to take shallow sips of air through his mouth.

Is that how all his wolves felt? Was want this ugly violence trying to shred through their skin?

If so, how could any of them be trusted with a group of unsuspecting, wholly human women?

He knew one who couldn’t be.

He swallowed – his mouth had filled with saliva – and said, “Go and tell the others to come along, if they want. You come straight back to me. Understood?”

Ragnar frowned, brows knitting.

“If you think I’m leaving you alone with anyone, you’re madder than I thought.”

Ragnar groaned. “Gods, Leif…”

Leif growled.

“Yes, alpha.”

~*~

The madam’s eyes went big as the gold marks that Leif poured into her cupped hands, and she didn’t hesitate to toss out the rest of the customers scattered across the tap room. When one of them – an ale-bellied lout already deep in his cups, red-faced and belligerent – lumbered forward to protest, Leif growled at him until he went staggering and stumbling out the door, trousers clutched up with one hand, the pack laughing at him. The girls, of which there were plenty, were glad to accept the trade: the wolves were all big and broad-shouldered, scarred and braided with bones, teeth trophies around their necks and arms bare to the cold. They were built like warriors, the scent of wildness rolling off of them, and far more appealing than the usual fat gropers.

They disappeared, pulled up the stairs in ones and twos, girls giggling and murmuring and squeezing at their muscles. Doors slammed overhead. And then it was a muted symphony of intimate sounds, too loud to Leif, as he kicked out a chair in the tap room and plopped himself down.

The madam thumped a tankard down at his elbow for which he murmured thanks. “Are you sure you won’t have some company, my lord?” she asked, drawing a second cup for Ragnar. “Either of you? Brigitte has the night off, but she’d gladly make an exception for the two of you.” Her gaze moved boldly and appreciatively over both of them as she placed Ragnar’s ale before him.

“I’m sure,” Leif said tightly. “Thank you.”

She shrugged and ambled off to wipe the bar. “If you change your mind, give us a holler.”

He didn’t respond; he wasn’t going to change his mind. He sipped at his ale and made a face; he’d grown spoiled off palace brews, and this was like horse piss by contrast.

Beside him, Ragnar laid his head down dramatically on the table, arms outstretched, and groaned. “You’re serious about this. About sitting here, drinking terrible ale while everyone else is–”

A moan from upstairs, feminine and breathy.

Ragnar fidgeted; Leif could smell the lust on him. “Couldn’t I–”

“No.”

“But you let the others–”

“The others aren’t traitors who’d kill their own kin as soon as look at them. I’m not letting you out of my sight in here.”

Ragnar sat up and hooked two fingers into his torq. “In case you’ve forgotten, I couldn’t disobey you if I wanted to – which I don’t want to,” he added. Then his look shifted, that I’m-so-clever smugness that Leif wanted to wipe off his face with physical force. “Or, here’s an idea: I won’t stray out of your sight. We can have her together.”

Leif choked on his ale.

Ragnar pounded him helpfully on the back. “Come now. You’ve never had to share? Ah, well, I guess a prince doesn’t have to–”

“Keep your voice down,” Leif growled, once he could take a breath. It was bad enough the people here thought him a lord; the last thing they needed was his real identity getting out.

“No,” Ragnar continued, waxing fondly reminiscent, “you would never have been stranded in an ice storm, only two women for fifteen of you, or no women at all. You know, your uncle’s not far off the mark, if the lad’s young and pretty enough–”

“Stop. Talking.” But there was no real command in his voice, and they both knew it.

“You’ll have to do something about that.” Ragnar nodded down at Leif’s lap, where his stand had tented his trousers obscenely. “If you want to handle it – heh – yourself, I can take care of it for you. Lend a helping hand so to speak.” He laid said hand boldly on Leif’s thigh, and Leif swatted him away.

Not before the heat and heft of it bled right through his trousers and sent a spasm up through his hip, groin, and spine, however. His toes curled inside his boots, and it was either shove Ragnar away, which he did, or shove his hand where Leif really wanted it, the temptation of which left his teeth bared, growl rumbling in his throat.

“Fine, fine.” Ragnar withdrew, and picked up his tankard. “You’ll not be able to walk out of here in that state, but that’s fine. That’s for you to worry over, alpha.”

Another growl shut him up, finally.

They sat, and they drank, but not in any sort of silence. The madam had pushed through the curtain into the kitchen, leaving them alone, save the sounds that filtered down through the ceiling from upstairs. The thump of bed frames against walls, crackle of stiff straw mattresses. Grunts, and groans, and moans, and curses. High, feminine cries and encouragements, and the more damning sounds of wolves loosed from men’s throats: growls, snarls, whimpers. If any of the women noticed the not-human noises, they either approved, or were too awash in pleasure to care.

Leif was so hard he had a stomachache, and his vision had gone fuzzy at the edges.

A particularly loud bang sounded overhead, and Ragnar breathed a rough laugh, shifting in his chair. A darted glance – stupid, stupid, he shouldn’t look, shouldn’t care – proved that Ragnar was in much the same shape, cockstand hard and very visible behind the flies of his trousers. But, unlike Leif, he wasn’t grinding his jaw and sweating resolutely through it. Seemed to be enjoying himself, in fact.

He lifted his ale to his lips with one hand, and reached with the other to adjust himself, humming a little, squeezing a little more than necessary.

“Stop that,” Leif choked out. Once again, he failed to push an order into the words when he should have.

Ragnar scoffed and sat back, hands braced on the table edge, arching and stretching his back, and then reaching down to rearrange his cock again. “It’s bad enough you won’t let me up there, or even split a nice juicy morsel, but now I can’t even give myself a hand?”

It shouldn’t have, but the mental image of that, Ragnar with his hand around his own cock, head tipped back, eyes low-lidded and wolf bright, muscles of his arm and chest working, sent a spike of arousal through Leif’s gut so acute he had to rest his hands on the table for support. It was only that he was so tightly wound, he reasoned. Anything would have set him off; he would have found anything exciting in his current state.

Also exciting, and curious, was the thought that followed on the heels of his little fantasy, a question he couldn’t keep from voicing. “Let you?”

Ragnar’s brows lifted in silent question, even as his head tilted, presumably to better catch the high, breathy squeals that started upstairs.

“What do you mean I don’t ‘let you’? Do you not…pleasure yourself?”

Ragnar hadn’t expected the question, he saw; the way his expression, always so mercurial and mobile, froze, gaze going flat and tight. He didn’t want to answer.

Leif’s wolf sat up at sharp attention, just beneath his skin. “If I ordered you not to, would you have to obey?”

Ragnar held very still a moment, save the pulse that throbbed in the hollow of his throat. Then he turned his head away, grumbling unhappily, a purely wolfen noise of distress.

“You would, wouldn’t you?” Leif asked, incredulous. “If I ordered you not to–”

He was cut off by a whine, one that Ragnar quickly swallowed. “You order me to do and not do everything else. Why would that be different?” he growled, and leaned down to rest his chin on his folded arms on top of the table, sulking.

That was true…and so this new facet shouldn’t have been a revelation…nor should it have been so exhilarating…

Before he could investigate further – a dangerous thing, awful, despicable, even – a new scent snared his attention. Ragnar’s, too, if the way his head shot up was any indication.

Leif faced forward, and saw that they were no longer alone in the dim tap room.

A young woman stood at the base of the stairs, one hand on the post, the other propped on her hip. Her hair was a thick, lustrous brown, unbraided, tumbling over her shoulders and down her chest. She wore a thick, woolen dressing gown belted at her waist in a way that highlighted its narrowness, and the fullness of her hips and breasts. She was pretty in a buxom, familiar, Northern way, and the smell of her – ripe and interested, warm and viable – hit him right in the cock.

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from gasping or growling; he wasn’t sure what sort of sound would come out if he opened his mouth.

Ragnar seemed to have no such problem, humming appreciatively under his breath.

The girl held still a moment, as though waiting for their attention, and then reached up to brush her hair back over her shoulder. As she did, the dressing gown slid down as well, revealing the embroidered strap of a night dress. When she spoke, her voice was low, affectedly sultry. “Good evening, my lords.”

“Good evening.” Leif could hear Ragnar’s grin, all the sharp smarm of it, as he fidgeted up straighter in his chair. If a wolf was a wolf no matter what, the sight and scent of this woman had grabbed him by the balls and turned him as stupid as Leif. Only Ragnar, at least, seemed capable of intelligible speech. “You wouldn’t happen to be the lovely Brigitte, would you?”

“I would.” Pleased, she released the post, took up her gown, and executed a sloppy curtsy. “And you are…?”

“‘My lords’ will do just fine,” Ragnar said, and patted the tabletop. “Want to come and join us, love?”

No, Leif thought as she strolled toward them, swinging her hips and making a show of it. No, no, no, I can’t. I can’t control it. Inside, his wolf was panting, growling, clawing.

It wasn’t about her, specifically; nothing about her was exceptionally alluring to him. But he needed to fuck, and fuck hard. He wanted it desperate, and sweaty. Nails scoring his back and half-pained little cries. Wanted the heat and the body contact, the smell of it; he wanted to bury himself in someone and get lost to the pure animal ecstasy of it.

Just before she drew up on the opposite side of the table from them, he wished fervently that he’d taken Ragnar up on his offer minutes before; that he’d unlaced his trousers and dragged Ragnar’s hand where he wanted it, and let him take the edge off for him. He couldn’t hurt Ragnar, not in any way that mattered; he could tear this poor girl to pieces, if given half the chance.

That was the thing that terrified him: he didn’t know, once he got his cock into someone, if he could keep the wolf at bay. If he could hold onto any gentleness, or if the wolf in him would pounce on a woman the way it pounced on deer, and badger, and rabbit in the forest. More than one kind of hunting, Ragnar had said…but Leif didn’t know if his wolf could tell the difference.

Then the girl was there, an arm span away across the table, smelling of skin, and sweat, and arousal, and the bit of rosemary oil she’d dabbed behind her ears. Her hair was brushed; her skin scrubbed clean. She’d wanted to impress the visiting lords; she had no idea what might be about to happen, as Leif’s pulse tried to beat its way through his chest, his throat, his cock.

“You’re both very handsome, my lords,” she murmured, shaking her hair back, reaching for the ties of her gown. “I like your golden hair.”

“Thank you, darling.” Ragnar raked a hand through his with a quiet rustle and a clink of bone beads. “We’re related, you know.”

“Really?” The tie came loose, and the gown fell open, revealing a bleached linen night dress beneath, stitched with intricate embroidery. Clinging in all the right places.

“Aye. Cousins. Handsomeness runs in the family, you might say.”

“Mm. I can see that.” The gown hit the floor with a muted thump. The dress beneath was laced from throat to navel, and she reached for those ties, now, working the bow at the top loose slowly, drawing the ribbons apart with her nails while she pressed her pelvis forward against the table edge. Slow roll of the hips, as though rubbing herself against the wood, enjoying it. Nipples sharp points pushing at the gown, little buttons throwing shadows on the fabric.

Ragnar said something Leif didn’t catch, something that made her chuckle. He was too busy taking careful sips of air in through his mouth, which didn’t help much, because he could taste the musk of her on the air. She was paid for this, yes, but she wanted them; thought they were handsome, and golden, and this would be just as much about pleasure as pay for her, he could tell.

It took every ounce of self-control not to leap over the table and throw her down. He dug his nails into his thighs through his trousers, felt the prick of claws; felt the prickling of too much hair down the back of his neck, the wolf wanting out, the wolf wanting to feast.

He jerked when a hand pushed his aside and settled warm and firm on his thigh instead, squeezing hard before sliding to grip him on the inside, up high. Ragnar. Leif’s hips hitched forward, seeking more of that touch, of any touch, in desperate need of something to ground him.

Brigitte pulled the last of the ribbons loose and folded down the halves of her dress so her breasts were exposed. Big and round as fresh melons, creamy pale, the blue of veins visible beneath the skin in the valley between. Nipples fat and peaked and rosy, begging for his mouth.

Ragnar’s hand squeezed again. “Brigitte, darling, I think my cousin’s a bit overwhelmed. It’s been a while for him, you see.”

“Aw. Poor lamb.”

“Why don’t you come around here and see if you can help him find a little relief, eh?”

“Of course.”

No. No, no, no, NO– Leif squeezed his eyes shut, as Ragnar’s grip shifted to his cock and pressed down with the heel of his hand, rubbing him in an almost soothing manner, making him whine through his teeth like a submissive pup.

Hair tickled his ear, and then warm breath filled it; his nose filled with the close, familiar scent of Ragnar, and it clouded out the dizzying effects of the girl’s scent. In a whisper too low for a mortal to hear, Ragnar murmured, “Order me to stop. Tell me not to.” A pause, in which Leif didn’t speak, much less order anything. “You need this, alpha. If you say stop, I’ll make it stop, but trust me, this is necessary.”

Ragnar’s hand continued to pet over his cock, and smaller, more delicate hands touched his knees; a rustle of fabric as Brigitte knelt between his spread thighs.

Leif tried to imagine shoving them both away. An alpha growl in his voice forcing Ragnar to back off, and stand down. Imagined getting to his feet, and walking out the door to let the cold night air slap him back to his senses.

Impossible. It simply wasn’t possible.

“Please,” he whispered, and felt the last of his resistance collapse. Inside, his wolf howled with joy.

“Right,” Ragnar whispered back, and then a warm, wet tongue licked up the side of his face, distinctly affectionate.

Leif didn’t have it in him to twist away from that tongue, or even find it disgusting. It was Ragnar’s rough, capable hands that unlaced his trousers and pulled his cock free; that gave it a few strong, dry pumps, the strokes quickly slicked from the way he was leaking at the tip.

The girl’s fingers were cooler, slimmer, but her mouth, as she took him inside, was all heat and wetness and relief.

He kept his eyes shut and tipped his head back, too overcome to participate.

Brigitte took him down to the root straight off, no preamble, a professional level of skill, and she fell into a quick, sucking rhythm, bobbing over him, holding him steady at the base with cool, sure hands.

Ragnar pushed up Leif’s tunic and scratched over his bare stomach, where the muscles were clenched tight; played with the hair below his navel. Like the lick, it felt affectionate.

“There you go,” he murmured. “Like that, yeah. Oh, you needed this, lad. Yeah. Like that.”

In that moment, Leif wasn’t anyone’s alpha; was a wolf shaking and internally screaming and falling apart. Swamped with sensation, hungry and happy and wanting even more.

Coming was like being tackled off a horse and landing hard on the frozen ground, all the breath punched out of his lungs.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ragnar said, chuckling. “Gods. Look at that. Make a mess of her.”

Pack. Mine. Those were his first conscious thoughts. The next was that he was an alpha who’d allowed his subordinate too much headway. The next was that Ragnar was still scratching over his belly, and he didn’t want him to stop anytime soon.

Pack. Mine. Brother. Mate.

The last one jerked his head upright on a gasp. He opened his eyes and blinked the stars from them.

He’d come, and come mightily, pleasure surging through him in ripples. But he didn’t feel spent, the way he normally would have. If anything, he felt rejuvenated, and like he could go again – like he needed to go again, cock throbbing and sensitive, but still hard.

A slurping sound captured his attention, and he glanced down to where Brigitte still knelt between his legs.

She must have pulled off at the last second, and he’d painted her chest, her neck, her face in spend. It gummed her lashes and trickled down her throat; a white pearl beaded and dripped off one nipple.

“Gods,” he muttered. He’d never done anything like that before. He wanted to feel embarrassed, but his wolf was all chest-out pride over his performance, over the idea of having marked someone in that way.

As if sensing his thoughts, Ragnar chuckled, and his hand shifted higher beneath his tunic, scratching up over his pectorals, pulling playfully at his chest hair. “Nice little feature, isn’t it?” he asked, like Brigitte wasn’t still there, looking up at them and licking spend off her fingers. “It won’t be like it was before.” Ragnar pinched his nipple hard. “You’re more than that, now.”

He was.

He’d worried he might shred this poor girl…but the wolf was savvy enough to know prey from prey. He was in no danger, he knew then, firmly, of killing her. He just wanted to fuck until he couldn’t see straight anymore.

He leaned forward, and caught her chin between thumb and forefinger, rewarded by the widening of her eyes. “Get up,” he ordered, voice steady now. “On the table.”

She bit her lip, and a shiver moved through her; he could smell her eagerness, the way she got wetter between her legs.

Leif released her – she stood – and turned to regard Ragnar, grinning at him, eyes blown, radiating heat and excitement. “You. Be good.”

He whined.

Leif stood, hand going to his spit-slick cock, stroking it. The girl was perched on the edge of the table, wiggling in her eagerness.

“No,” he said. “Turn around, hands down flat.”

Her eyes widened again, but she turned readily enough, braced her hands on the table, and presented him with her backside.

Leif bunched up her dress, hiked it over her ass, and spared only the briefest touch between her legs to find her sopping entrance. Then he spread her lips, lined himself up, and thrust inside on one strong push.

“Gods,” Ragnar swore, with feeling, the same moment Brigitte let out a sharp, breathy gasp of shock.

Leif pressed in until his hips were flush with her ass, smooth and plush; until his whole length was gripped in that tight, wet heat, squeezing him tight in her surprise.

This was what he’d needed. Base pleasure, a simple fulfilment of natural desire.

He gripped her hips, drew his own back, and slammed home again.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, but she leaned back into him, and she didn’t say stop, so he built a rhythm that way, urgent and brutal, digging bruises into her hipbones with fingertips that wanted to turn to claws.

In and out, and in and out. Slap of skin against skin. Sweat dripping off his nose and onto her back, dotting the fabric of her dress. He could feel her, could smell her–

And he could smell his packmate, too. Pack. Brother. Mine. Mate. His stomach cramped with urgent want, and he growled, low and lupine through gritted teeth, unable to hide the animal quality of it.

While he fucked her, he twisted a look over his shoulder, seeking out Ragnar. He sat on the edge of his chair, gripping his own thighs, nails sharp and black, shifted to claws. Sweat shone on his brow, and in the hollow of his throat, irises the barest blue ring around the deep black of his pupils as he studied the place where Leif’s cock disappeared inside the girl, over and over. His cock looked painfully hard where it pushed against his flies.

Mine, mine, mine. It filled his head on loop, and Leif was past the point of questioning it. Nothing existed now outside this room, this table, the pained huffs of Brigitte’s breath and the slap of his hips against her ass as he filled her, over, and over, and over, table creaking beneath the onslaught.

“Come here,” Leif rasped, and he put his full alpha voice behind it, a true order.

Ragnar scrambled to comply; under different circumstances, Leif would have laughed at the way he tripped over himself, and stumbled up to stand beside him, one hand braced on the table, the other cupped protectively over the bulge in his trousers.

Leif adjusted his grip; slid a hand to her lower back and urged her down lower over the table, changing the angle, going deeper.

“Touch yourself,” he told Ragnar, and Ragnar hissed.

“Thank the gods. Shit. Shit…ah.” He tore at his flies and fumbled his trousers down around his hips. “Gods,” he murmured, head tipping back as he got a hand around himself and started stroking.

Brigitte was echoing his sounds, higher, breathier. “Oh…ah…gods…yes.”

But Leif’s eyes were on Ragnar, on the almost frenzied motion of his hand over his cock, thumb pressing fast into the slit on each upstroke, squeezing tight on the down. Leif had seen him before, of course he had, in the dungeons, and in a creek the day before, when the pack stopped to bathe in frigid spring water. He’d been soft, then, not flushed this pretty pink…all the way up to his face. Not with his head hanging, and his biceps bunching thick and strong as he worked himself, faster, faster.

“Don’t come,” Leif ordered, and it was Ragnar’s cut-off whine, as he gripped tight at the base of his shaft, staving off orgasm, that sent Leif tumbling into his second orgasm, earlier than he’d thought possible.

He grunted, and bore down on the girl – he’d forgotten her name, forgotten what town they were in, forgotten everything but her muted cry, and the clench of her sex around him, and Ragnar, panting and hungry, watching him, as pleasure crested like a wave, and slammed him right in the chest.

His vision went black a second. His stomach cramped. He felt the growl rumbling in his chest and wondered if it left his lips; he didn’t know, couldn’t hear.

When he came back to himself, tingling head to toe, warm throughout like he’d drunk cups of warm mistress, he found that he was still lazily thrusting into the girl, the way slick and heated now from his spend. Satisfied for the moment, buzzing pleasantly, heavy and pleased, and proud.

He pulled out of her, and shuffled back, and marveled a moment at the mess he’d made, catching his breath.

Then he looked to Ragnar, and said, “Your turn.”

~*~

Ragnar wasn’t expecting it. His face transformed, first to blank shock, then disbelief, then fervent desperation. “Alpha,” he murmured, low and rapt, and Leif felt his cock twitch with a faint stir of renewed interest.

An interest he didn’t do anything about.

Leif dragged a chair to the side and slumped back into it, sated for the moment, content to watch Ragnar step in behind Brigitte and feed his cock into her slick sex, inch by inch. He was drowsy, now, but refused to let his eyelids flag, gaze skipping from Ragnar’s hands clenched on the girl’s hips, to the dent and flex of his backside where his trousers had slid down, as he fucked her at the same furious pace that Leif had. Slap-slap-slap of sweat-damp skin. His hair swung forward and back on every thrust, bones clicking together, tooth necklace chattering as it slapped against his chest. His mouth was open, he was panting, and grunting, and growling under his breath, face twisted up with the same sort of painful pleasure that had afflicted Leif minutes ago.

By the time he came with a shout, hips kicking hard enough to send Brigitte into a paroxysm of gasps and moans as she finally found her own release, Leif had his hand on his cock again, stroking absently just to feel the weight of it, no real intention of bringing himself off again.

When Ragnar pulled out, Brigitte collapsed forward onto the table, sighing out little hiccupping sounds, pushing her hair off her face while their combined spend trickled down her thighs.

That was from both of them, Leif thought, gut clenching. Him and Ragnar together.

His cousin.

A traitor.

Pack. Mine, mine, mine. Mate.

Ragnar staggered back, turned around, and crawled into Leif’s lap.

Leif had to let go of himself to catch Ragnar around the waist and keep him from sliding to the floor. The chair groaned – not built for two men together of their size – and it was too hot, too close, too much. Ragnar shoved his face into Leif’s throat, whining quietly, hands clutching at Leif’s arms, his clothes, hooking into the collar of his tunic and tugging.

“Shh.” Leif let his head fall back, giving Ragnar the access he wanted to nose, and nuzzle, and lick at his throat, the salty sweat there. “Hush.”

“Alpha.” A low rumble, chest to chest, vibrating through them both. “Alpha, alpha.”

“I know. Hush. Shh, shh.”

When he finally lifted his head, the girl was gone, and Ragnar was snoring.

10

Night flying was an entirely different experience than day flying. Once they were aloft, and the camp fires had faded, there was no light save the soft, silver edging of the moon: the humps of the tree tops like mountains, the buckled carpets of clearing and field, gleaming ribbons of streams. The wind was in Amelia’s face, cold and sharp, but she wasn’t blind; her mind’s eye provided her with a constant stream of insight from the drake beneath her. An indistinct shadow below bloomed as an abandoned, wheelless cart in her mind, once Alpha provided a clearer image. Each time her worry jumped hard, a fear that a stand of trees below was a Selesee scouting party, Alpha reassured her that his eyes were keen, and he wouldn’t fail to notice their enemy. He would watch, her eyes and ears, and all she had to do was hold tight to the reins and lean low over his neck, two creatures locked in perfect harmony.

In the end, the plan had come together simply. They could have sat around that table and argued over strategy for days, talking themselves into circles until nothing made sense anymore. It had been Leda, finally, who’d clapped her hands together, snatching all their attentions, and said, “We have drakes, and they don’t. Figure out a way to use them to the best effect.”

And that was it, wasn’t it? There was a reason a fresh battalion of Sels hadn’t marched through the forest to reclaim the Inglewood manor, and she sat astride that reason, now, the night alive all around them with the snap and rush wings.

Above, a cloud scudded past the moon, and its glow swelled, a waxing fat fruit smiling down on the landscape. By this point, her eyes had adjusted, so she barely needed Alpha’s input to tell what was what down below.

Ahead, a stream cut through the trees, fat and wide, swollen with snow melt, very nearly a river; the sort of waterway a man thought he could swim across, but whose current would snatch him up by surprise and whirl him away to dash against the rocks at the shoreline. Beyond it, the trees thinned, and Amelia sat back, drawing on the reins.

Alpha lifted his head, and his next flap pushed him up rather than forward; he slowed, and then stopped, hovering in midair a moment while she got her bearings. The girls lifted up over them, spiraling in circles, the thrust of their wings drumming like thunder. Alpha snorted, steam curling up from his nostrils.

“I know.” She stroked his neck with a gloved hand. “It’s almost time. Almost.”

The tower stood lone and jagged in the midst of a clearing that had been made even wider by the Sels’ axes. They’d cut the forest, burned the stumps back, so five-hundred yards of blackened, bristled scrub had been added to the half-mile radius around it. The burned places looked like a void in the dark; like something evil. The tower itself resembled a stubby broken tooth, its crenelations long crumbled, its walls matted and bumpy in the moonlight, decades of lichen and decay having eaten at the once-smooth limestone finish.

The war machines crouched like beasts on the grass. Not the massive trebuchets of which Oliver and Tessa had written, the sort of weapon needed to batter down palace walls and rupture a castle’s defenses like a boil. No, these were smaller…but far more dangerous for her and her drakes. Scorpions, as Edward had predicted, and not at rest, either.

Alpha offered her a glimpse of them through his strange, gold-tinted vision. The scorpions were loaded with sharpened spears as long as a man was tall, the ropes drawn back tight, ready for the pull of the pin from one of the four men stationed at each. They were tucked down into the grass, wrapped in cloaks, dozing…but they were ready, in their armor and mail. Not the bright gold plate and purple cloaks that struck fear and awe in the hearts of enemies, but a simpler, plainer style, built for efficiency rather than flash.

Amelia steered Alpha to the side, and set all the drakes flying in a wide perimeter, circling the clearing. She knew that someone down on the ground would hear the distant flap of their wings; see their distinct silhouettes against the moonlight. The goal now wasn’t to keep hidden, but to keep out of range – a tricky thing, given the reach of Selesee weaponry.

Careful, Amelia thought at Alpha, at all of them. Marigold sent back a cocky sense of invincibility that made Amelia smile: a drake’s fantasy of picking up a Sel in sharp teeth and flinging him across the tree tops from a great height. Be careful anyway, she thought, and sensed the other females chastising Marigold. A silent drake argument that Alpha settled with a low, crooning call, one most definitely heard at the tower.

She let out a slow breath, trying to calm herself. It was dark, she reasoned, and even though deadly, the scorpions lacked a handheld bow’s accuracy. It took two men to aim, and combing human error with nighttime, it would be only a lucky shot that struck home.

One lucky strike was all it would take, though, and the prospect of losing or injuring one of the five drakes was unthinkable.

It was Alpha who reassured her, then, when she thought it should have been the other way around. Through their bond, he pushed the confidence that they were strong, and quick, and clever. We’ll be fine, he conveyed, without any actual words.

Amelia stroked his neck, leaned low over it, watched the tower, and waited for their signal.

~*~

To Reggie’s surprise, Connor’s stern lecture – even worse, his warm embrace, after, the strength of his arms, the gentleness of his refusal on the grounds that Reggie wasn’t ready – had braced him in a way that lasted. He’d sought his bed that night full of a numbness he’d been careful not to probe, for fear it would collapse and leave him a shaking wreck. But it had stayed: all through the rest of the night, and the next day, and persisted now, as they peered through branches across the shattered landscape, toward the tumbledown tower that was their destination.

He himself had been the one to suggest this particular strategy, though he did miss his armor.

The problem was getting in close enough to disable the scorpions without being spotted, and his own bright plate and mail, his pale blue surcoat, were not made for stealth. Connor was, though; him and his Strangers.

Connor had lifted a brow at the war table. “You want me to send my men to slaughter?”

“No. I want them to do what they do best: sneak. And I’ll join you, as a show of faith.”

The brow had arched higher, joined by the other. He’d read, and dismissed the silent question in Connor’s gaze: Are you sure you can handle that? You won’t go to bits?

No, he wasn’t going to go to bits, thank you very much. His heart hammered, and sweat gathered at his temples, and beneath his clothes, but the numbness persisted, leaving him cold, analytical, and capable.

He wore light, leather armor, a mail shirt beneath, padded with a thick wool doublet to keep it from clinking. His trousers and tunic and cloak were borrowed from a Stranger, the shifting brown-gray-green that resembled dancing leaf shadows, and which concealed them so well in the forest. He’d smeared dirt on his face, and ground it into his hair – ugh – and felt that he looked sufficiently unlike a golden lordling. Connor had done a double-take, before they departed, so that was something.

He peered now through a screen of leaves, and Connor did the same beside him, Strangers flanking them on both sides. The nearest scorpion – manned by a crew of four, if he wasn’t missing anyone in the shadow of the contraption – stood two dozen yards away. Near enough they could cover the distance quickly, but far enough that one of the Sels would have a chance to take up the bow that sat propped at the scorpion’s base and fire off a shot at them. The moon was big tonight, nearly full, and visibility would hurt them, and help the enemy.

Again, Reggie waited for panic to grip him, but he stayed firmly rooted in the moment, and the problem at hand.

They’d counted on this, and were ready.

He turned to his left, and the young Stranger standing there, his long hair twisted back in a knot, arms banded with leather bracers. Reggie caught his eye, and lifted a single finger. Be ready. They were in position, now it was up to–

A distant, inhuman call echoed through the clearing, a lilting, crooning sound that Reggie could tell straight off was Alpha, communicating with his girls.

All four men on the scorpion snapped to attention. There was a scuffle, the hiss and shush of nervous voices, speaking in their native tongue. They stepped around the base of the machine, peering up at the sky.

Reggie peered up, too, and saw a drake’s silhouette pass before the moon. The long, serpentine neck and tail, the great rise and fall of the wings, their sharp, batlike tips stark black against the moon-washed blue of the sky. At the drake’s withers, a small bump: Amelia’s head, where she was tucked low between his wings.

For a moment, he didn’t see them as his friend and a friendly beast he’d come to respect and trust, at least a little (Lenny was his favorite, after all), but as the panicking Sels must have seen them: a winged demon, dressed in darkness, impossible and terrible and awesome. A single note of fear licked down his spine, and he knew the urge to go belly-to-the-ground, cover his head, and pray to any gods that might be listening.

But then he blinked, and his chest was flooded with satisfaction, as the men on the ground scrambled toward their firing positions.

Alpha slipped past the moon, two of his females close on his heels, which meant the other two would be on this side of the clearing, waiting to back them up. He wished, with a sudden, shocking fierceness, that he could communicate with them the way Amelia did. Reach out through a psychic bond to check their location, and urge them closer, ask for their reinforcement.

Not possible.

He lifted a second finger toward the Stranger beside him – then a third. Go.

Creak of the bow, twang of the string, and a Sel toppled forward onto his face in the grass, the shot too quick and true for him to so much as cry out in pain. He was dead before he hit the ground.

His comrades turned, shouting an alarm, and the archer shot a second man, clean through the throat.

Reggie signaled forward with the flat of his hand, drew his sword, and charged out of the brush.

Feet thundered on either side of him; he heard Connor’s open-mouthed, excited breathing – or maybe that was his own. He couldn’t be sure. They closed the distance in a matter of strides, and in that span of steps, Reggie felt the old thrill of battle rise up in him. He didn’t like violence; it inspired a twist in his belly, and a rush of blood in his limbs, and a sensation like panic around his throat, stronger even than the phantom noose. An ugly thrill. But he trusteed his training, his strength, and he powered through. His vision sharpened, so he could see the smooth, near-poreless grain of the Sel’s pale, beardless face, before he cut him down, an unhesitating strike at the join of neck and shoulder.

His blade hit bone, and bit. The Sel bared his teeth, face a rictus of pain, but he didn’t scream, and he didn’t drop the sword in his other hand. Brought it up in a clumsy strike toward Reggie’s belly.

Reggie tried to dodge backward, but his sword was stuck in the Sel’s clavicle. In a split-second of battlefield stupidity, he refused to release the sword. He had a knife on his belt, but it was a poor substitute. He yanked–

And another blade swung up beneath him, deflecting the blow the Sel had aimed for his gut. Squealing scrape of steel on steel.

His sword pulled free, finally, and he staggered back to see that it was Connor who’d interceded on his behalf, deflecting the Sel’s blade. Who was killing him, now, with a vicious thrust through the throat, blood fountaining black in the moonlight.

Connor jumped back from the spray, but his face was dotted with it, when he turned to Reggie.

Reggie who was too focused on the task at hand to bother being angry that Connor had interfered. Far from it: Connor had saved his skin just now, and he knew it.

He was rusty.

“Thanks,” he breathed on a gasp, Connor nodded, and they rushed to take command of the scorpion, Strangers taking up a defensive ring around them, bows nocked.

Drakes shrieked high overhead, and human voices took up shouts, moving in a ripple around the clearing. A glance over his shoulder revealed the bloom of torches lighting. The element of surprise was working in their favor, but now the alarm was roused. They had to work quickly.

Ragnar gripped the heavy iron bar on one side, and Connor took hold of the other. Together, they swung the scorpion around, so it was loosely aimed at the next scorpion over.

“Peter!” Connor shouted.

“Right, coming.” The archer who’d shot the first two Sels from the trees rushed forward to help them aim. Down, up, side, other side, smaller and smaller increments.

Reggie felt hourglass sands slipping through his fingers. Precious seconds passing, passing…

“Peter,” Connor growled.

“Okay. Ready.”

“Pull it.”

At first, there was only the scrape and click of Peter pulling the pin. Then the whole machine leaped. A great mule kick that jerked all the muscles in Reggie’s arms and back – Connor’s, too, if his swear was anything to go by.

A moment later, he heard the crack and splinter of wood, alarmed shouts, a pained scream. Direct hit.

On the opposite side of the clearing, he heard a similar commotion, which meant Edward’s team had been successful as well.

“Pitch!” Reggie called, and two Strangers pushed in close with the jugs. They slopped it over the heavy wooden frame. Reggie and Connor stepped clear, and Connor produced a flint.

One strike, two, three – the spark hit, and caught, and then they were all rushing clear.

A whistle of air parting right beside Reggie’s right ear, and a quick pain like a bee sting on his cheek. Another whistle on his left. Arrows from the tower, chasing them back.

Someone nearby grunted in pain. Blindly, Reggie hooked an arm around the man’s waist and helped him hobble along. “Your leg?” he asked.

“Yes.” Hiss of pain. “I’ll live.”

Then, finally, the scorpion went up with a great loud whump. Hot air shoved at their backs. Reggie stumbled the last few strides, and landed in a heap, tangled with the wounded Stranger, in a holly at the edge of the forest.

“Ouch!” He scrambled back to his feet and turned to see that other Strangers were already rushing forward to help their friend.

Reggie shaded his eyes against the glare of the fire behind them, fiercely orange and hot from the pitch, climbing the scorpion to lick at its empty frame.

Three other fires went up, one after the next, encircling the tower, all the scorpions lost.

Reggie felt movement at his side: Connor coming to stand beside him, chuckling in satisfaction. Reggie spared a quick glance his way, saw the firelight carve the laugh lines and dimples in his lean cheeks, orange light dancing in his eyes. Connor’s gaze cut over, bright and smug, like the two of them shared a secret.

Reggie swallowed hard and glanced away, just as five shadows descended toward the tower, hovering down from above with a leathery clap of strong wings. Alpha roared, and a single, too-bright gout of flame speared down through the dark to scorch the top of the tower.

Men screamed. One even jumped over the edge to his doom.

Alpha roared again, and then Amelia called down, voice ringing from the back of her drake: “Surrender the tower! You’ve lost!”

The drakes hovered, hovered, hovered.

Above the crackle of fire and the cheers of their men, Reggie heard Alpha inhale, a great bellows heave as he prepared to unleash more fire.

The door of the tower burst open, torchlight spilling out across the grass. Sels came out, hands held aloft, weaponless.

Connor chuckled again. “I’d say she’s made her statement, then.”

~*~

Inglewood Manor had been transformed since their return, all the hostages safely in tow, drakes well-fed on Sels, and the rest of the enemy put to the sword, save the captain, whom she’d taken prisoner. Edward had agreed it was a smart idea, and so he’d been wrapped in chains and secured in the manor’s wine cellar, guards stationed at the door.

Everyone was celebrating, and though Amelia didn’t like the thought of letting their guard down, she knew the men had earned a chance to relax and let loose.

The lawns and gardens danced with light from dozens of campfires, and the air was filled with raucous laughter and good-natured shouts. Someone had started up a bawdy song, and it had been picked up by a dozen voices. She’d not grown up on a battlefield, but she knew this was how it was supposed to be – though her pleased grin turned rueful when she saw a gaggle of camp followers go traipsing past in low-cut gowns. Before the battle, the men worked themselves up to it, stressed, and eager, and thinking they might not make it back. The peak of adrenaline ebbed into a euphoria that called for an outlet. Singing, laughing, drinking, eating. Fucking.

Amelia turned back toward the manor, mounted the terrace steps, and went inside.

It was shockingly quiet by contrast. Candles burning in empty rooms, the party atmosphere outside muffled by windows and walls. Her footsteps echoed hollowly through the manor, and for a moment, she was gripped tight by grief.

Once, she would have grabbed a bottle of wine with one hand, and the front of Malcolm’s tunic with the other. Tugged him up the stairs, both of them laughing too hard to kiss, bumping noses, and hips, and squeezing at one another until laughter turned to appreciative hums. He should have been here with her, celebrating; should have been there the first time she swung her leg over Alpha’s back and took to the sky; should have been waiting on the ground to take her by the waist and whirl her around, proud and triumphant afterward. He should have been here…but she walked alone.

Amelia crossed the front hall and headed for the library – and the sideboard loaded with bottles. Lady Leda had brought plenty of her own stock to beef up the wine they’d found here, and a nice glass or two, or three, in front of the library fire sounded better than the wild chaos of camp at the moment.

The double doors stood ajar, and she slipped inside without having to push them wider. She–

Froze.

Two people stood silhouetted by the fire, but the way they stood – the tall, thin man standing bent over a woman, her hands clasped within his, her head tipped back so their faces were angled intimately – was so damningly tender and romantic that it took Amelia a moment to believe her eyes. Candlelight gleamed gold on their profiles, illuminated their faces. She blinked, but she wasn’t hallucinating: there stood Lady Leda Primrose, gazing up entreatingly at her stepson, young Lord Colum.

They were speaking, and though Amelia didn’t believe in eavesdropping as a general rule, she held her breath the better to hear them.

“I should have gone,” Colum said, with feeling, his gaze intense on his stepmother. He was always so quiet and reserved at the council table, his expression pale and pinched. It was ripped wide open, now, mobile and near-anguished. Brow furrowed and mouth twisted, eyes glittering in the firelight. “I should have been there with them – with the men who are defending our homeland!”

Leda shook her head. “Col, your leg–”

“My leg is fine!” He wasn’t shouting, but his voice rang out through the quiet room, deeper and more resonant than it sounded during meetings, when he made a rare, monotone interjection.

Leda made a low crooning sound, and reached to cup his cheek. Colum leaned into the touch, eyes fluttering closed. He looked so different, like that, shadows of his lashes on his cheeks; he looked handsome. “Oh, darling, I know it is. But there’s fine for living, and then there’s fine for battle.”

His jaw clenched, and his nostrils flared, but he didn’t move away from her hand; if anything, he leaned into it more firmly. When his eyes opened, they were wet – with anger, she thought, and not sadness. Frustration of a sort she knew well. “I’m not a child anymore, Leda.”

Leda. Not Mother, nor my lady. The sound of her name on his lips felt too intimate, and Amelia nearly ducked back out the door, save she worried they’d notice the movement.

“I know you’re not,” Leda said, stroking down his jaw, the side of his throat. She rested her hand on his chest, over his heart, her voice thickening. “I know you’re a man, now.”

His head tilted, somehow deepening their eye contact, and he said, pleading, “Then you must understand that I can no longer hide behind my – my impairment. It’s an old injury, long-healed. Men march now bearing fresh injuries. They rot in dungeons – our own crown prince is held captive and I – I sit, and I–” His breathing had gone ragged and too-quick, choking him.

“Shh,” Leda murmured, pressing her fingertips to his lips.

Amelia had stopped pretending there was anything maternal about their relationship at this point.

“I know, I know,” Leda continued. “I know you want to prove yourself–”

“I want to help.”

“Darling, you are helping.”

His face creased with pain, and he tried to turn away, toward the fire.

Leda touched his jaw and turned him back. “And what of me?” she asked, gently. “What shall I do, if you go off to war, and you don’t come back?”

The pained look intensified. “Leda–”

“Are you so eager to leave me?” Her smile was impossibly sad. “If you come home victorious, you shall have your pick of maidens. Spit and you’ll strike a potential wife.”

“No,” he murmured, soft and broken. “No, I…I would never.”

“It’s all right, sweetheart. You should have a maiden. A wife. A whole passel of children.” She reached to touch his face again, lovingly, with heartbreaking care. “You should have a future.”

He captured her hand in his, and brought it to his lips, kissed the back of it. “I will. With you. Afterward.”

Leda blinked, and the fire illuminated the crystal teardrops that flecked her lashes. “Darling. My sweet boy.” She pulled him down, and he went easily, readily. A kiss that was not new and tentative, but familiar, desperate.

Loving.

Amelia tiptoed backward a step – and promptly bumped into the door. Its hinges creaked, and she winced.

The kiss broke, and both their heads whipped around.

Colum swept a protective arm around Leda’s shoulders and tried to tuck her behind him. She clutched his sleeve in turn, her smile wry, caught-out. “Relax, darling. It’s only Amelia.” In a louder voice: “Welcome back, my lady. Congratulations are in order, I hear.”

Colum’s face closed up hard, jaw setting, eyes hooding. His hands curled to fists, and Amelia could discern the crack of his knuckles over the pop of the fire.

Propriety demanded she flee; her role here, in this brigade, in this house, demanded she pretend as though she hadn’t seen anything.

“Thank you, my lady.” She dipped her head in brief acknowledgement. “We were truly blessed by the gods tonight,” she said, making her way to the sideboard and inspecting a glass for lip prints. Satisfied, she reached for the nearest bottle and poured generously. “With brave men, and powerful drakes, we were able to take the tower, reclaim our men, and acquire a valuable prisoner.” Formal words, rather than the tired honesty that had come to exist between the two of them. She could feel Colum’s gaze boring holes into her back and resisted the urge to twitch beneath the onslaught.

A rustle of fast whispers sounded behind her, like the rustle of wings in a dovecote. When she turned back around, glass in hand, Colum bowed stiffly, voice choked when he said, “Congratulations, my lady.”

“Thank–” He set off for the door at a brisk walk, not once looking at her. “You,” she finished, and looked to Leda, as the doors slammed shut behind him.

Leda sighed, and fell into her usual armchair as if her legs have given out. She slumped to one side, temple resting against her fist, and gestured to the chair opposite. “Won’t you join me?”

Amelia did, grateful for the chance to sit on something that wasn’t a moving drake saddle, lips clamped firmly shut to hold back her curiosity.

Leda could read it in her face, however, a rueful smile touching her lips. She sighed. “He’s not as familiar with scandal as I am, you see,” she said. “And he’s terribly protective, I’m afraid.”

Amelia took a long – much-needed – swallow of wine. “I noticed.”

In the glow of the fire, it became clear that Leda hadn’t been sitting around with her feet kicked up while they were gone: she’d been fretting. Quietly, gracefully, but the worry had etched her face into a shadow of its usual beauty. Her hair was coming down out of its pins…though perhaps that was down to Colum’s fingers. Amelia’s mind was still spinning at this new revelation, a surprise that didn’t affect her personally, but a genuine surprise nonetheless.

Leda’s gaze came to her face. “I see you wanting to ask me.”

Amelia took another slug of wine. On an empty stomach, it was instantly warming; she could already feel her sore muscles relaxing. “It’s none of my business.”

Leda smiled, truer this time, and sat back in the chair; reached for the glass waiting on the table beside her, half-full of red. “I don’t suppose you give much credence to rumors, do you?”

Amelia met her lifted brows with a steady gaze. “I was a duke’s daughter sleeping with her man at arms. I care about people, about who they are, underneath the masks we’re all forced to wear – I don’t give a fuck about rumors.”

Leda snorted into her wine. “Too true.” She sighed, and the defensive set of her shoulder relaxed. “Gods,” she murmured, gaze shifting to the fire, its flames throwing tongues of orange light up her face, glimmering in eyes that could go wet at any moment. It was a tragic sort of expression, as though she was clinging desperately to something she expected to dissolve. “My marriage was arranged,” she said, and Amelia was careful to keep the surprise from her face, her voice.

“I didn’t know that.”

“All marriages are arranged, really,” Leda continued. “I’m sure your mother tried to chivvy you into a less-than-desirable union?” Quick glance.

Amelia swallowed more wine. “Yes. The last, before she gave up, was Reginald.”

Fast, rough bark of a laugh. “Oh, that would have been grand.”

Amelia grinned. “Wouldn’t it?”

“At least he’s young and pretty, though.” Leda shook her head, memory dragging her back. “My family gave the impression we were doing well for ourselves…but the truth is, Father was skint. Too many bad crops, too much land mismanagement. We had two years of floods, lost all our crop, and had to buy from other lords to feed the vassals. We had to let go the servants – Mother did my hair herself for every ball my last season – and there was one snowed-in week in which we fed the fire with books instead of logs. Mother wept for them, her precious books.”

Amelia hadn’t known that, either, but she kept silent, waiting for the rest of the story.

“Mother cried all the time, and Father got thin and sallow, and the steward packed up his family and left: it became very clear that me marrying a wealthy lord was all that could save us. I know, I know.” She flapped a hand and threw back a hard slug of wine. “We could have given up the manor and gone to live in a cottage somewhere. Lived a simple, happy life without all the trappings. Could have even emigrated to the Crownlands, lived in a townhouse, or a terraced flat, gone to the market each morning for bread, taken in washing and sewing. I could have married a nice country lad, or a city merchant. Someone handsome and kind, if not rich. That…gods, that sounded wonderful.” Her voice went wistful, before it took on a leaden, damp quality. Defeat. She was back in her last season, seventeen and lovely and despairing of happiness.

“But that wasn’t what Father and Mother wanted, and I couldn’t bear to disappoint them. I knew my job. I knew what I had to do.

“The balls, though…The house parties. The musicals.”

Amelia remembered her own all too well: the suffocating corsets, the stifling ballrooms and drawing rooms. Too many people packed into a space sipping lukewarm punch. Sweaty young men offering her a hand, asking for a dance – getting fresh when the dance turned them out of sight, and their hands slid down to grip her backside. All the girls tittering behind their fans, talking about their hair, and their dresses, and which boy was giving them glances across the room. Amelia had loathed it all. Had felt its weight around her throat like a millstone.

But Leda said, “That was freedom. No books in the fire, no sobbing Mother. There was tea, and punch, and cakes, and sandwiches. There were bright young people in the loveliest new fashions. We didn’t talk about what might happen if the crops failed again; we talked about who looked handsomest, and which lady was accused of a scandal. We talked of silly, unimportant things. I – I got to be a girl. Just a girl.” Her gaze came to Amelia. “I know it must sound horribly shallow–”

“No,” Amelia assured. “I understand.” And she did: the season had been Leda’s Malcolm. Her Shadow. Her escape. Her wild, uncomplicated joy.

“I was…well, I don’t suppose I always comported myself as a lady should.” She left it at that, but Amelia had heard the stories; wondered which were true, and why anyone had cared so bloody much. “There was a boy…oh, a lovely boy. Black hair, and blue eyes, and a laugh like music. He was – well, it doesn’t matter, because he wasn’t as wealthy as the man my father decided should be my husband.”

Amelia had seen him only a handful of time at parties, seated with his hands propped on a walking stick, stooped, and white-haired, and liver-spotted. The last thing a vibrant and beautiful young lady would want for a husband.

“I was his third wife. He was…kind to me.” A wealth of unwanted memories lived in those words. She said, “Colum was just a little thing. He’d had a horse fall on him, crushed his leg. He spent most of his time indoors, in the library, staring out the window at his brothers and reading books.” Her smile was impossibly sad. “I think he was always a little in love with me – innocently, at first. And then…”

Amelia didn’t pry for details; she could see them writ clearly in the woman’s face.

“Nothing happened until well after my husband passed. Everyone expected me to marry again, but…” She closed her eyes, briefly, pained, and turned her face back to the fire. “I’ve tried, so many times, to convince him to take a wife. To live his life. He won’t.”

“He loves you.”

“What use is love?” Leda whispered, tears glimmering on her lashes once more. “It only ever gets in the way of what needs doing.”

~*~

Warm breath huffed delicately through slitted nostrils puffed against Reggie’s face, stirring his damp, freshly-washed hair, drying his scrubbed-clean cheeks. The chill of the early spring air cut through the thin shirt he’d put on after washing up, but heat radiated off the drake’s body, where she was curled around him, and her breath steamed in the dark, beating back the cold.

He wasn’t sure what had drawn him here, to the place where the drakes had bedded down in the long grass, flattening it all into a woven mat, but he’d been content to plop down cross-legged in the turf, not at all expecting Valencia to lift her head, trill a greeting, and come shuffling over to wrap herself around him. That was exactly what had happened, though.

And then Liam had showed up.

He yawned hugely, now, lying tucked into the curl of Lenny’s tail. “Did you kill anyone?” he wanted to know, in the same tone he might have inquired about the weather.

Same as with the drakes, Reggie wasn’t sure why he continued to entertain the child, but it was easier, somehow. Children and animals. Safter. The numbness of battle had given away to a surge of victory, of satisfaction…and also left a gnawing, hungry pit in the bottom of his stomach. He felt restless, too big for his skin, like he was shedding a poisonous outer layer long in need of stripping off. Deep down, he knew exactly what he wanted, what he needed, but he wasn’t going to acknowledge it, especially not with the bacchanal atmosphere that had turned the usual noise of camp to a hot-blooded roar tonight.

“What do you think?” he countered Liam, reaching to stroke absently at Lenny’s nose. She leaned into the touch with a low, contented hum.

Liam yawned again, small jaw popping. “I think my daddy did.”

“Well, I did, too,” Reggie said, before he could think better of justifying himself to a child. “I killed–” He bit down hard on the rest of the sentence. “Actually, I don’t think we should talk about that.”

“Baby,” Liam accused, on another yawn.

“Really? I’m not the one about to fall asleep. Who’s the real baby here?”

“I’m five,” Liam pouted.

“Which means it’s far past your bedtime.” He softened his voice, insides softening as well at sight of that little pout. He was a cute bugger, he’d give him that. “Why are you out here? Didn’t Lady Amelia set you up in a manor house bedroom? With a nice feather bed?”

“There’s fleas,” Lian said, scratching his neck.

“Perhaps that’s just you.”

He shot him a scowl that so resembled Connor’s Reggie nearly laughed…and then sobered at thought of Connor. Where was he tonight? Off with someone ready? Getting his dick wet, obviously; with the Lady Leda? Or, high from victory, had Amelia finally deigned to return his attentions?

The thought of Connor tangled with either of them so soured him that it must have shown on his face, because Liam said, “What?”

“Nothing.” He wiped his expression clean once more.

Liam yawned. “’Sides,” he said, returning to the earlier topic, “I don’t like it inside. There’s no sky there. And you can’t feel the wind.” He thrust a small arm into the air, as if to demonstrate, and the breeze tumbled down over Lenny’s back and doused them both with a blast of hair-flattening cold.

Reggie shivered and leaned back more firmly against Lenny. “I suppose that’s true.”

“And if you can’t feel the wind, and you can’t see the stars,” Liam continued, “how do you know what time it is? Or if it’s going to rain? How do you know anything inside?”

Reggie smiled. “I don’t guess you do, when you put it like that.”

Liam nodded sagely, glad to be right.

They lapsed into silence, and in minutes, the boy was snoring.

Reggie gave Valencia’s nose a final pat and stood, wincing at the soreness already setting in. “I suppose I should find the little rat a bed somewhere,” he said, though fondly.

The drake made a low, inquiring sound when he stood, but he soothed her with a murmur and a pat to the neck. She flexed her tail helpfully when he bent to gather Liam up in his arms, and that earned her another “good girl,” as he stood with the boy cradled limp to his chest. Liam’s lashes fluttered, and his lips smacked, but he stayed asleep; Reggie wanted to think that was a show of trust, that he himself registered to the boy’s unconscious mind as a safe figure.

He wasn’t sure why it mattered, nor why the idea was so pleasing to him. He adjusted Liam’s head to a more comfortable angle and resolved not to dwell on it.

Despite being offered a bedroom as general, Connor had taken to roughing it with the men; his tent was up by the house, nestled in amongst all the others, and the prospect of all the noise and revelry that lay ahead soured Reggie’s stomach. He paused at the edge of the meadow for one last look at the drakes.

Alpha and the girls were getting settled for the night, tired from their efforts, satisfied from their meal; they coiled up together, steaming black boulders in the moonlight. Valencia had moved to join them, but glanced back, serpentine neck craned over her shoulder. She made a low, rumbling sound that he thought distinctly fond.

“Good night,” he said in return, and turned to carry his burden through camp.

The path that wove through the tents was an organic affair, worn down by the passage of countless pairs of feet in the past few weeks; it wended and wove and took a circuitous route back toward the house. To his left, a fire leaped high with a sound of broken glass as someone tossed a bottle on it, and someone else cursed him for it. Reggie jumped internally, but held himself steady, clutching Liam tighter; thankfully, he didn’t stir.

To his right, a burst of conversation: “…no, you tit, she had red hair!”

“No, black! Do you think I don’t have eyes?”

“I think you’re both liars, and you snogged each other in the dark!”

Great shouts of laughter.

At the next fire, a camp follower was down to nothing but skin, swaying back and forth to music only she could hear, before one of her slavering audience grew impatient and took her wrist, hauled her down into his lap to the sound of his friends’ jeers.

Reggie’s face heated, and he checked to see that Liam was still asleep. Probably, he reasoned, the boy had been exposed to as much or more before. The Strangers were not a shy nor prudish people. Had he watched his own father at such a thing? A naked woman on his lap, a laughing order for Liam to go to bed? It was far too easy to picture…and far too easy to flush with anger because of it. The boy wasn’t starving, no, but he certainly didn’t receive the sort of careful looking-after a child deserved. His mother hadn’t been much more than a child herself, and Connor had been throwing himself at anything that moved since her death. Doubtless Liam had witnessed things he shouldn’t.

It was an anger that continued to mount, as they passed fire after fire, scene after scene: men drinking, laughing, swaying. The scents of meat roasting on spits was undercut with the musk of sex; there were men fucking camp followers out in the open, under the stars, their fellows shouting encouragements, joining in, waiting for their turns.

It was a gods damned orgy, and passing through it left Reggie uncomfortably stiff in his trousers, and deeply furious.

By the time he reached Connor’s tent, he was boiling, hands shaking where he held Liam, and he wasn’t sure which impulse that warred within him was strongest.

A lively celebration was happening at a cookfire a dozen yards away – no women, thankfully, but plenty of spirits and a rousing card game of some sort that had resulted in lots of shouting – but there was no one in front of Connor’s tent. The flaps were down, though a trickle of smoke through the vent at the top, and the glow of lantern light through the canvas belied its occupation. Reggie could think of only one reason Connor would be squirreled away in his tent, rather than seated around the nearby fire having a drink and a laugh with his men, and it was all too easy to picture him, rumpled and sweat-soaked, mounting a woman begging for his attentions. It was Connor the rake he pictured now, rather than the man with the surprisingly tender touch from the terrace last night.

His flush deepened – his face felt on fire – and a sick twist in his belly warned him away. He should take Liam to the house; tuck him up into the bed that Connor should have used and keep watch, make sure no harm came to the boy during the night.

But the idea of Connor on top of a woman, his feral grin, his swinging, too-long hair…Reggie ducked his head, shouldered through the flap, and took up a defiant stance. As defiant as one could stand while carrying a child.

But the scene that greeted him was far from the one he’d expected.

Larger than those flanking it, Connor’s tent was set up in true general fashion, with rugs laid down, and the furniture at the front laid out for conducting business. A large wood table, laid with maps, carved figures marking their position, and that of the enemy. There were foldable wooden chairs with hide seats, and a sideboard loaded with flasks, bottles, and wooden cups. A candelabra on the table was lit, along with two large hanging lanterns strung from the tent’s ceiling. Beyond, on the other side of a small, crackling brazier, Connor was laid out sideways on his bedroll, lounging up on an elbow amidst the furs and cushions. He had stripped down to his half-laced shirt and trousers, feet long, and bare, and pale from the constant wearing of boots. He was reading a book, one he looked up from at Reggie’s entrance, and then he did a double take and sat upright.

Concern creased his features. “Liam? Is he–”

Belatedly, Reggie realized that he stood holding the man’s unconscious son, a dark scowl on his face. He recovered slowly, knocked completely off guard by the absolute lack of debauchery he’d found here.

“Oh, um,” he said, as Connor rolled to his feet and crossed the tent toward them. “He, uh – he fell asleep. I…brought him.”

Connor reached them, and Reggie could hear the quick, worried rhythm of his breathing…and then could hear the way it hitched and slowed when he saw Liam’s peaceful, sleeping face.

“Ah,” Connor said. “Thanks, then. Here, I’ll take him.”

It was awkward, passing him over; he weight more than he looked, while limp like this, and they ended up bumping hips and accidently gripping one another’s clothes; Reggie got a handful of strong chest, warm, right nub of a nipple digging at his palm – did he imagine the way Connor’s breath sucked in in response? – and his anger flushed hot again that he’d noticed, that it mattered at all. An anger that fizzled and spit like the coals in the brazier as Connor carried his son to the back of the tent, around a series of screens to a second sleeping pallet, one blocked off so that the boy could rest in some semblance of privacy; a touching little detail, a sign of a not-as-poor-as-he’d-thought father, and that only stoked the heat in his belly.

“Thanks,” Connor said again, as he returned. His hair was damp – he’d washed it, and it was drying in the heated air from the brazier, curling on his shoulders. Even clean, his face and neck scrubbed post-battle, he looked like a wild thing, with his stubble, and his tumbling locks, and his open shirt, chest hair on display. He didn’t begin to resemble the gentleman he'd once been.

That was exciting.

And therefore infuriating.

“I almost took him to the house,” Reggie said, surprised by the sharpness of his tone. Connor was surprised, too, if the lift of his brows was anything to judge by. “I thought you’d surely be entertaining company.”

Connor’s look went quietly wary. He gestured to the side. “The lads got a bit loud for my tastes. I decided to turn in.”

“Alone?” Reggie pressed. He had the sense he was riding hard and fast for a cliff’s edge; stupid and reckless, but unable to stop, no matter what harm might come.

Slowly, Connor’s expression hardened. He’d caught on, now, and looked more resigned than anything. “Yes.” His head tilted, and Reggie caught the glint of a challenge in his gaze. “Disappointed?”

Reggie hesitated; the anger was boiling up his throat, scorching the back of his tongue – stupid, rootless anger he had no right to feel, but there all the same, choking him. When he shifted his weight, the rub of his trousers against his half-hard cock was unbearable. He was going out of his mind, falling faster and harder with each too-forceful throb of his pulse, but he had enough sense left to know that Connor had just thrown down a snare. He intended to trap him, somehow, and not in a friendly way, he didn’t think. The sting of rejection prickled along his skin, the memory of last night putting a lump in the pit of his belly.

He swallowed with difficulty. “Pleased, actually,” he said, aiming for cool, sounding stiff instead. The worst part was, he wasn’t lying. Not yet, anyway, but here he went: “I was afraid poor Liam might see his father in a less-than-flattering light if he found him…enjoying himself.”

One corner of Connor’s mouth twitched in an aborted grin, the bastard. “Hm. Enjoying himself? Or enjoying a lovely lady?”

“No one out there could be counted as ‘lovely.’ And nothing like a ‘lady.’”

“Come now,” Connor said with a tsk. “That’s ungenerous. Not to mention you’re biased.” He took a half-step forward, swaying subtly into Reggie’s personal space. Reggie held his ground, unsure if he wanted to retreat…or lean in. “You don’t find any ladies lovely.”

Reggie couldn’t keep from scowling. “Speaking of ungenerous…”

Connor laughed.

“Oh, is that every man’s fantasy? An unwashed camp follower with half her teeth missing?”

“Been inspecting their teeth, have you? That’s a good practice for judging horses, lad, and I feel obliged to tell you that women aren’t horses. They tend not to like it when you go lifting their lips up for a peek.”

Reggie’s knuckles cracked as his hands curled to fists. He sucked in a too-sharp breath that hurt his lungs. “I’m talking about your son, you ass. About preserving some sort of innocence, though gods know he hasn’t had much of that in his poor, miserable life. And as usual, you turn everything into a tasteless joke.”

“And you turn everything into a bloody lecture,” Connor shot back. With real offense coloring his voice, he said, “I may not have him dressed like a little fop – like you – but I damn well don’t neglect my son. If you want to stammer and blush and hurl insults like an overwrought maiden in need of a good fucking, then fine, but if you’re here to call me a terrible father, you can get the fuck out.”

Reggie was good and bowed up, ready to lash out in response to the maiden remark – but Connor’s expression pulled him up short. He was angry, now, and offended, yes, but hurt, too. Reggie’s comments had hurt him.

“I…” he began, and all the fight drained out of him. In its wake, he was exhausted, sore, shaky from the adrenaline come-down. He was still half-hard, though, and on the edge of oversensitive. Wanting.

He’d been that way when he first marched to war, before he was captured, before he was hanged. There’d always been something thrilling about the kill, but it was a sensation that gave way to quiet horror, after, when his blood had cooled, and he always felt a desperate need to be reminded that he was alive; to feel base, purely physical pleasure, sex washing away the taint of death that clung to his hands, an invisible stain that no amount of scrubbing had been able to lift.

He wanted that now, even if he was frightened, even if ugly memories crowded close at the edges of his vision.

Wanted it from this man in particular, who would not hurt him unless he asked for it.

Connor made a disgusted, disappointed face and turned away from him. “Get out. Go back to the house where you belong.”

Reggie did neither. He reached out, before he could think better of it, and snagged Connor’s sleeve. A light touch, a pinch of fabric between thumb and forefinger, easily brushed aside.

But Connor halted. And then turned back to him, brows drawn together.

Reggie had never been a reckless person. Spoiled, early on; entitled, yes: when he wanted something, he took it, or cajoled his way into its trousers at the end of a long party. But he didn’t blunder his way into things. Didn’t throw caution to the wind, the way he did now.

“Reggie,” Connor said, and his voice held a fine note of strain.

“Is this what you normally do after a battle? Read a book?”

Connor attempted, but didn’t quite succeed in delivering a rueful smile. “How many battles do you think I’ve participated in?”

“Answer the question,” Reggie pressed. His own expression must be wild, he thought, going by the bright starbursts at the edges of his vision, the heat in his cheeks, the way his breath came in unsteady huffs through his open mouth. He wet his lips, for all the good that did, and was rewarded by the flick of Connor’s gaze following the motion of his tongue. “Is that what you do? When you’ve been fighting? Do you settle in for a night of reading?”

Connor’s brows went up in disbelief. “While you, clearly, enjoy interrogating your allies after you’ve spilled a little blood. You’re welcome, by the way, for the assist earlier.”

Reggie huffed in frustration. His skin felt too tight, too thin. “I thanked you for that.”

“Yes, and then treated me to this.” He gestured between them, and when he turned away this time, Reggie let him go, fists tightening helplessly at his sides.

He only went as the sideboard, though – relief bloomed like hope in Reggie’s chest – and poured himself a generous cup of wine. He turned to lean back against the table as he sipped, watching Reggie over the rim of his cup. From a distance like that, he couldn’t help but see how tense Reggie was, from the clenched, jaw, to the fists, to the restless way he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

It was obvious what Reggie was after, what he was doing here, and though his face burned scarlet, there was no sense pretending otherwise. No sense retreating, either: for one, he hadn’t gotten what he wanted. Secondly, he didn’t relish the idea of proving himself weak yet again. So he kicked his chin up to defiant angle and said, “You didn’t answer the question.”

Connor had gotten control back, wiped his face of every emotion save wry amusement. “That’s because I think you’re looking for a specific answer.” He slouched down, shoulders curling, shirt slipping to show a little more clavicle, the shadow between his pectorals. “And I’m not sure it’s an answer you’ve earned.” A smile played across his lips, before he raised the cup to them again.

He was teasing him, now. He was always teasing.

Reggie had had enough of that. And besides: Connor wasn’t the only one with that power.

He forced a laugh and thought it came out halfway convincing. Then he reached for his sword belt, gratified by the way Connor’s gaze snapped right to the motion. “Earned? I’ve not earned it? What about you? What have you earned?”

“I saved your life tonight.” Tone dry, but pupils expanding, gaze getting a little lost.

The sword belt hit the rug with a muffled thump, and Reggie hauled his thick, wool tunic over his head to drop beside it. Started in on the laces of his shirt.

Connor swallowed audibly. “What are you doing?”

“Proving a point.” His fingers felt numb at the tips, and he fumbled the laces; yanked them when they wouldn’t give, and heard threads snap, but his shirt loosened, gapped open.

Connor’s throat jerked as he swallowed again. His voice had grown rough when he said, “And that is…?”

Cool air kissed the rope scar on his throat, and he felt its phantom weight, now, felt his airway constrict. He clawed the shirt off over his head and said, “That you don’t give a single damn about your book right now.” He bent forward at the waist and tugged his boots off, one by one. Rolled down his stockings and stuffed them down inside the tops. He was cold, now, shaking, teeth threatening to chatter – though that was partly nerves. When he straightened, he reached for his flies and managed to keep his voice from shaking too much when he said, “My next question is: why were you reading when we both know what you really want to be doing?”

Connor’s pupils had gone wide, eyes dark and glazed over. He set his cup down without looking. “Dunno,” he murmured absently, gaze pinned on Reggie’s hands as he finally got the knot loose and then shoved his trousers down in one fast go, before he could think better of it.

The air in the tent was chilled – he shivered, and his nipples popped to heard points – but he was rock-hard, now, and the coolness felt good against his too-hot, throbbing cock. He took himself loosely in hand to watch Connor swallow again, to watch his eyes go black in the candlelight. Any questions he’d had about Connor’s attraction to men were vanquished by the dazed look on his face. He was attracted all right.

And Reggie was burning up, in too far to back out now without being utterly crushed. He swayed a few awkward steps forward, still holding his cock in a loose fist. He petted across his chest with his other hand, played with his nipples and tried to soothe the jumping muscles of his stomach.

Connor bent forward at the waist, and his hands gripped the table edge until his knuckles turned white, like he was clinging to resistance. “Reg,” he said, tight, panting a little, “you can put your clothes back on and leave, and we can pretend this never happened.”

The thought struck him like a blow. “Is that what you want?”

“No.” More panting. “What do you want?”

In the end, he was surprised by how easy it was to say. “I want you to fuck me.”

Connor’s breath left him all at once, with a low, punched-out sound.

Reggie let his hands fall, and closed the distance between them, too caught up in Connor’s hungry stare to care about the way his cock bobbed obscenely; he didn’t think of covering himself. Let the man look: he was beautiful; he’d been wanted by men and women from all walks, from eager stable boys, to matrons smiling coyly behind their fans. If he thought of it that way, Connor was no different.

(Except he was different in every way. This was giving, this was letting someone in, an invitation he’d never offered anyone before, and he was offering it to this man, this lord gone wild, this rough woodsman who teased and mocked and stared at him now in a consuming way.)

When he stood within reach, Reggie braced his feet on the rug, threw his shoulders back, and sent him a challenging gaze. Here I am. I’m ready. Do your worst. The surge and ebb of adrenaline in his veins was the same as it had been outside the crumbling tower, just before the charge. Fitting: this felt every inch the battle as well, only without a drake to save the day. This was all down to him.

Up close, he could see the ring of brown encircling Connor’s blown pupils, and the flicker of his pulse at the base of his throat; the beading sweat there, and on his temples, shiny in the glow of candles and brazier. He looked like a man who’d been running, exerting himself. Reggie felt a swell of pride at thinking it took an effort not to pounce on him. A swell of panic, too, because oh, gods, this was about to happen, wasn’t it? He stood naked before him, on offer, and he couldn’t believe he was finally going to attempt intimacy again, and that it had begun with anger. A thrown gauntlet. What was he thinking? Why was he–

He was dizzy. He was…

A warm touch landed on his bare chest, right over his galloping heart. The familiar, callused brushed of Connor’s fingers. He stood straight from the table, to his full height, so that he had to angle his head down to maintain Reggie’s gaze. His eyes had cleared, and the sad tenderness there was worse than the hunger. Worse than anything. He couldn’t stand to be pitied. Couldn’t stand for fucking to be a favor, some means of soothing him. He couldn’t…couldn’t breathe, he…

Connor leaned forward and brushed their mouths together. Quick and fleeting as the touch of a butterfly, not even a kiss; a shared sip of breath. But it drew Reggie up tall and rigid; stopped his lungs from working. Panic flared, sharp as a knife through the ribs. No, no, no–

Connor’s other hand came to his throat, circling it loosely, and Reggie let out a pitiful, frightened sound. Connor’s thumb traced the scar that bisected Reggie’s pulse point, a soothing back and forth sweep, a delicate touch in contrast to the roughness of his skin.

“Can I be the one to talk now?” Connor murmured, low, close, intimate.

Reggie felt run-through, completely vulnerable and exposed and hurtable. “Yes,” he whispered.

Connor’s thumb moved, back and forth, back and forth. His other hand rubbed slow circles on his chest, the skin smooth and hairless, so different from Connor’s hair-dusted skin. “You understand, don’t you? What it means when you say you want me to fuck you? I’m not a servant boy at one of your musical evenings, Lord Reginald.”

Reggie shivered at sound of the honorific, and managed a nod that pressed Connor’s palm more firmly against his throat. “Yes.”

“What do you want?” The hand on his chest slid down, bold contact all the way, over his sucked-in stomach and lower, through the line of hair beneath his navel, until it curled firm and sure around Reggie’s cock.

Reggie gasped, and moaned a little, high in the back of his throat.

Connor’s eyes flared in response, but his hand started up a tortuously slow rhythm, and his voice stayed a low purr. “Do you want it like this? For me to stroke you? Play with you until you spill all over my fist? Or do you want to get on your knees for me? Play with yourself while you take me down your throat?”

Reggie tried and failed to swallow down another sound. He’d considered it – had considered more than that – but hearing it in Connor’s voice brought the image to life in vivid full-color inside his head. He’d never sucked anyone off before, had always been on the receiving end of that act. The thought of the rug fibers biting into his knees, and Connor’s fingers tightening in his scalp sent goosebumps breaking out across his arms and chest. Would he gag? Would it panic him? Bring his Sel captors rushing back to crowd out the present, until he was choking on the cock of a captor, ruthless and uncaring that he brought back up the water and stale bread they’d given him before? He…

Another brush of lips to lips, lingering this time, brief touch of a warm tongue to his lower lip. Reggie closed his eyes and swayed into it. He wasn’t with the Sels; his captors had never kissed him, never stroked his cock so sweetly as this.

“Still with me, sweetheart?” Connor murmured against his mouth.

They’d never called him pet names, either. He’d seen it as insulting when Connor first did it, but lunged at it like a lifeline, now. It wasn’t mocking; it never had been, not at all.

“Yes,” he managed.

Another kiss, deeper, lips fitting, harder pressure. Then Connor skimmed his lips along his jaw to his ear, where he whispered, “Or do you want me inside you?”

“Oh,” he murmured, unbidden, hands clenching on empty air.

“You want me to work you open nice and slow, and then give you my cock?”

Reggie tipped his head back, and Connor kissed his throat, his scar; sucked at it gently. “Yes,” he choked out. “I want – yes. I want you. Want you to – to come inside me. I want it to feel good, this time. I want–”

He wanted Connor to fuck the memories of his captors right out of him, so that penetration was no longer the stuff of nightmares. He wanted to decide when he took a man into his body; wanted to be the master of his own pleasure in that way.

Connor sucked hard and drew back with a wet smacking sound. “All right, darling. All right. I’ve got you.” He took both of Reggie’s clawed hands into his own and drew them to his waist. “You can touch me. I want you to.”

Reggie pulled back far enough to see his face, the crooked, encouraging half-smile he found there. Belatedly, he registered the roughspun fabric of Connor’s shirt beneath his hands, and then he gripped it tight, knuckles digging into the warm skin beneath. Connor breathed a quiet laugh, and Reggie’s gaze snapped to the source of the sound, to his strong throat, and the vee of exposed skin on his chest.

Touch him, he’d said. He wanted it.

And Reggie didn’t want to be the only one naked.

He found the hem of the shirt and slipped his hands beneath, his confidence returning. “Take this off.”

Connor’s brows quirked. Cheeky, his look said, reprimanding. But he said, “As my lord commands, and lifted his arms so Reggie could push the shirt up, up, up, and off over his hands. It fluttered down to the floor like a dropped leaf, and Reggie stayed a moment, hands on Connor’s wrists, and the steady pulse that beat there against his palms, their faces close, chests brushing when they inhaled together. His chest hair tickled Reggie’s nipples. A potent, masculine scent wafted from beneath his lifted arms, soap and heated, clean skin, a unique note that was simply him.

Reggie wanted him terribly.

“Kiss me.” It came out a plea rather than a command. “Will you kiss me? Please?”

Conner’s arms lowered around him. He cupped the back of his head and titled him to the angle he wanted. “Since you asked so sweetly,” he said in measured tones – and then all but lunged forward to fit their mouths together.

Here was the kiss he’d wanted, needed. Reggie let out a relieved moan that Connor swallowed down and then chased with his tongue, sliding through Reggie’s teeth, urging his mouth open wider. Sloppy, hurried, desperate kisses.

Reggie was panting by the time Connor drew back, and registered Connor’s rough laugh the same moment he realized he was rutting against Connor’s thigh, humping his leg like a dog.

“Yeah,” Connor said, sounding deeply pleased, “you’re ready, aren’t you? Come here, sweetheart. Against the table.”

Reggie would do anything to be called sweetheart some more. He went readily when Connor steered him around and helped him place his hands on the edge of the table. Turned his head, blindly seeking, and Connor rewarded him by fitting himself to Reggie’s back, kissing his cheek, the side of his neck, the corner of his mouth when Reggie made a wordless noise of entreaty. One hand settled on Reggie’s hip, and the other slid around to his front, tweaking at one nipple and then the other, teasing at the grooves between his abdominals.

“Connor…”

“I like when you say my name.” Connor nibbled at his ear, sharp little sparks of pain he then soothed with the flat of his tongue. “You should do lots of that, yeah?”

“Yeah. Connor.”

He was rewarded by Connor’s hand sliding down his stomach and taking hold of his cock again, no longer teasing and slow, but sure, firm strokes, root to tip, hand twisting over the head to smear the pre-come that welled at the slit.

Reggie hissed, and Connor petted his flank with his other hand. “That’s it, love. You don’t need to do anything but feel. Just enjoy.”

Reggie’s clammy hands skidded on the edge of the table, so he placed them flat on the top, blunt nails digging at the wood. He leaned forward on his arms, head hanging, and finally, finally let go of all the tension he’d been carrying around like an unwanted cloak. He let himself enjoy, as Connor had said; forcefully shut off his mind and basked in sensation.

Connor worked his cock at a steady pace, his touch expert, just the right amount of pressure. His other hand slipped around to play with his balls, warming them in his palm and squeezing gently, until Reggie gasped and clawed at the table, thrusting into his touch, chasing the pleasure, asking for more with quiet little “please”s hissed through his teeth.

“Please what?” Connor asked, lips at the top of his spine, his still-clothed cock rutting between Reggie’s cheeks, urging his tempo faster, faster.

“More,” Reggie bit out. “Please, Connor, more.”

The hand left his balls, there was a rustle of fabric, and then it was bare, hot skin against his ass, shocking and sticky, pressing right back in between his cheeks as Connor rutted against him another moment, cursing under his breath, gripping bruises into his hip.

Panic leaped in Reggie’s chest, a kneejerk response to having a bare cock that near his entrance, hot and hard and bold and wanting to carve him open, to hurt him, to…

“All right,” Connor’s familiar, rough voice pulled him back, nothing like the lilting, vowel-laden speech of the Sels. “You’re all right. Easy, now.” He drew his hips back, and his hand moved in to take the place of his cock, stroking firm and sure along his cleft.

“Reg,” he said, lips along his spine again, a chain of kisses, moving upward to his nape, warm breath in his hair. “Who am I? What’s my name?”

Reggie knew that; he knew he wasn’t in danger. He dragged a deep breath in through chapped lips and shoved it back out again, shoving some of the worst of his nerves with it. “Connor,” he said, and though it seemed silly, saying it helped. He’d not had a name, then, when it was the Sels. There’d been nothing of care in the digging, bruising hands. He didn’t need handling with kid gloves, and Connor certainly wasn’t delicate, but there was something of care in the slide of his hand, up and down, up and down, parting him a little more on each slide. A thumb skimmed over his hole, and he shivered. “Connor, you’re Connor,” he said, surer now, and his next shiver was of anticipation.

“Good lad. Fetch me that oil, right up there, in the blue bottle.”

Reggie lifted his head, blinked his vision clear, and then, to both their surprise, laughed. Like Connor’s name, that too was a release of tension. He snagged the bottle, small and blue, and passed it back. “I can’t believe you keep your oil with your wine.”

Connor chuckled. “It came in handy, didn’t it?” The sound of the cork pulling free was accompanied by a mental picture of Connor pulling it with his teeth, and Reggie widened his stance a little automatically, cock twitching. “Now, then.” Anticipation in his voice, relish…before it softened. Connor stroked his hip, and his tone turned gentle, seeking. “Ready?”

“Yeah.” And he was.

The oil was cool, when it drizzled on his tailbone and slid in viscous pearls downward. He flinched away from it automatically, before he steadied himself, and soon, Connor began smoothing it in with his hand, warming it, the way slick, now, when he thumbed over his entrance.

When memory tried to overwhelm him, it failed, because this moment was so different than it had been with the Sels. They’d not used oil. They’d not warmed it with their fingers and teased him until he was rocking back, asking for a bolder touch.

Connor teased at him with a single fingertip, spreading the oil, testing, and then, finally, breached him.

It didn’t feel good, exactly. He could tolerate it, but tolerating wasn’t the same as being awash in pleasure. He remembered the pain of the only other time this had happened to him, the sharp sting, the blunt, forceful pressure, the sensation of being ripped open, while he was held down, and laughed at, and spit on.

As slowly as Connor worked that finger in and out of him, the heat bled out of his body, leaving him cold, and flagging.

He felt Connor’s hand flush to his backside, his finger worked all the way inside, and he started to thrust it, nice and easy, as tension streaked up Reggie’s legs, gripped him by the hips.

Warm breath touched his ear, and then Connor’s other hand cupped his jaw and pulled his head around to the side, so their lips could meet in a clumsy, over-the-shoulder kiss. Reggie closed his eyes and leaned into it gratefully, mouth open for the teasing of his tongue.

“You’re so tight,” Connor murmured against his lips, voice honeyed and warm. The slide of his finger was easier, now, a proper fucking, in and out. “You don’t normally do it this way, do you? It’s always you in charge, yeah? Do they like it? Your kitchen boys and stable lads? Do they arch their backs and stick it out for you? Begging for more? I bet you’re good with your hands, aren’t you? I bet you can find that” – his finger pressed deep, deep, searching, and then touched a place that lit up Reggie’s insides with a sharp zing of pleasure, black powder bursts of sensation that left him gasping – “spot. Yeah, yeah. You know about that spot, don’t you? Those long, pretty fingers, you always know how to make them feel good, don’t you?” It was an onslaught of words, heated and close against his lips, and Connor’s other hand closed around his cock, slow, even pumps in time to the thrust of his finger.

“Yeah?” He could feel the shape of Connor’s smile against his mouth, and then his cheek, his neck. “Like that? There you go, sweetheart. Arch your back a little more, and spread your legs – yes, good lad, just like that.” A swelling of pressure on the next forward press, a second finger, and this time Reggie felt the stretch. A sting, but one that heightened the sensation. It wasn’t comfortable – but it was thrilling. And Connor kept talking, the sound of his voice winding him up and up, until he was fucking into the fist around his cock, and rocking back on the fingers – three, now, when had that happened – chasing something.

“That’s good, that’s good – there you go. Gorgeous. Look at you. You like it, yeah? Feels good?”

Reggie reached forward, hands slipping on the tabletop, and deepened the arch of his spine, legs spreading, inviting him deeper. It was getting good, now, but he needed more; was beginning to feel empty and a little frenzied each time Connor’s fingers drew back. If he stopped now…no, don’t think of that. Connor wouldn’t do that to him. Connor was good, he was safe, and he wanted Reggie, the stiff, hot brush of his cock on the back of Reggie’s thigh evidence of that, same as the gravelly shift of his voice.

It was all so much, and not nearly enough; Reggie felt drunk though he hadn’t had a drop. “Please. Please, Connor, please, I need more,” someone was saying, and belatedly, he realized it was him, breathy and wanton like that one stable boy he’d had, years ago, gripping a stall door and begging with tears in his voice. Please, please, please, my lord, please, I need it. Who was the stable boy now? The beggar, the supplicant. Gods, it was excruciating, to think of himself that way, so exciting he was leaking, fucking the back of Connor’s hand right into the table edge in his eagerness.

And then Connor stopped touching him altogether. His fingers slid out, and he turned loose of Reggie’s cock, leaving him humping empty air.

“No! No, don’t–”

“Shh, shh, don’t wake the boy.”

Oh, gods, he’d forgotten all about Liam in his desperate need to be fucked. He–

“Shh,” Connor murmured again, stroking up and down his back, whisper of skin on skin. “You’re all right. You’re only ready for me, yeah? You want my cock? Want me to fill you up? Make you feel good?”

The talking was good; it helped. Reggie let out a deep breath and nodded, as he listened to the slick sound of an oiled hand on a cock. Connor’s cock. Ready for him.

The hand that stroked his back slid down, and spread him wide.

Reggie dug his nails into the tabletop.

A warm, blunt head kissed up against his hole, poised there. Connor’s breathing was fast and ragged. “I need you to say it for me, darling. I need you to be sure.”

And Reggie was sure. “Fuck me,” he panted. “Fuck me, Connor.”

With a muttered curse, Connor pushed inside.

In those first moments, that first, steady breaching, it was nothing like what the Sels had done to him. Was so careful, and measured, the way slick and well-loosened, that there was no danger of comparison. Reggie could do nothing but feel; Connor’s cock worked its way in inch by inch, driving out panic, and remembrance, and nerves. Reggie took, and took, and wanted to take some more, his head blissfully, perfectly empty save for thoughts of Connor.

The raw scrape of his breath, the squeeze of his hands at Reggie’s waist and hip, the heat of his skin, slide of sweat on sweat. His hips kissed Reggie’s backside, and he was all the way in…and shaking. Reggie could feel the tremors everywhere they touched; hear them in the little gasp against his nape. Connor’s fingertips dug into the hollow of his hipbone until it hurt, a pain that Reggie found himself rocking into. Something smooth and damp dropped against his back, and he realized it was Connor’s forehead.

And that Connor was muttering under his breath. “Gods, you’re tight – shit – hold on, hold on.” The last with another hip squeeze, as Reggie pressed back on his cock. “Give me a moment, just…fuck. You’re lovely.”

“I need–”

“I know, darling, I know.” A grunt, experimental flex of his hips that lit up Reggie’s insides like Yule candles. “I’m going to give it to you.”

Connor exhaled – rush of air between Reggie’s shoulders – and then drew his hips back slowly, and snapped them forward again.

Reggie knew he made some sort of noise, but couldn’t tell which, given the roar of blood in his ears. He bent low over the table at Connor’s urging, hands rattling wine bottles as he took a grip on the far edge, face pressed flat to the wood, scent of linseed oil in his nose, and the feel of Connor over him, in him, all around him. He held tight to the table, closed his eyes, and gave and gave and gave, body rocking hard as Connor began to fuck him properly.

He built a rhythm, retreat and thrust, retreat and thrust, filling him again and again, picking up speed as he went, so the time between each delicious kiss of inner pressure, that bright spark on his nerves, grew shorter as they went. Skin slapped skin, louder, and then louder, and Connor’s murmured praises became wordless little grunts, and harsh breaths.

Reggie’s cock rubbed up against the table edge on each thrust, a teasing friction, shy of what he wanted, but his orgasm was building in an entirely new and thrilling way , the pleasure welling up in slow increments from somewhere deep inside him, like ripples on a pond, spreading, intensifying, until his whole body was shaking with it. He wanted to touch himself, reach down and strip his cock with short, hard pulls until he came, but he wanted to drown in this moment, too, dizzy and breathless, awash in unhurried pleasure, holding onto the table for dear life.

Connor’s thrusts had grown quicker and jerkier as he lost himself to it. He’d come soon, Reggie thought, and found he relished the idea of feeling and hearing it, of knowing what he was like in that reckless moment of release. He wanted to see it, but that could wait for another time.

Another time? Yes, gods yes. He wanted to do this again, and again, and again–

Connor pulled out with a curse.

The sudden emptiness was so startling it took a moment to register. But when it did, it was devastating. Reggie felt cracked open, used, abandoned. “No,” he said, slipping as he tried to push up on his hands again, the tent swaying and swirling around him. There wasn’t a drop of blood left in his head, and his thoughts were taffy-slow, emotion boiling up to fill the space. His eyes burned and he was afraid he might start crying. “No, I–”

“Hush,” Connor said, gripped his hips, hauled him up as though he weighed nothing, and turned him around.

He caught a blurry glimpse of Connor’s face – flushed, sheened with sweat, long hair clinging to forehead, and cheeks, and throat – before he was hoisted up and laid back across the table. Connor leaned over him, smelling of musk and fresh sweat, to shove bottles roughly aside, and then he guided Reggie’s hands back to the far edge. He latched onto it automatically and said, “What?” He felt as though he were at sea, pitching and heaving, the hard, cool wood of the table all that grounded him.

That and Connor’s hands, as he smoothed them down his chest and stomach, and pushed his thighs apart so he could step in between them. His cock was angry and wet, curving up toward his navel, so flushed it looked painful, while Reggie’s own cock drooled across his belly, starting to flag in his confusion.

Connor spread his cheeks, guided his cock with one hand, and thrust back in, one smooth slide that set Reggie’s world to rights again. He fit there, was made to be there, and Reggie let out a huge breath, sagging back against the table as Connor started fucking him again, deep and hard.

“Wanted to see you,” Connor said, teeth bared in a quick semblance of a smile. He pushed Reggie’s thigh up and out, deepening the angle of his thrusts, and groaned. “Gods, you’re gorgeous. So pretty like this. You like my cock?”

“Yeah.” Said cock brushed along all his nerves in a new, electrifying way, and Reggie tried to lift into the next thrust, spine arching off the table. “Yes.”

He understood, now, why his past lovers had moaned for this; why they’d left scratches in the wall paneling and murmured nonsense, shaking and sweating and crying, even. He felt the hot leak of tears sliding down his own temples, now, and didn’t care, could find no shame, only pleasure – deepened, now, by the chance to watch Connor above him.

His jaw was clenched, cheeks hollowed and flushed deep pink with his efforts, nostrils flared as his breathing fought to keep up with the pistoning rhythm of his thrusts, relentless and accurate, in, and in, and in. Reggie felt them in his throat. Connor bore down on him with something like determination, hands gripping his thigh and his hip, slipping now and then with sweat; his chest heaved, stomach sucked in and flexing, all the muscles there jumping beautifully as he worked to drive himself deeper and deeper. His gaze was trained now on the place where he disappeared inside Reggie, his pupils blown, his brow furrowed as though he was in pain.

The sheen of his bunching, flexing shoulders proved irresistible, and Reggie turned loose of the table so he could take hold of skin instead. It was a chaste touch, compared to everywhere else they were in contact, but the feel of strong, trembling sinew beneath his palms, the way the skin gave when he pressed in with his fingertips, added another layer to the intensity of the moment.

“Gods,” he swore. “Connor.”

Connor growled something unintelligible and ducked lower over him, shoulders lifting up into Reggie’s hands like a cat seeking a stroke. His hair fell across Reggie’s chest, teasing silk, breath rushing warm over his peaked nipples.

A hand slid off Reggie’s hip, the pace faltered – and then Connor had hold of Reggie’s cock, squeezing and tugging and stroking.

That was the moment Reggie realized how close he’d been.

A half-dozen pumps, and then a shout was catching in his throat, and his heart was stuttering, and the rushing in his ears became the crescendo of breakers at high tide. Pleasure peaked, snapped, and crashed over him with the burn and sparkle of lit powder.

He fell apart.

When he became aware of the world outside his own thrumming body, he cracked his eyes open – when had he closed them – and saw Connor gazing down at him with unguarded reverence. A look more intimate and toe-curling than anything he’d ever been on the receiving end of before; a look of which he hadn’t thought Connor capable. If he hadn’t been pulsing and spent, he would have blushed and turned away from it.

He became aware that Connor was stroking his chest – rubbing Reggie’s own spend into the grooves between his muscles, stroking it slippery over his nipples; he was still thrusting into him, but slow and unhurried, the sound of it sloppy. Reggie could feel the mess, there, between them, sliding down his skin.

Connor had come inside him, filled him up with spend.

He had no idea why he found that so scintillating, but he clenched hard on Connor’s shoulders before he let his hands fall back over his head. They hit the table with a thump.

Connor’s hips flexed: thrust, thrust, thrust, chasing the clench and release of Reggie’s body, and no doubt the final pulses of his own climax. The wet sound of it broke Reggie’s brain a little. Left him smiling, hugely and stupidly, even as he winced with oversensitivity.

Connor petted over his stomach; ran a thumb up his hyper-sensitive cock where it lay softening in the groove of his hip, making him hiss. His grin broke slow, and crooked, and woefully handsome. Reggie felt like a rabbit in a snare – one who’d put himself there intentionally.

“Well,” Connor said, and finally slipped out of him. “What do you think?”

Reggie whimpered a little at the loss, beyond caring about such trivial things like dignity, then sighed in relief when Connor slipped two fingers inside him. He reached to drag his fingertips through the mess on his chest. “You know what I think,” he said, voice shaking. He was exhausted, now, and growing more so by the second.

Connor’s grin got sharper, and he pressed in just so with his fingers, to watch Reggie squirm. “Come now. It’s not so much the knowing as it is the hearing, sweetheart.”

Reggie huffed out a breath…and then sighed. Let himself go boneless across the table, save the way his hips chased the press and retreat of the fingers inside him. “Fine,” he said, feigning exasperation, but missing the mark, too pleasure-drunk to completely wipe the smile from his face. “You’re a good fuck, Connor Dale.” Souring: “And you’re being a prideful sod, because I know I’m not the first to tell you that.”

Connor’s sharp-edged smile softened; the mischief melted out of his gaze, leaving it fond. Something else, too, perhaps, but Reggie refused to name it. “No,” he agreed, “but definitely the prettiest.”

He leaned down, then, to kiss him, slow and soft. And when he pulled back, he shifted lower, and laid his lips against the noose scar on Reggie’s neck. Held there, still and purposeful, while a lump formed in Reggie’s throat.

When he could, Reggie lifted a hand and fisted it tight in his too-long hair.

“You’re all right,” Connor murmured, and perhaps, now, he could begin to be.

11

Tessa was pacing the width of her bedchamber, the one she shared with Rune. Her husband. Who didn’t yet know that she intended to march south with them.

She reached the wall, spun on her heel, and paced the edge of the rug again, stepping over the runes woven into it, trying to decide how she’d present her argument. She didn’t like that: argument. She wasn’t going to argue with Rune. She was going to inform him – yes, inform, that was better. When she’d discussed it with Oliver earlier, he’d taken on this pained expression, cheeks dusting pink beneath his freckles.

“Not to speak, ahem, indelicately,” he’d said, gaze skating over her shoulder, refusing to meet her head on, face growing even pinker. “But I’ve found with Erik that, um, how shall I put this – a bit of sugar helps him swallow the medicine with greater ease. Offer your decision” – he held up one hand, and then the other – “alongside a bit of sweetness. If you – uh – take my meaning.” He’d pressed his lips together. “Please don’t make me say it, dear.”

“Seduce him, you mean.”

“Yes.” He’d heaved a relieved breath, and then flushed crimson. “Or, wait! No! I shouldn’t encourage that, as your elder. I should – you see – oh, bollocks.”

Tessa had tried and failed to suppress a giggle. “Relax, Ollie. I’m a married woman, now. I know all about seduction.” But then she’d blushed, too, face heating until she’d clapped her hands over her cheeks in an attempt to hide them.

“Aren’t we a pair?” Oliver had muttered. “Look: I’ll only say this once, because otherwise both our faces might catch fire. If you’re going to make a declaration such as this, get your man good and soft, first. Or, well…” He’d winked, despite his scarlet cheeks. “Hard, actually.”

She barked a startled laugh, and walked away from their conversation feeling much more confident about the matter.

Now, though, she was pacing, and thinking, and wringing her hands, as a matter of fact. Distantly, she felt Alfie’s purr of inquiry through their bond, wondering why her mistress was distressed. Tessa forced her hands down to her sides and halted. Took a deep breath.

“You can do this,” she whispered to herself. “You can. And even if he is Erik’s nephew, he isn’t going to react the way that Erik would.”

She hadn’t been privy to what went on behind closed doors, but she knew that Oliver had faced quite the fight with his mate when it came to asserting himself as a drake-rider, a warrior, a valuable part of the war effort. It had started early on, while they were away for the disastrous Midwinter Festival, and been hastened by dangerous circumstances and necessity. But she knew that Erik had planted his heels and been a bear about the whole thing, stubborn and intractable, covering his fear and worry with anger and kingly bluster.

She could see Leif acting that way, especially now that he was…changed. But Rune was different. Gentler, more measured; he didn’t get possessive and jealous, wasn’t the sort to trample over her wishes. He would be worried, of course, but worry she could handle. Worry they could work through together, and she had no doubt that she could help him see the wisdom of her presence on the campaign.

Not to mention, she didn’t want to be separated from her husband so soon after their wedding.

Husband. The word still sent pleasant prickles all down her spine. It shocked her, at times, just thinking it: husband. Rune was her husband. She smiled now, marveling at it all over again, which was completely silly. She’d come to Aeretoll for the express purpose of marrying, aligning her house with that of a royal, warrior family. She’d known from the day the letter arrived in Drakewell, word of Father and her brother’s death, that she would marry, and marry soon. She’d spent the entire journey north assuming she’d marry Erik. That was impossible to imagine, now, but the acquisition of a husband had been certain.

Having it be Rune, though…who was so handsome, and so kind, and so ridiculous, and eager, and devoted to her. That seemed too much like a fairy tale come true to be real, sometimes.

She was standing in the center of her rug, smiling like a fool, when a light rap sounded at her door, and it swung open before she could say come in. She smoothed the front of her dress, and adopted what she hoped was a strong posture as the door creaked inward; donned a warm smile, greeting poised on the tip of her tongue.

But it wasn’t Rune’s familiar silhouette who filled the doorway.

Revna checked for her, said, “Oh, good,” and swept into the room in a swirl of woold skirts and a firm closing of the door.

Oh no, Tessa thought, heart leaping, because she’d spent all her time worrying about how she’d break the news to Rune, and hadn’t considered telling her new mother-in-law that she was planning to leave her here all alone.

Well, not alone. She had Bjorn, and she had her maids, and–

“I’m glad you’re here,” Revan said, in front of her now, because of course she’d charged across the room, despite her condition. She took both of Tessa’s hands in her own larger ones and squeezed. “Listen,” she said, hurried and businesslike, “Erik is on his way up. I’ve told Oliver to stall him a moment” – she made a face – “though I’m not sure what that will require. Perhaps I’ve bought myself more time than I need.” Curl of her lip, and shake of her head, before she gathered her thoughts again. “But I wanted a chance to warn you. You’ve not told Rune yet, have you?”

“Told him what?” Tessa asked, half bewildered, half panicked. How did Revna know? How could she possibly? Had Oliver blabbed? If he had, Tessa had more than a few embarrassing stories that perhaps Ollie’s beloved Erik ought to know about.

Revna sighed, fondly exasperated, smile touching her lips. “Have you told him that you’re going? That you’re to depart tomorrow with the rest of the campaign?”

Tessa failed to suppress a gasp.

Revna squeezed her hands. “Oh, darling, did you think I hadn’t guessed? How can Percy and that little demon Valgrind go scarpering off to war and leave Alfie behind? Of course she’s going – which means of course you’re going, too. Yes?”

She should have known Revna would correctly predict her plans. She swallowed, and jerked a nod. “Yes.”

“I thought so.”

Tessa braced herself for the inevitable lecture, flinching inside her dress, already gathering her arguments.

Revna laughed and said, “Darling, your face! What’s the matter?”

She could do this, Tessa reminded herself. She could. When she spoke, the words came out very formal, making it clear she’d been practicing. “I know that it will be dangerous, and that you won’t approve of–”

Revna laughed again, louder this time, blue eyes scrunching up as she smiled. “Oh, dear. No, no, you can save that for my brother. I don’t disapprove of anything.”

Tessa hadn’t expected that. “You don’t?”

“No. I’ve known from the first that you would go with them. How could you not?”

“I…” She was gobsmacked.

“Here.” Revna towed her over to the bed. “Let’s sit.”

They settled on the edge of the bed, and Revna turned loose of her, one hand settling on her expanding side. Before Tessa could ask if she was feeling well, Revna sighed. “I’d be going along too, if I wasn’t in this state.” She peered down at her belly and shook her head, as though marveling. “I still can’t believe…” Another headshake, and she straightened to give Tessa an encouraging smile. “But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, you’re going.”

Inexplicably, Tessa’s eyes filled with tears.

Revna rubbed her arm briskly, a bracing, maternal touch. “What’s wrong? Did you get yourself all worked up for an argument and now there’s nowhere for it to go?”

“No – well, yes.” Tessa sniffed hard, and dabbed at her eyes; blinked the tears away. “But that’s not why I’m…” She fanned at her face, and willed it to cool. Wherever she was, Amelia certainly wasn’t crying right now. Amelia was strong. “I feel as though I’m abandoning you,” she said. “I haven’t told you yet because I didn’t know what to say, and I never thought you’d – you’d–” Damn, the tears were coming back. “Be so understanding.” She squeezed her eyes shut tight, trying to stem the flow.

“Gods,” Revna said with a dry chuckle. “Am I really such a villainess as all that? No, no,” she said, when Tessa started to protest. “I know what you mean.” She produced an embroidered handkerchief from the pocket of her dress and passed it over. “I’ve so enjoyed your company. Enjoyed having a daughter.” Her smile went wistful. “I’ve not had one of those before, and I’ll miss you terribly. No offense to the other girls, but.” She blinked, too, and Tessa feared they’d both be crying.

But Revna being Revna, she refocused, and fixed her with a direct look. “I love you,” she said, matter-of-factly, “and I’ll worry over you as much as if you were my own, and I’ll wish you were seated beside me in the hall each day, and I’ll worry over the horrible things you’ll see out there, in the wide, mean world, and wish I could keep you from them. But that isn’t how the wide, mean world works. You’re your own woman, now, and I don’t believe in hiding the hard truths from grown women. It isn’t a holiday, it's a war. I know that you know that, but even so, it shall be harder than you’re expecting, more difficult than anything you’ve ever faced. I know that you must go, however. I know that only you can fly that beast on the battlefield, and she’s a beast our side will need.”

She reached to cup Tessa’s chin gently in her hand. “Be firm with Erik. Don’t let him browbeat you. He always sees sense in the end – we simply must alter the direction of his gaze, sometimes.”

When she smiled, Tessa smiled back.

A heavy knock sounded at the door, and Tessa jumped.

“That’ll be him.” Revna stood, and swooped down to press a kiss to her forehead. “Be firm,” she reminded. “He’s not nearly as frightening as he likes to look.”

Tessa thought a few battlefield ghosts would disagree, but she nodded, and got to her feet.

Revna gave her one last parting smile of encouragement, then turned and marched for the door. When she opened it, Erik’s black brows jumped before they notched together in a harsh frown. “What are you doing here?” he asked his sister.

Revna tipped her head back to a haughty angle. “Am I not allowed to visit my daughter-in-law? First it’s no sword practice in the yard, then no riding, and now I can’t visit?”

Erik’s frown twitched into a more complicated shape that left Tessa biting her lip against the sudden threat of laughter. The poor man really had no idea what to make of women, did he? Thank the gods he hadn’t swallowed pride, leaned into duty, and agreed to marry her. What a cold, loveless union that would have been.

“Er…no,” he said, uncertainly.

“Quite right.” Revna gave a hard sniff, stepped around him, and strode down the hall, boots thumping softly across the flags.

Erik turned his head a moment to watch her leave, puzzlement plain on his face. Then he gave an incremental shake of his head, stepped into the room, and closed the door soundly behind him.

Tessa took a deep breath.

He smoothed his expression into something like an awkward, formal greeting, which she supposed was better than the dispassionate gaze he bestowed upon petitioners in the throne room, but not as friendly and familial as she would have liked. “Good evening.” He gave a brief dip of his head, in acknowledgement of her station as a princess.

She wanted to simply be a niece instead. But she could sense the nerves in him, see them in the way he idly played with one of his rings – the one that was a perfect match to the ring Oliver wore – before he forced his hands still at his sides.

Whenever in doubt, Tessa fell back on good manners. She gripped her skirts and bobbed a quick, but correct curtsy. “Good evening, Your Majesty.”

Erik’s frown returned, and he stepped deeper into the room, patting the air with his hand in a gesture she read as quelling. “No, no,” he said, “no need for ‘Your Majesty.’ I’m–” He hesitated, frown deepening.

“Uncle?” she suggested, and felt her face heating.

She didn’t expect his face to smooth and clear, nor for the faintest smile to lift the corners of his mouth. It transformed him completely; a smile Oliver probably knew well by this point, but which she’d only seen a handful of times.

He inclined his head, lover’s beads in his braids chiming together softly. “Yes,” he said, “I’d like that.”

The startling contrast between his stern, kingly countenance and his rare moments of softening were of the sort that could make a person terribly fond of him. Tessa had begun their relationship uncertain, but felt well on her way to that sort of fondness, now.

Oliver, obviously, was head-over-heels smitten.

She crossed to the sideboard, a new addition to her bedchamber as a married woman. She turned over a pair of silver goblets and poured wine for both of them. Two armchairs were slanted in front of the fire, and she said, “Shall we sit?”

His smile slipped away, and he was serious again. “Yes. Thank you.”

They took their seats, across from one another. Tessa crossed her legs, and smoothed her skirts, and took a bracing sip of wine. Be firm, Revna had said, and she hitched up straighter in her chair.

Opposite, Erik took a much larger swallow of wine, and then sat forward, elbows on the chair arms, staring down into his goblet, which he cradled between both large hands. Rune had large hands like that, she reflected, big, and wide-palmed, but with surprisingly elegant long fingers made pretty with the glimmer of all the rings.

He was nervous, she realized, as he continued to sit, and gaze down into his cup, tapping its side absently with the ring on his middle finger. Uncertain of how to broach the subject.

How terribly endearing.

Tessa smiled to herself, and said, “Was there something you wanted to discuss…Uncle?” That would take some getting used to, but it felt nice.

His head snapped up, as though she’d startled him. Then he nodded, set his wine aside on the table to his left, and folded his hands together over his stomach. His head took a decidedly paternal angle. “Ollie tells me you want to come with us on campaign.”

Tessa took a deep breath, but slowly, in hopes he wouldn’t see the flare of her nostrils or the heave of her chest. Firm. What would Revna say? She attempted to channel her. “Well. I’ve decided to come. I will come.” Her pulse picked up; she wasn’t used to speaking this boldly – to a king no less. But she didn’t want to show so much as a shred of doubt. He might want to be called Uncle, now, but she knew he would exploit anything he saw as a weakness in this instance. “I’ve already packed.” She gestured to the trunk over by the wall, ready to be toted down and loaded onto one of the baggage sleighs. “My armor and harness are waiting in the barn with the drakes.”

He drew in a deep breath of his own, though not subtle about it. His wide chest lifted, and the exhale rushed audibly from flared nostrils, after. His gaze shifted to the trunk, and back. “I’m sure Rune has–”

“I haven’t told Rune yet. I will tonight, when he comes in.”

That earned a lift of his brows. “It’s quite soon in your marriage to be keeping secrets from one another, don’t you think?”

Tessa wanted to frown, but schooled her features. He wasn’t being fair: was clearly going to try to manipulate her, prey on her guilt and obligations, use word games as opposed to direct orders. She wouldn’t allow him to see that it bothered her, and she wouldn’t back down. “I wanted to ensure that I could be properly prepared to depart before I worried him with the decision. I commissioned the armor special, as well as a blade, and a saddle and harness for Alfie. Now, I’m ready, and I’m going to tell Rune tonight, as I’ve said.”

“When he won’t have weeks to wheedle and beg you to change your mind.”

She did let her frown show this time. “Rune doesn’t wheedle and beg. We don’t have that sort of relationship.”

She’d spoken more harshly even than intended, and Erik’s chin lifted a fraction, his gaze going assessing, eyes half-lidded and hard to read.

“If you’ve need of two drakes,” she said, “then three are even better. Percy and Valgrind have riders, and so does Alfie. I don’t have wishes to ride in the melee, nor am I so foolish to think that I might escape unscathed from another hand-to-hand encounter with a Selesee warrior. But I can fly, and my drake can fight, and so you need me, you see. And I’m going.”

“You’re going,” Erik echoed.

“Yes.”

“I could refuse to allow you, you know,” he said, and her stomach tightened unpleasantly. “I could order guards to your door, and tell them to bar your way no matter how much you protested.”

She met his stare, and didn’t speak, her jaw set. She would not bend. She would not beg, as he’d supposedly expected his nephew to do – a misjudgment of character that left her faintly sick. How could he think so little of Rune? Of their marriage, for that matter?

Erik held her gaze a long, tense moment – and then he heaved a deep sigh, turned away, and picked up his wine again. Took a long swallow and shook his head. “Gods,” he said, on another sigh. “You Drakes will be the death of me.” His gaze returned, accusatory. “I thought you were sweet when you first came. Timid.”

“I’m sorry you underestimated me, Your Majesty.”

Slowly, a grin graced his lips. His eyes crinkled, spark of amusement in their blue depths. “Originally, I thought you and Oliver were very different. But I’ve begun to see that you aren’t so different at all. Is it the red hair? Or the Drake lineage?”

She felt the tug of her own smile. “A bit of both, I suspect.”

His grin widened, and when he took his next sip of wine, she took one of her own, a new lightness swelling in her chest. She’d misjudged him, too, all along the way, even now.

He lowered his cup, and fixed her with the warm-but-stern, serious-but-loving, very uncle-like look she’d hoped for to begin. “I won’t lie and pretend we don’t need all three drakes, because we do. Things are…”

Náli’s grave news from the North, murmurings of an Immortal Emperor looking for Oliver, wanting him for reasons none of them understood.

“…not ideal,” he finished. “Each time we talk of the war, it seems to grow more dangerous. And with Leif…” His gaze turned reflective a moment, anguished. Then he shook his head. “Suffice to say, we need every asset on this march, the drakes most especially. I’m not opposed to women serving the war effort – this is the North, after all, our women are warriors, just as much as their menfolk.

“But – forgive me – you’re very young. And you’ve just married my nephew, and he’s wild about you. And if anything should happen to you…”

She nodded, but said, “Anything could happen to any of us. What should I do if Rune…?” She couldn’t make herself say it, she found. “Or if Oliver should…”

Pain flashed in his eyes, powerful and palpable.

“I know it’s dangerous.”

“And I know you must go, though I wish you didn’t need to.” He gazed thoughtfully into the fire, wide shoulders lifting on a deep inhale. “I want to make you promise to be careful, but that feels so futile. It…so much of it…feels futile.”

She couldn’t see him head-on, only in profile, now, the way his head was turned, but that was all she needed to glimpse his haunted expression. His typical sternness concealed the sort of burden that would have buckled other men’s knees.

Tessa knew a sudden, fierce urge to embrace him, to try and hold him up with a hug, and a kiss on the cheek, and the promise that he was loved, and that everyone knew he was doing his best.

She hoped Oliver did that for him. Knew that he must, but thought it might be counterbalanced by Oliver’s willingness to climb aboard a dragon’s back and go flying off into danger.

In a gentle voice, she said, “I don’t think trying is ever futile, no matter the odds.”

His gaze slid over sideways, mouth quirking in a rueful grin. “Does that run in the family, too?”

Her cheeks warmed, but before she could reply, the door opened – no knock this time. Rune.

He swept in smelling of snow and the smoke off the peat braziers in the yard, braids unraveling – she still wasn’t very good at getting them tight enough, but he insisted she be the one to do his plaits and set his beads each morning, humming and basking like a happy cat beneath her touch while she made her sad attempts – face pink from the cold. He smiled at her automatically, wide, beautiful, unchecked, so different from Erik’s careful reserve.

“Darling,” he started, slinging his cloak over the bed, heeling the door shut. “I–” Then he caught sight of Erik, and froze, hands mid-gesture, foot poised mid-step. All the good humor bled out of his face straight off. He settled, standing up straight. “Uncle.”

It broke her heart to see the worry writ large on his face, the way he’d seen the two of them sitting together and immediately thought Erik was here lecturing her, intimidating her. From worry, he shifted quickly to defensiveness; crossed the room and came to stand beside her chair, hand settling on the back of it. He worshipped his uncle, but he wasn’t going to let the man bully her – which he clearly thought was happening.

Erik stood. “Rune. I was just leaving.” To Tessa: “Thank you for the wine, Tessa.” He shot her a meaningful look, head titled toward Rune. Tell him. “I’ll see you in the morning. Both of you. Sleep well.”

“Sleep well,” Tessa echoing, smiling. I will.

“G’night,” Rune said, belatedly, when Erik was at the threshold.

He lifted a wave over his head and left them, door closing in his wake.

The moment they were alone, Rune rounded the chair and knelt before her, arms laid over her lap, hand seeking hers and pressing it tight. He looked up into her face, entreating. “What did he say to you? Why was he here? Was he being cruel? I don’t think he means to be, but he never knows how ugly he can sound, and–”

Tessa silenced him with a finger laid against his lips; laughed when his brows shot up in confusion. “It was fine, darling. He was a perfect gentleman – but we discussed something that it’s time I discussed with you.”

He frowned. “What?” And then his brows went back up, nearly to his hairline. “You’re with child?” She didn’t know if he sounded joyous, or petrified by the idea.

“No.” She scooted over against the arm of the chair, and patted the space beside her. “Come and sit, my love. I want to talk to you about tomorrow morning…”

~*~

Sweaty and out of breath, blood humming pleasantly with aftershocks, Oliver leaned up and pressed a smacking kiss to Erik’s cheek, bristle of his short beard tickling his own hairless chin. “That was terribly kind of you, Erik Frodeson.”

“Hmm.” Erik stretched beneath him, the lift of his chest like the shaking of a mountain, nearly dislodging Oliver completely. His hand landed with a light smack on Oliver’s backside, afterward, fingers dipping into the cleft and probing where he was still loose, and sensitive, and slick with oil and spend. “I rather thought I was being unkind, and that you liked it.”

Oliver bit the edge of his jaw in reprimand, and earned a low, rumbling laugh that vibrated through his own body. “What I meant,” he said, “was that it was very kind of you to give Tessa your blessing for the trip.”

Erik shifted around again, hand sliding up to settle at the small of Oliver’s back. The laughter bled out of him, replaced by another, lower, less happy hum. “Firstly, it’s a campaign and not a ‘trip.’”

“Yes, of course, love.”

“Hmph. And secondly, she would have come whether I gave my blessing or not.” His fingertips trailed up Oliver’s spine, tapping out a rhythm against the vertebrae that said, gently, that Oliver might be in a bit of trouble. (Given that usually resulted in a thorough and spirited fucking, he couldn’t say he was sorry about it.) “Thirdly, I wonder how much of her bravery was…borrowed. From a cousin, let’s say. Or perhaps encouraged is the better word.”

Oliver covered a laugh – Erik truly was more dramatic than a stage performer – with a sigh and pushed up, both hands on Erik’s substantial chest, so he was straddling his waist and could look down into his face. A face creased with worry, despite the fatigue that underlined his eyes. He looked far too tense for a man who should have been basking in the afterglow.

“Do you think so little of Tessa?” Oliver asked. “That she doesn’t have a backbone of her own and that I had to encourage her?”

Erik made a face. “Gods, she said nearly the same thing.”

Oliver grinned. “We’re related, you know.”

“Yes, yes, I know far too well.” He reached up to tangle a hand in Oliver’s hair and pulled him back down to lie against his shoulder. Oliver settled there gladly.

“It will be difficult for her,” Erik said in a defeated voice.

“I know. She knows that, too.”

Erik sighed. “Well, then. South we go.”

He sounded resigned, and Oliver knew that it would take some time for him to accept all that he could not control, all things fantastical and magical swirling around him, completely out of his hands. A tough challenge for a king, but one Oliver was determined to help him through.

Tomorrow, though, and all the days after, because the heat of Erik’s skin, and the deep, even beat of his heart, the rise and fall of his chest, like the slow lifting of steady tides, was lulling him to sleep.

He closed his eyes, breathed in the smell of his lover, and let the dark close over him.

This time, when he opened his eyes to pale sky, and paler clouds, the rush of cold wind in his face and Percy’s wings beating beneath him, he knew that he wasn’t dreaming. That, in his dreams, he had crossed over to that other plane – the Between, Náli had called it. A realm for the dead who hadn’t yet sought the Halls of the Ancestors, nor been claimed by Hel’s dark fields. Spirits who couldn’t, or wouldn’t move on.

Why, then, was he here? Why had he been coming here for months, thinking the visits only dreams the whole time? He understood why Náli walked here – he was the Corpse Lord, after all – but how was Oliver able to reach this place? Again and again, in the company of his drake.

He’d asked Náli, while they sat in the snowy garden, icicles dripping all around them, the first buds forming tight and hard on the apple trees. But Náli had only shrugged; he didn’t know why Oliver was here. Didn’t know, he admitted, fear coloring his voice, much at all about this place, and regretted the loss of the one person, one spirit, one ancestor, who’d been able to share information. He was gone, dispelled in his efforts to protect Náli. And Romanus Tyrsbane walked this realm as well, hunting them.

Hunting Oliver.

Flying through the washed-out haze of this spiritual sky had lost most of its appeal since he was here last.

He leaned low over Percy’s neck, tightening his grip on the reins. “Can we go back?” he asked, and Percy pushed a sense of responsibility through the bond. You can do that, not me.

“That’s not fair,” Oliver muttered, voice snatched by the wind. “Valgrind can cross over at will, can take Náli in and bring him back out.”

Percy sent sulky thoughts his way, accompanied by an unhappy, vocal growl.

“Yes, well, perhaps you ought to apply yourself to learning how to do that, hm?”

He should apply himself as well, but since he hadn’t intentionally entered a meditative state, nor sought a light, gone through a portal – nothing of the sort – he didn’t know how to go about doing so on this side, to get back out again. He supposed he could leave if someone woke him up in the real world, but he was alone with Erik, who was probably sleeping like the dead now.

Which meant he and Percy were alone, here, and would have to figure out a way on their own.

He sat up, tweaked the right rein, and spiraled Percy into a slow, gradual descent. The clouds shredded around them, and below he glimpsed the gleaming snake of a river, the distant shadows of mountains. The ground came on by increments, until they landed, safe and secure, in a sea of waving gray grass. Oliver stayed atop Percy a moment, once his wings had folded, shading his eyes from the hazy sun and searching for a sign of life – any kind of life. But there were none, not even the droning of insects nor the trilling of birds.

“Bit spooky,” he muttered, and slid down off Percy’s back. The grass crunched and folded beneath his boots, dry and dead. Huh. Perhaps everything – even the vegetation – was dead here. Everything but the two of them.

And whatever let out a high, whistling shriek in the distance.

Oliver swore and gripped the strap of Percy’s breastplate, all his muscles tensing at once.

Percy lifted his head, inhaled with a sound like a windstorm, and shrieked back.

The sounds were different in pitch and tone, but there was no mistaking the first as belonging to anything but a drake.

Oliver cursed again, and swung up onto Percy’s back, took up his reins. Percy spread his wings, flexed them, body coiling big and strong beneath him.

But Oliver didn’t heel him forward, didn’t urge him to take flight.

He marched for war tomorrow, to face horrors that would put the siege at the palace to shame. He and his drake were going to do battle in open fields, against whole waves of enemies, physical and real, with weapons glinting sharp and deadly in the spring sunshine.

If he could face that – and he would – he could face this, whatever it was, in the realm between worlds.

Percy made an inquiring noise, and Oliver straightened his spine, stilled his hands, forced his breathing even. “We stay,” he said. “Whoever it is, we’ll meet them head-on.”

Percy shook his head, frills flapping, but he fixed his gaze on a point overhead, and he growled, low and threatening.

Oliver squinted against the light, and as the shriek sounded again, closer this time, he saw the first, indistinct speck of a silhouette above them. One that dropped quickly, gaining mass and dimension, until it resolved itself into a drake, bat wings and long neck and whipping, fork-tipped tail.

That was different from Percy, and now that he could see better, the wings weren’t quite the same either, longer and sharper at the tips, with barbs at the ends like claws. Also…where were its front legs? Percy was a quadruped, an wyvern. But this drake looked like…

A wyrm. He could see it, now, clearly. Its front legs were attached to the thin skin of its wings, which made its torso a dramatic, triangular shape, rather than the horse-looking silhouette of the cold-drakes. Not a fire-drake, either, then. This was–

Going to land on top of them.

“Shit!”

Percy sent a frantic burst of worry through the bond, asking if they should flee.

But at the last moment, the drake above angled its body, tilting into the wind, and sailed off away from them.

“We stay,” Oliver repeated, though less steadily. He’d begun to shake – inwardly, for now.

Percy grumbled, but reached back to nose at his knee, silent encouragement.

“Thank you, dear heart,” Oliver murmured, and reached to stroke his face, one quick touch.

Fifty yards away, the other drake landed. The last, hard flaps of its wings bent the grass double, and beat flecks of grit against Oliver’s face that he blinked away with aid of his sleeve. Percy grumbled a threat, and shook his head, vivid blue eyes blinking same as Oliver’s.

The other drake – the wyrm – was an impressive creature, half-again Percy’s size, crouched like a buzzard on the grass with its strange, fused wing-arms, sharp, clawed tips pointing skyward while its weight balanced on a pair of batlike knuckles at the midpoint. In the blurry sunlight, its scales were an iridescent purple-black, glistening like the flocking of a butterfly’s wing. Its head was large, blunted at the snout, eyes topped by a set of spiny, heavy brows. Four horns sprouted from the crown of its head, rather than Percy’s two, and the spines down its back were jagged and ferocious; they looked as if they’d cut a man’s hand if touched.

All of this Oliver noted with an absent glance, his attention snapping to the figure who sat tall and imposing in the drake’s saddle. A man with a narrow waist and broad shoulders, a long sword strapped to his back. He wore a helm crested with short, dyed-purple horsehair bristles. And the armor was a flawless, gleaming gold.

A Sel.

He knew which Sel, straight off, though he refused to think the man’s name nor title. Maybe it wasn’t him…maybe it was a minion. A foot soldier. Someone who’d fallen asleep and crossed over accidently, just as Oliver had.

The man swung his leg over the saddle and dismounted in one fluid leap, landing lightly, despite the obvious weight of armor and blade. He paused a moment, to stroke his mount’s nose, the drake whuffing affectionately and nudging his shoulder. He spoke to the beast in that odd, lilting Selesee language that sounded more like spoken poetry than prose.

The he turned toward Oliver, and Oliver felt the weight of his gaze through his helmet, and across the distance, over the waving stalks of grass.

He failed to suppress a shudder, but stayed his ground; gripped the high pommel of his saddle and kept his back straight, his shoulders square.

Movements slow, deliberate, the armored man reached up to unbuckle his helmet; he drew it off, tucked it under his arm, and shook loose a sheet of straight, white hair that reached the middle of his back, scraped back at the crown and secured at the back of his head. His skin was nearly as pale as his hair, face stark amidst the grays and creams of the landscape.

Oliver took a slow, unsteady breath as the man caught and snared his gaze, and strode toward them.

He thought of waking in a Fang cell high in the mountains; swaying under the effects of ice rose, and watching an army of skeletons sprout from the ground like spring flowers. Thought of screams in the night, and antlered shamans in the shadows of the trees. Thought of that first night he’d met Percy, riding out from the gates, seeing this great, awesome creature who’d become his friend, a stranger still, a threat, squared off from his lover. Thought of flying back toward Aeres, afraid of what he’d find there; thought of crumbling walls, and the snap of trebuchets, the screams of wounded and dying men.

Thought of all of that…and knew an outsized, foundation-shaking fear at sight of the man walking toward him.

Toward them. Percy lowered his head, steepled his wings protectively around Oliver, and hissed.

We’re all right, Oliver thought, though he didn’t believe it. I have you, and you have me, and we’ll manage.

Percy sent a disbelieving trill through the bond. But outwardly, he snarled at the approaching Sel, a nasty sound Oliver had never heard from him before.

The Sel kept coming. As he neared, he lifted his free hand, palm toward Percy’s head, the smooth, dark leather of his glove seeming to glow.

He didn’t cow Percy completely, but Oliver could feel the way he pushed some sort of magic toward him; a sympathetic buzzing in the back of Oliver’s head, a hum unlike anything he’d heard, and an intense wave of sluggishness.

“Percy? Percy! Oh, damn, damn, damn.” He slapped lightly at the drake’s withers, and Percy snorted, and shook his head, as though trying to shake out the hum. His wings dropped, lay like white, fallen leaves against the grass, and the Sel walked right up to his side, close enough to reach for Oliver’s foot in the stirrup, which he did.

Oliver could feel Percy’s sleepiness dragging at him, making his head heavy, clouding his thoughts – but he could tell it was because of the bond, that he himself hadn’t been afflicted; the trick was to fight it.

“Stop!” he shouted, when the Sel’s gloved hand was inches from the stirrup. “You there, stop! Stop right now!”

Miraculously, he did. His hand hovered a moment, before it lowered slowly to his side.

Percy swung his head around clumsily, snorting loudly, crooning. Wanting to help Oliver, wanting to fight for him.

“It’s all right, darling.” Oliver patted his neck, took a deep breath, and caught the gaze of the man standing below him. It was a shockingly bright blue verging on lavender. Lilac, Oliver thought with a shudder, recalling Náli’s impossible story. Not so impossible now – at least parts of it were true. The Sel stared up at him with unflinching intensity, his expression calm, calculating, but his eyes burning in his pale face, as the breeze lifted his hair like a white banner. The worst part was that he was beautiful, in his harsh, too pale, terrible way.

No, the worst part was that he was staring a hole through Oliver’s skull, a covetous, devouring gaze that left him squirming inside.

The wisest course of action would have been to duck his head and show deference. A man who called himself the Immortal Emperor Unchallenged probably liked a good grovel.

But Oliver was choking on panic, and he’d always had a bad habit of falling back on snark and snap when he was most frightened.

He scowled, and said, “Who are you? What have you done to my drake?”

The Sel regarded him a long, silent moment, and then inclined his head the barest fraction, hair fluttering in a new direction as the breeze changed – as though that small movement had altered the flow of the wind, though Oliver knew that was merely coincidence. When he spoke, it was in Continental, but with a thick, lilting accent. “Your drake? You think he is yours?”

Games. King games, emperor games. The sorts of games even young lordlings had played back in Drakewell. You? You think we’d invite you along on the hunt? You think I’m going to suck you off in this closet? No, no, bastard, I’m the important one.

The flush of old, remembered anger filled him with resolve. Where were those lordlings now? Dead or captured in the war. And here sat Oliver, a king’s consort, seated always at His Majesty’s side during important council meetings, dripping furs and jewels, valued, looked-to, with his very own bonded drake.

He puffed up in the saddle and said, “He certainly didn’t come with you.” Gods, that felt good. “Yes, he’s mine. What have you done to him? What sort of magic is that?”

The Sel’s lips twitched in what might have been a smile – or merely a facial tic. He didn’t seem the smiling sort. “If he is yours,” he said, “then you should know what sort of magic it is.” Damn him, damn the games. He somehow grew more serious; something about the slant of his white brows, the tucked-in corner of his mouth. “You are the Drake.” A pause, and his voice deepened, roughened; his pupils expanded, when he added, “The red whore.”

The words hit him like a punch to the belly, though he’d already heard them from Náli, and had expected them. “I’m not wild about that,” he said. “We’ve never met; you’ve no idea whether I’m a whore or not, which I’m not, by the way.”

The Sel’s top lip lifted in a nasty sneer. “You debase yourself with that Aeretollean.”

“Who, Erik? He’s a king, you know. There’s no debasement about it.”

The sneer got nastier. “He is nothing. A worm to be trampled, and yet you spread yourself for him, pant for him, like a whore.”

“Like a consort, get it right, man, and it’s no concern of yours.” Inwardly, his panic swelled, filling up all his nooks and crannies. How could this man know any of that? Could he see Oliver, somehow? When he was going about his daily life? When he was spreading and panting in Erik’s bed? Was he inside Oliver’s mind?

No. No, that wasn’t possible. He was simply hurling insults; he knew that Oliver was with Erik, that was all.

But how did he know that? All the Sels at Aeres had been killed. Had a message been sent before? From the Midwinter Festival perhaps?

Ragnar, he thought sourly. He’d sent word along, a falcon, or a rider, some spy to go whispering a word to his Selesee masters.

“I was out for a flight, that’s all,” Oliver said. “Minding my own business. What do you want? Romanus Tyrsbane.” He leaned hard on the name. Yes, I know who you are. No, I will not use your titles, you insulting fucking wanker.

Rather than expressing alarm, the Sel – the emperor – nodded, seeming satisfied. “You have heard of me. Your little necromancer told you of me.”

“Don’t say it like that. He’s not my little necromancer. He’s my friend. Do you have those where you come from? Friends?”

“I have subjects,” he said, without a shred of humor or irony. He was perfectly serious.

And ungodly strong, when he snatched Oliver’s ankle, and dragged him down off Percy’s back.

Too late, Oliver realized that he hadn’t dreamed himself a sword in this plane. And that he should have spent more time bracing for an attack, and less time mouthing-off. He made a grab at the saddle, tried to clamp his thighs tight, but he was caught off guard, and the emperor was strong, and he went tumbling right off.

He closed his eyes, ready for impact with the ground.

But strong hands caught him under the arms and set his feet gently down. He made an automatic grab, and his hands slapped down on armored forearms. He stared a too-long moment at the tableau of his bare fingers against the spotless, gold-plated greaves.

Time seemed to slide sideways, slippery and uncertain; the gray field faded to a smudge, inconsequential and insubstantial. The golden armor seemed to radiate its own light by contrast, the brightest thing on this plane – too bright. As were the emperor’s eyes, when Oliver dragged his head back and met his gaze. Eyes that were in fact lilac, neither blue nor purple, but the loveliest, most vivid shade somewhere between, like the first spring flowers on a hillside. Deep and clear enough to drown in.

No, a very small, easily ignored voice chimed in the back of Oliver’s mind. This wasn’t right. He shouldn’t be allowing this. He had no interest in swooning into the Selesee emperor’s arms…but here he was, an insect caught in amber, helpless and limp.

Magic. It had to be magic, something dastardly and insidious…but Oliver was so very tired. His head was so heavy.

When the emperor cupped the side of his face, he leaned into the touch, and let him hold the dragging weight of his skull.

No. No, no, no–

A low and vicious snarl ripped through the stillness.

The emperor broke their gaze, searching for the source of the noise, and Oliver snapped back to himself just as a hulking gray-gold blur threw itself at the emperor’s side.

A wolf. It was a wolf. A big one, and it slammed the emperor in the shoulder with both forepaws, and sent him tumbling to the ground. It bore down on top of him, snarling, snapping, and Oliver stood, utterly stupid, and watched it happen, fighting to take a deep breath.

His pulse, sluggish before, had leaped to action; his vision had refocused, his head light, and clear, and the sudden shift had left him dizzy.

On the ground, the emperor growled something in Selesee, kicked and flailed, and one white hand latched into the wolf’s ruff and twisted hard.

The wolf yelped, and leaped free, but his teeth were bared and bloody, and he circled fast, head tucked low, moving in for a second attack.

Blood stained the emperor’s white throat, his golden breastplate, a vast red swath of it, like the wide strokes from a paintbrush. But he pushed himself upright as though unhurt, and drew his sword the same moment the wolf dove for him.

Something warm and soft brushed Oliver’s side, and it was a second wolf, slipping in low from behind the emperor, a two-sided assault.

Oliver gasped.

Faster than should have been possible, given the length of the blade, the emperor executed a fierce swipe that looked set to lodge itself in the wolf’s shoulder. It ducked away at the last moment, growling.

The second wolf lunged – and the emperor’s hand snapped up, and caught the beast by the throat.

The wolf squealed, and writhed, and the first wolf attacked again. A white hand was snatched between white fangs, spurt of crimson blood.

But Romanus didn’t let go of the sword.

The second wolf wriggled free, whimpering, and lunged again, as the first one’s fangs sank deep into the emperor’s hand.

Percy roared – out loud, and in Oliver’s head.

He jumped. Right. Time to make a run for it.

But the emperor’s head whipped around, white hair flaring dramatically, and he caught Oliver’s gaze before he could flee, even while the wolves closed in tighter, and savaged him. He was utterly expressionless: no grimace, no sneer, no smile. Nothing. But his eyes burned.

And then, in the span of a blink, he was gone.

The wolves tipped off balance, with nothing to tear at, and tumbled together into a heap on the bloodied grass.

Something shoved Oliver in the shoulder. Percy, making urgent noises, wanting to leave.

Oliver turned his head, and saw that the emperor’s drake had disappeared along with its master.

The wolves, he found, as he watched them scramble back to their feet, didn’t frighten him.

He patted Percy’s nose. “It’s all right, now. I think.”

Both wolves were a similar gray shot with gold, both much larger than your average, winter-starved wolf, one two shades darker than the other.

The lighter of the two, the first one to appear, went to the second, sniffed at its throat, its bloodied snout – and then licked it, there, fast, cleaning licks until the second one sneezed and shook its head, shook its packmate away.

Oliver said, “Do I know you?”

Two heads snapped his direction. One raised high, the other tucked low, uncertain…submissive. Both of them had blue eyes. Not that awful, burning lilac shade of the emperor, but a true, freshwater blue, reminiscent of cold, Northern skies.

The same shade, in fact, as Erik’s eyes.

Recognition dawned with a spark of excitement. “Leif?” Oliver asked. “Is that you? And that would mean…” His gaze slid to the second wolf, looking up at him, hackles half-raised, shoulders tucked like he meant to bolt. “Ragnar, then,” Oliver said on a sigh. “Yes?”

The first wolf blurred, rippled; there was a sound like rent cloth, a surge of light, and Leif stood in the wolf’s place, thinly dressed in a sleeveless leather tunic with furred collar, his hair tangled, his mouth red and wet with blood.

Oliver grinned…and then froze. His breath caught. It was Leif, yes, recognizably so, with his mother’s blue eyes, and his strong, clean-lined face, his golden spill of hair.

But he looked bigger. The gold bands around his biceps looked stuck there, so dense and thick had the muscle in his upper arms become. His shoulders seemed broader, his trousers more closely fitted over his thighs.

And there was blood on his mouth. Human blood.

Oliver swallowed with difficulty and glanced toward Ragnar, who’d gone to sit – whining faintly – at Leif’s feet, still in his wolf shape.

“He can’t shift here,” Leif said, and his voice was deeper and rougher than Oliver remembered. “He’s stuck as a man in our world, and here, apparently, he can only be a wolf.”

Interesting, but not important now. Oliver looked back to Leif and said, “‘Here’? You know where we are?”

Leif frowned and shook his head. “I only know it’s not a dream.” He turned and glanced off across the waving sea of grass, toward a distant shadow along the horizon. “There’s a forest there.” He jerked his chin toward it. “That’s where we are, usually. There’s other drakes there. Black ones. And a woman with dark hair.” His voice took on a strange resonance when he said woman.

“Amelia,” Oliver breathed, and earned a sharp look. “It must be my cousin, Tessa’s sister: Amelia.”

Leif’s frown deepened. “Or a sorceress. A Sel mage, like the one who was about to snog you.” He bared his teeth in a show of disgust, and at his feet, Ragnar started panting, tongue lolling from his bloodied jaws in a manner that looked distinctly like a wolfish laugh.

“I wasn’t – I didn’t–” Oliver spluttered, before he recalled that he was the elder and gathered him composure. He shot Ragnar a dirty look – blue eyes slitted in delight, fangs glinting in the sun – and said, “That was no mere Selesee mage. That was the emperor himself. Romanus Tyrsbane.”

Leif’s brows jumped. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. He put some sort of enchantment on Percy, and it worked on me, too, I suppose.” He shook his head, skin clammy with memory of that treacle-slow, unreal moment when he’d been caught in the man’s gaze. “How did you know to find me?”

“We could smell you.”

“Ah. That was lucky.”

The breeze gusted hard across the field, bending the grass, tossing Oliver’s too-long hair in his eyes.

There were a dozen things Oliver ought to have said to him. Your mother is worried. Your uncle fears Ragnar has too much influence on you. Why didn’t you wait for us? Why are you pushing away your family when all we want to do is to love you, and help you, and understand what you’re going through?

But he couldn’t bring himself to voice any of that. Instead said, “Can you show me the forest? If Amelia really is here, I’d love to talk to her.”

Leif’s expression twitched. Ragnar leaned into his leg and whined something incomprehensible to Oliver, but which caused Leif to stroke the top of his head absently. “Yeah,” he said. “Follow us.”

Oliver scratched at Percy’s chin. “Come along, you.”

They set off across the plain…but somewhere along the way, the Between faded, and Oliver blinked himself awake in the dark study, Erik snoring against his neck.

He turned his head and pressed his face into silver-shot black hair, felt the texture of braids he’d woven himself, breathed deep the pine scent of oil. He was home, safe; far, far away from grasping white hands, and burning lilac eyes.

But he shuddered all the same.

12

Another night, another village. This one south of the river, a strange and sprawling settlement all of timber and thatched roofs, set a mile within the Inglewood. The road leading to it had been wide, and well-traveled, deeply-rutted from wagon traffic, hoofprints sunk in the mud. Leif knew the forest proper was a tangle of wilderness, but here, an inn had been established, a village of craftsmen and farmers sprouting up around it, to serve and service weary merchants brave enough to travel the road that led into the trees. The whole settlement was encircled by a tall, pointed fence of logs, designed to keep out the wild things, Ragnar had said with a chuckle.

They’d traveled in wolf-shape, all save Ragnar, of course, and Leif too, slinking through the underbrush alongside the road. But as the sun set, and stomachs rumbled, and Leif began to scent the sharpness of desire on his pack, he’d weighed the options and ordered them to shift to two legs. They’d approached the gates, and the watchmen stationed there, in their man-shapes, offering false names and stories about their travels.

Thunder had rumbled overhead, and the watchmen had peered at them carefully, in the last of the daylight. “Travelers, you say? And young lords? Yes, yes, you look it. From up north? Of course, of course. Welcome, then, to Riverside. We can’t be too careful these days. There’s Sels about, and scarier things in the forest besides.”

Leif thought they probably counted as “scarier things in the forest.”

Another night, another village. Another girl. An inn, this time, and a hot meal first, decent ale, and then a private room. Bed, washstand, window. Candles burning, flames dancing up the mud walls. Rain drumming on the roof overhead.

And a girl moaning with abandon.

Leif sat against the headboard, naked, absently pumping his slick cock. He’d had his turn first, as his right as alpha, and was buzzing now with the pleasant aftershocks, enjoying the view and ready to go again, when Ragnar was finished. For now, he was content to watch.

The girl was pale blonde, long and slender, situated on her hands and knees at Leif’s feet. Despite her slim build, her breasts were full and heavy, and they swung forward and back, forward and back. She gripped the bedclothes in white-knuckled fists, face contorted with pleasure as Ragnar rode her hard from behind. Ragnar had one hand fisted in her hair, holding her head upright so Leif could see the wet O of her mouth, the teardrops standing on her lashes, his other hand gripped tight to her hip, pulling her forcefully back onto his cock each time he thrust into her.

“Oh – oh – oh,” she murmured breathily. “Ohhh.” Accompanied by the slap-slap-slap of flesh, and the squelch of her sex, already painted by Leif’s release. Her back was arched, her arms trembling as she fought to keep upright against the onslaught. Her breasts swung faster now, like pendulums, pink, spit-slick nipples flashing him on each forward thrust.

But it was Ragnar his gaze strayed to, again and again. The tooth necklace slapping against his chest. The gleaming flex of lean muscle in his stomach as his hips worked, strong and relentless. The bunch of his biceps, as he adjusted his grip. And the awful, teeth-baring grin, the glazed look in his blue eyes as he chased his pleasure. His hair lay in tangles over his shoulders, the gold rings on his biceps denting the flesh there each time his arms moved. And he was growling, low and pleased and lupine.

Leif wondered if he knew he was doing it.

Wondered at the misfortune of finding him savagely beautiful in that moment.

He tightened his hand on his own cock, stroking harder as Ragnar shifted his hips, changed the angle, thrust hard, and made the girl scream.

Ragnar put a hand between her shoulders and pushed her face down to the mattress as she came, muffling her cries, enjoying the throb and clench of her sex around his cock if his hiss was anything to go by.

“Yeeeah,” he groaned. “There you go, sweetheart. Take it. Take all of it.” His thrusts turned sloppy, and his stomach hollowed out. He tipped his head back, tendons standing stark in his throat, as he ground against her and found his own release. “Fuck,” he said, like a man laying eyes on the gods. “Fuck me, that’s good.” The words tapered off into growls, and his hands, resting on her hips, threatened to shift, his nails going long and sharp.

Panic spiked in Leif’s gut a moment – the thought of him shifting while he was inside this girl, revealing what they were – but then faded just as fast. The torq gleamed around Ragnar’s throat, jerking as he growled, and swallowed, and cursed his way through orgasm. He couldn’t shift. Not like this.

The thrill of the idea, though, only made him harder. He hastened his strokes, watching as the girl collapsed down onto her side with a wounded sound.

She pushed her hair off her face, her eyes closed, panting for breath. Limp and used and half-asleep already.

Ragnar clucked. “Poor thing.” He patted her hip, and she didn’t react, hand falling limp to the mattress in front of her face, eyes still shut. “We wore her out.”

His gaze wandered over her a moment, appreciative but impersonal, before his head cocked, and his eyes slid up the mattress to land on Leif, where they pinned him back against the headboard.

Leif’s hand stilled. His vision sharpened, as his pupils contracted; if he looked in the mirror, now, he’d see wolf eyes peering from a man’s face. His scent changed, too, he could tell, piqued with interest. An interest he couldn’t control.

An interest Ragnar could smell. His smile bloomed slow, like a poisonous flower, his canines too long and sharp, another glimpse of his body wanting to shift, but not being able to. His laugh rolled out dark and low.

“Shut up,” Leif barked, his own voice gone rough.

Ragnar chuckled again. “But I haven’t said anything.” He studied Leif, a frank and detail-cataloguing assessment, but not sexually-charged or mocking. It was remarkable to watch him transition between Ragnar the wolf, and Ragnar the smarmy lech. He’d always been the sort of man who teased relentlessly, never serious, always eager to poke at a person’s figurative sore places.

But this removed, analytical side had been a part of him, too, carefully hidden away. The wolf hadn’t created it, merely brought it more often to the forefront.

At least in front of the pack. In front of Leif.

His gaze moved now down Leif’s naked body, over the goosebumps forming as the sweat dried, to his still-hard cock, gripped in a loose fist. He glanced then at the girl, snoring now.

“She’s not up for anything else at the moment, I’m afraid,” he said. He looked back at Leif, kneeling on the bed, hands resting on his thighs, his cock half-hard and glistening. He scratched at the hair above it absently, chest lifting as he inhaled. He was still getting his breath back when he said, “Do you need to go again?”

Leif pushed air through his nose, an unhappy huff, and forced both his hands flat to the mattress on either side of his hips. “I don’t need anything,” he said.

His cock, the traitor, twitched, hungry for more attention.

Ragnar tsked. “You can tuck yourself away, yes. But what shape will you be in tomorrow morning? Tomorrow afternoon, on the road? With everyone looking to their alpha, wanting to know what to do about the lion screaming off in the trees?”

Leif shot him a glare.

His glares didn’t have the same impact they had at first. Or, a more disturbing thought, Leif had stopped putting the full heft of his authority behind them. Less and less did he feel the need to act the alpha; his growls were more conversation than order or warning. He could feel that part of himself still within reach, knew he could have put Ragnar face-down on the floor, now, and held him there until he was mewling like a cub.

But he didn’t want to. The rest of the pack ducked their heads and deferred to him at every turn. If he was honest with himself, he rather enjoyed Ragnar’s insubordinate spirit; enjoyed having someone to talk to. He’d never had a proper conversation with any of the others, and couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about it. They were his pack, his followers, his wolves.

Ragnar was something else entirely.

He took a breath and held it a moment, released it slowly, willing himself to calm. “What, then? Am I to be some lusty beast from now on? Forced to fuck or lose my wits? A slave to my base urges?”

Ragnar snorted, and smirked. “You make it sound like men aren’t that way already. No,” he said, rolling his eyes before Leif could say anything else. “No, you won’t be a slave. But it’s still early days for you – you’re still getting the hang of it. And…” He hesitated, chewing at his lip.

“What?”

Ragnar sighed. “It’s different for an alpha, yeah? All the lads like to get a leg over when they can. It’s better than killing.”

Leif frowned, and was ignored.

“But the alpha…well, he’s supposed to be building the pack. He’s the one who gets first choice, who gets to properly breed. It’s his pups who the pack looks after, and raises up as the next generation.”

The words hit him hard. A punch in the throat that nearly choked him, and a crippling tightness in his belly that left his cock twitching.

Ragnar noticed, and his smirk widened, his own cock fattening up with interest. “You like the sound of that.”

“No – no,” Leif stammered. “I don’t…” Another measured breath, this one less calming. “I don’t have any intention of breeding. I don’t want anything to do with pups.”

“No?” Ragnar’s head cocked the other way. “But you were all set to do your princely duty: marry the girl, get some redheaded brats on her.”

“I never wanted that,” he said, shocked by the bitterness in his tone – by the truth of it. Ragnar, too, going by the way his brows shot up. “It was a duty, and I would have done it, but that doesn’t matter, now. Tessa married Rune, and I’m a bloody wolf. Breeding is the last thing I want or need to do.” He couldn’t bring himself to ask what a child fathered by him would be. A wolf like them? A human? Could the curse be passed down?

He didn’t want to know. It wouldn’t ever matter.

Ragnar looked nearly pitying, which rubbed him raw. “Fine. I don’t care for brats, either, so we’re in agreement there. But it’s not about breeding in the literal sense. It’s instinct. You’re going to be the randiest bastard in the land, now.”

“How do you know?”

Shrug. “Because I was, until you took my place.” Small, bitter smile. “I could still fuck a knothole in a tree most days, but it’s amazing what a loss of leadership does to a man’s eagerness.” His gaze dropped, then, and his hands squeezed tight on his thighs.

Leif refused to feel sorry for him.

In a smaller, defeated voice, Ragnar said, “It’s not good to hold it all in. You’ll get grumpy and snappish. Well” – flicker of a grin, there and gone again – “grumpier and snappier.”

Leif knew he’d already acquiesced – to whatever Ragnar was about to suggest, damn him – but he heaved a sigh, and asked anyway. “What, then? Do you propose to go downstairs and find another girl? They’re probably all in the same shape as this one.” Nod to the sleeping girl on the other side of the bed; he didn’t even know her name, the poor thing. Not that she’d complained at all. Still. He’d had manners, once.

“No.” Ragnar straightened, shoulders back, hands flat. He lifted his head, and met Leif’s gaze with a steady one of his own, his eyes the blue of a pond in spring, clear and unguarded. Brimming with intent. He wet his lips, peek of a fast, pink tongue. “I propose to take care of my alpha.”

Gods. Gods, gods, gods.

Leif’s hands curled to fists in the bedclothes as Ragnar prowled forward until he could kneel right between Leif’s thighs. He set his hands on Leif’s knees, and smoothed them upward, over pale skin and a dusting of golden hair. He stroked all the way up to Leif’s hips – until Leif gritted his teeth and swallowed a growl – and then back down. And up, and down, the rasp of palms against hair loud in the otherwise quiet room. Distantly, he could hear thumps, and muffled moans: sounds of the rest of his pack enjoying themselves down the hall. In here, there was only the sound of Ragnar’s hands against him, the vivid blue of Ragnar’s eyes, and the question waiting silently in them.

Leif resisted a moment, staring back, a growl building in his chest, willing himself to give an order. To shove him away, boot him off the bed, punish him for his boldness. For behaving as though he knew Leif better than he knew himself.

But if he did that, he’d be hard, still, his wolf straining beneath his skin, and he’d either need to finish himself off, or wait until the girl had gathered her wits; rouse her and mount her again.

His nails – his claws, now – pierced the bedclothes with a quiet sound of shredded linen.

The corner of Ragnar’s mouth flicked upward, a fast smirk.

Leif let his head thunk back against the wall. “Do it,” he ground out toward the ceiling beams, and nearly retracted the statement when he heard Ragnar’s low, approving chuckle.

But then Ragnar’s big, callused hand closed around his cock, and he could think of nothing else.

He had enjoyed the softness of the girl’s skin when she’d stroked him, the way she’d teased delicately with her nails, and murmured over his size. She’d been skilled, knowledgeable and not shy. But it was as though Ragnar could see inside his mind; could feel what Leif felt, and touched him with the same rough treatment Leif would have shown himself, the sensation made wildly different, more pleasurable, because it wasn’t his own hand doing the work.

He let out a deep breath, as Ragnar worked him with a sure, firm grip, the tension of restraint and denial giving way to a much more pleasant sort of tension. His hips twitched upward, chasing the movement. It would take him a few minutes to come like this, but there was no sense not enjoying it: the almost too-tight squeeze, the firm stroke of a thumb over the tip on each upstroke. Ragnar knew what he was about, he’d give him that.

A tickling sensation along both thighs pierced the fog slowly rolling through his mind. An insistent one, growing stronger. Leif frowned, and lifted his head, just as warm, damp air brushed the head of his cock.

Not air – breath.

The sight that greeted him was as alarming as it was thrilling: Ragnar tucked down low on the mattress, breathing against him, lips parted as though he meant to take him into his mouth. It was his hair trailing over Leif’s thighs that had caused the tickling.

Leif’s heart leaped traitorously, choked him, and he could only offer an inquiring growl, unable to form words. What are you doing?

And also: Gods yes. That part he hoped Ragnar couldn’t read in the curl of his snarl.

Ragnar whined, quietly. He held Leif’s gaze, questioning, and slowly, slowly, flicked out his tongue and licked over his cockhead.

Every line of Leif’s body jerked with tension; Ragnar may as well have licked every inch of him, chin to chest to the soles of his feet, darts and tingles filling him head to toe. His tongue rested there, cushioning the tip, and he held still, waiting for his alpha’s decision.

Finally, Leif nodded, and Ragnar smirked again, a fast twitch of his lips, before he spread them wider and swallowed Leif down to the root.

Leif shot off embarrassingly fast, and Ragnar swallowed every drop. It was the most intense orgasm of his life.

But a one-time occurrence, he told himself, firmly, once Ragnar had licked him clean and come to snuggle up against his shoulder, humming and chuffing quietly against the side of his throat. Only the once, he swore.

But the next night, when they were deep in the tangles of the Inglewood, he gripped Ragnar by the hair and dragged him behind a thicket of bushes. Ragnar grinned at him again, slice of sharp teeth in the dark, before he bent his head to please his alpha.

13

Steel chimed on steel, again and again, a musical ring that echoed out across the square of garden they’d converted to a training yard. In its center, Reggie and Connor circled one another, trading blows in quick, blocked and parried strikes. Clang, clang, clang. Then they sprang apart and circled once more, taking one another’s measure, searching for openings. Amelia sat beside Leda, perched on a low stone wall and sipping cold tea from wine goblets. She didn’t know what had happened between her two generals, only that something certainly had.

Both were flushed from exertion, sweating, clothes steaming in the afternoon sunlight. Reggie wiped his forehead with the back of a gloved hand and left a smudge of dirt behind.

“Careful, Lord Fop,” Connor said with a laugh, teeth gleaming white in his scruffy, dirt-streaked face. “Your lily-white face might need a washing after this. You don’t want to exert yourself too much.”

Reggie sneered in return, but there was a laugh threaded through his voice when he said, “Come now. I could show you how it’s done. I promise the soap won’t hurt you.”

Connor’s grin widened, and they rushed together, swords clashing. Clang, clang, clang.

Connor got tripped up on his footwork and stumbled back a step; nearly fell and had to spin away out of reach to keep upright.

“Ha!” Reggie crowed. “You’re getting slow.”

“Watch yourself, young one. Slow and steady wins the day, yeah?”

“Wins the race,” Reggie shot back. “And we’re not racing.” He came on again, and Connor met him with a two-handed hold that banged the blades together, and left Reggie gritting his teeth against the vibrations. He could doubtless feel them through his whole body, echoing at the root of each molar and at the base of his neck.

Amelia wrinkled her nose in sympathy. “What do you think this is all about?” she asked Leda in an undertone. “They’ve always sparred – with words, mostly. But this is…different.”

“Hm,” Leda hummed. “That’s because they’ve fucked.”

Amelia whipped to face her. “What?”

“Shh, or they’ll hear.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, whispering this time.

Leda’s gaze was on the men, calling a truce now, waving each other off, and abandoning their swords to eager squires in exchange for water flasks. “Don’t play the maiden,” Leda said, though fondly. “You certainly aren’t one, and given your love for Oliver – pardon me, His Lordship Oliver Drake” – she chuckled – “that’s going to take some getting used to for this crowd. But you aren’t willfully blind about the ways of men, thanks to your cousin. Look at them.”

Reggie and Connor had moved to the opposite wall, perched on its edge, sipping water. Reggie said something too quiet to hear that left Connor snorting. He turned his head, sweat-damp long hair tucked behind his ears, and Amelia had a clear glimpse of his profile – and the very soft, unguarded gaze he’d pinned to Reggie, while the latter was unaware, telling a story with lots of hand gestures. Water slopped from the mouth of his flask, and Connor’s smile was small and intensely pleased, wholly different from his nasty, mocking grin.

“Gods,” Amelia murmured. “They have, haven’t they?”

“Men get this look when they’re besotted,” Leda said. “And Lord Connor Dale’s practically boiling over with it. It’s a bit hard to look at it, honestly. And the bad part – I don’t think our young Reginald has a clue how invested he is.”

As they watched, Reggie turned to Connor, who wiped his face neatly clean, only mildly interested now.

“Aw,” both women said at once.

“I knew they didn’t hate one another,” Amelia said. “But I thought all the banter was a disguise for a secret admiration for one another. One that might blossom into friendship.”

“Oh, it blossomed into something all right,” Leda said with a chuckle, as Reggie’s gaze dropped, plainly and boldly, to Connor’s mouth, and Connor leaned in closer to him, as though pulled on a string.

Amelia sighed. “Do you think it’s a problem? I mean: do you think they’ll be distracted? Less careful in the field?”

“There’s no way to tell now. But the Northern tribes – the nomadic clans, you know, the ancestors of the current royals of Aeretoll – had a habit of bedding down with one another. The men, I mean. Long winters, harsh conditions, the women all dead in childbirth and the clans too busy warring with one another to intermarry. It was the Úlfheðnar, especially.”

“Úlfheðnar?” She thought of Oliver’s letter, of his cautions about Leif…and the cousin who’d turned him.

“Yes, the wolf-shirts,” Leda continued, heedless of the sudden knocking of her pulse. “My late husband was a book collector, you know, quite interested in the cultures and customs of our neighbors to the north. According to his reading, the wolf-shirts would lie down in pairs, man and man, to keep one another warm in the long winters, and to find a bit of ease, too, for the terminal condition known as manhood.” She snorted at her own joke and said, “The clan chiefs wound up encouraging the practice. They found that it made the men twice as ferocious in battle: they were protecting their bedfellows – their mates, if you will – and in guarding one another guarded the clan as a whole far more adroitly.”

“Huh.”

“Connor and Reggie’s entanglement could prove a distraction, or an asset. We won’t know until it’s playing out, I suppose.”

“Comforting.”

Leda chuckled, the scholarly tone dropping from her voice, and finally turned to give Amelia a wink. “Which one do you think gets on top?”

Amelia made a scandalized noise. “Ugh. You’re terrible. We shouldn’t speculate.”

Leda grinned.

“Connor,” they said together, and dissolved into girlish giggles.

~*~

“I think Amelia suspects something,” Reggie said that night, in the relative privacy of Connor’s tent. Liam had passed out a few minutes ago, face-planting amidst the building blocks he’d been using to construct his very own kingdom, and Connor had tucked him away behind his screen in the corner.

He walked now to the bedroll where Reggie sat, stripped to his breeches, the scars on his chest gleaming silver in the light of the brazier as he leaned down to offer a cup of wine – “Thanks” – and then settled cross-legged beside Reggie on the pallet, sipping from  his own cup. He made a dismissive face. “Amelia’s always far too worried about what everyone else is doing. Being in charge has gone to her head. We behaved no differently today. There was nothing for her to suspect.”

“Hm,” Reggie hummed into his wine. He wasn’t sure he agreed.

That afternoon in the training yard, he’d been startled by an outburst of laughter from the far side of the wall, and seen Amelia and Leda doubled over with it, dabbing at their eyes and struggling to catch their breath. As he’d watched, Amelia had glanced his way, and in the fleeting instant before she turned her head, his blood had run cold, sure that she could see right through him and knew everything. Knew that he wanted Connor to take control; that he begged and begged until there were tears in his eyes, and he couldn’t catch his breath. That Connor kissed over his noose scar and called him sweetheart, and darling, and love, and gorgeous.

His cheeks heated thinking of it, and he adjusted the cross of his legs.

Connor noticed the fidgeting, pausing with his cup halfway to his mouth again. “Wait, you’re serious.” He turned a frowning look on him.

“Of course I’m serious. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Connor said, incredulous, “You’re actually worried that she knows.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No. Why should I be? Everyone knows I’m, in Lady Leda’s words, ‘randy as a goat.’ Me fucking someone won’t come as a surprise to anyone here, and if it does, sod them.” He took another sip, as though the manner was done and dusted, nothing else to consider.

But Reggie’s own swallow of wine turned metallic in his mouth, and he barely got it down, scar on his throat pinching tight. Fucking someone. The phrasing left him a little sick.

Yes, he’d used that word. Fuck me, Connor. I want you to fuck me. And it had tasted thrilling; left his blood humming, a vulgar, shocking sort of intimacy they’d shared together.

But the way Connor spoke of it now…hearing that he was only someone…sounded so casual, nothing special or earth-shattering about it. He supposed it hadn’t been either of those things for Connor. Reggie had come with his bleeding heart and all his nightmares dripping in his palms, bared himself and let Connor see every ugly inch. And Connor had gone along with it, because he’d fancied a fuck.

Reggie drained his cup, swallowing the wine down with difficulty, and moved to stand, needing more.

Connor caught him by the wrist, and his hand tightened when Reggie tried to twist away. When Reggie looked at his face, he found him frowning.

“Hold on,” Connor said. “What?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

“Then why are your teeth gritted? Gods, Reg, you’re upset about this.”

Reggie twisted his wrist viciously, and Connor finally let go. “Yes, I’m bloody upset, and you should be, too!” Barefoot, naked save his trousers, he got up from the bedroll and went to the table to pour more wine. The table where Connor had flipped him over onto his back – wanted to see you – and fucked him into oblivion. His hand shook, and he spilled wine on the wooden surface. Swiped his friend hand through it as he brought his cup to his lips again and drank deep.

“Hey.” Connor got up with a wince and a curse, doubtless as sore as Reggie was from the day’s sparring match, in which they’d pushed harder and for longer than they should, enjoying the banter, the crash of steel, the sight of the other sweat-soaked and coming undone. It had been a fun afternoon, a good one.

And then Amelia had spotted them, and Reggie had worried his way all through the council meeting, and now here he was, nothing but a nameless, faceless tryst to the man he’d bared all his vulnerabilities to.

“Hey,” Connor repeated, beside him now, heat emanating off his bare chest, and snatched his cup away.

“Hey!” Reggie echoed, reaching for it, wiping the wine off his chin with the back of his hand.

Connor held the cup away with one hand, and pressed on his chest with the other, expression troubled. “Do you want to get drunk? Or do you want to talk to me?”

“I want you to stop pretending to be the more measured, responsible one of the two of us. And I want to get drunk.”

Connor’s frown deepened, pulling at the sun lines that framed his dark eyes. “Too bad,” he said, turned, and poured the wine out on a strip of grass and dirt not overed by rugs.

“You bastard.” Reggie lunged for the cup, jostling Connor back against the central tent pole, which wobbled. The canopy rippled above them.

Connor growled a curse, threw down the cup, and caught Reggie by both wrists. “Stop it,” he barked, and the command reached right into Reggie’s brain and pressed on a tender spot. An old, badly-scarred-over wound, still oozing.

Stop. Lie still, Aquitainian slut. Shut up. Stop it.

Whatever his face did, Connor released him immediately.

Reggie turned around and pressed his hands to his face, willing back the heat in his cheeks, wishing away the oily taint of memory that had spilled inside his head, and turned his limbs to water. He breathed, in and out, in and out.

He wasn’t there. He’d gotten away. And maybe he wasn’t where he wanted to be, but he was safe, essentially. Nothing he’d done in this tent had been against his will.

“Reggie.” Connor’s voice had changed, shifted into a low, concerned register that left Reggie shivering, and shaking his head. “Reg,” he repeated, even softer, and slipped arms around him from behind, one across his waist, one across his chest, palms warm and grounding.

Reggie didn’t want to sag back against the heat and strength of his chest, not when he was only a fuck and nothing more, not when he was embarrassed, and ashamed, and worried, but his body had other ideas. He did sag – and Connor caught him up; pressed flush against him, chest to back, arms tightening, chin hooking over Reggie’s shoulder.

“Talk to me,” he murmured, and kissed the side of his throat, drawing another shiver from him. “What’s going on in that pretty golden head, hm?”

“Don’t – don’t say that.”

“What? That you’re pretty?” Another kiss, this one slow and lingering, right over his scar. “But you are.”

“You don’t mean that,” Reggie said, voice a bare scrape. “Don’t lie to me. Not after…” He bit his lip, and closed his eyes, and willed himself the strength to shake out of his hold and walk away.

Connor’s arms shifted – he was letting go, turning him loose, listening to him, damn it, when all he really wanted was connection, no, no, no – and he gripped Reggie’s upper arms, and urged him to turn around.

Reggie did, stomach leaping with relief, and when he opened his eyes, he found Connor gazing at him with a terribly sad look in his eyes.

He reached to cup Reggie’s face in both hands, a careful touch as though he was afraid he might break him. It burned, that gentleness, and he craved it as much as he wanted to pull back from it. Reggie held still, instead, and Connor traced thumbs over his cheeks, his baby-fine, pale stubble, barely in need of shaving each morning.

In a soft voice, barely loud enough to fill the handspan between them, Connor asked, “Who here among this company have you slept with? Anyone but me?”

Reggie shook his head – and then stilled, not wanting to dislodge the thumbs that continued to pet over him in slow, soothing sweeps.

Understanding showed as a fast twitch of a smile on Connor’s face. “Ah. No one knows, then, that you prefer the company of men.”

Reggie kept silent, and knew the answer was clear in his eyes.

“Are you afraid of what they’ll think?” Connor asked, and his head tilted, and his gaze was far too knowing. “Or are you afraid of what I think of you?”

There was no way to answer that without damning himself. Flat denial of any sort of care would sound like the lie it was. And admission would only make him weaker in Connor’s eyes.

He tried to step back, and Connor’s hands dropped to his shoulders, squeezing. Entreating squeezes, rather than commanding ones, and so Reggie submitted to them, and blinked the sting of impending tears from his eyes.

“I have no reputation to uphold,” Connor said. “But you do. I will try to be less–”

“It’s not that,” Reggie finally gasped out. “I can’t–” He couldn’t look at him, when he said, so he turned his head, though he stayed within his grasp, and stared at a fraying spot on the wall of the tent. “Everyone knows what happened to me,” he said. “They all see the scar on my neck; they heard the rumors that spread. A ransom note was sent to my mother, and it was…graphic. One of the maids got hold of it.”

“Gods,” Connor swore, softly. “I never heard.”

“You wouldn’t have. You were off in the forest playing at bandits.”

“Reg.”

“They know I was defiled. That I wasn’t man enough to fight back against them.”

“You were a prisoner of war,” Connor said, harshly. “There is no fighting back against that.”

“They know,” he insisted. “And when they find out that I’ve bent over for you, then they’ll know that it wasn’t merely circumstance last time. They’ll know that I – that I crave – that I want to be subjugated. They won’t respect me as a man, nor as a commander. I’ll–”

“For gods’ sakes.” Firm fingers gripped his chin and pulled his head back around, so they faced one another. Connor’s expression had gone stern – nearly lordly, despite the long hair and scruffy jaw. “Stop saying what you’re saying – stop thinking it, because it’s all bollocks. What you do or don’t want to do in bed has nothing to do with being a man or a commander. Anyone out there” – he aimed his free hand toward the field beyond the tent – “who disagrees can answer to me.” His hand became a fist, knuckles cracking as it tightened.

He radiated aggression, enough to startle Reggie from the numb, downward spiral of worry and shame, familiar as his own face in the mirror by now. Being defended wasn’t familiar, though. He wasn’t sure he liked it – what it implied about needing that defense – but in the moment, there was a certain sharp sweetness to it. One he could fall into, if he wasn’t careful; the sort of thing that could become addictive, and the last thing he needed was to depend on Connor more.

“That’s very chivalrous of you,” he began.

And Connor swooped in and kissed him. The sort of immediately bold, and heated, and slippery kiss that left his head spinning.

Connor drew back a fraction, his face a blur, his breath warm and wine-scented across Reggie’s lips. “Stop thinking so much,” he murmured, and when he kissed him again, Reggie reciprocated, hands tangling in long hair and holding tight.

~*~

Amelia ought to have been in bed, resting up for the next day’s patrolling. Instead, she sat in the window seat of the bedroom she’d taken for her own, gazing out across the slowly-dying campfires, thinking of romance, and the unlikely ways it manifested under stressful conditions.

She was still stunned by the notion that Leda had taken up with her stepson, of all people, and hoped her face didn’t show it each time Leda walked into a room and Amelia remembered Colum’s reverent, pained expression all over again. She wanted to blame it on proximity, because Leda could have had any man she wanted, and yet she’d picked Colum. But proximity wasn’t to blame for the tenderness in Leda’s touch against his face, nor the warmth in her gaze when she looked at him. Love was a strange spell, not easily blamed on superficial conditions.

Connor and Reggie were less surprising, in truth. There’d been tension between them from the first, always sniping at one another, hurling insults with a kind of fervor that left everyone around them wondering who would throw the first punch.

It had been a kiss instead, apparently.

Were they together now? she wondered. Out there in Connor’s tent? Did their tempers flare in the throes? Or were they gentle with one another, all the temper an act and a display of misplaced ardor?

She gave herself a shake. She shouldn’t be wondering anything. It was their private business, and none of hers.

She stood, drew off her dressing gown, and climbed into bed.

But she couldn’t stop wondering. She didn’t wish that she’d taken Connor up on his offer weeks ago, didn’t want him. Didn’t want anyone in particular – she wanted Mal, oh, Mal, no, no, no – but she wanted…something. Was restless and hungry in a way she hadn’t been since Mal had…

No, no. She couldn’t think of that. Of him. She couldn’t afford to get stuck in memories, even happy ones, or she might not climb back out of this bed the next morning.

She tossed and turned, fluffed her pillow, and must have fallen asleep, amidst all that restlessness, because the next thing she knew, she stood at the border of a now-familiar forest, the sun hazy white overhead, the sky the washed-out color of dirty linen, the forest floor between the tree trunks a preternatural black. Fireflies winked and flittered in that darkness. Low branches rustled; twigs cracked.

It was becoming a habit, coming to this place in her dreams. She twisted around and saw the wide, slick surface of the pond, but no sign of her drakes this time. She frowned, but it was curiosity more than fear that nagged at her. She’d begun to suspect this was no ordinary dream, but being the only one in her current company with any sort of magical leanings, she had no one to ask for advice.

She missed her sister and cousin fiercely. Wanted to sit with them, laugh with them; to talk with them over the wild ways their lives had turned sideways in the past few months.

She sighed, and turned back to face the forest.

And there they were. The wolves.

They stood closer now than they ever had before. With their strange gray-gold coats, one two shades darker than the other, and their blues eyes, identical in color, differing only in sternness. She could tell, in the short distance of grass that separated them, which was the boss of the two. The alpha, she supposed.

Just as she knew this wasn’t a dream, she sensed that these weren’t truly wolves. Not normal ones, at any rate.

She recalled Oliver’s letter, his news of the prince, Leif, who’d run off with his wolf pack, able to shapeshift, full of a new bristling, lupine aggression. A wolf prince headed her way, alongside a traitorous wolf cousin not to be trusted.

Was this them?

She didn’t know. But she stepped forward, bent at the waist, to make herself smaller, and held out her hand. Wiggled her fingers. “Hello, there,” she said, and chose not to smile, in case these two were more wolf than man, and took her bared teeth as a sign of aggression. “Hello. I’m Amelia. Amelia Drake.”

Belatedly, she considered that offering her real name might be foolish; if this wasn’t Prince Leif and his cousin, but some dark, Selesee spy instead, she’d just painted a target on herself. With her other hand, she felt along her hip, but her sword wasn’t there, not even a knife.

Damn.

The two wolves turned their heads to regard one another, communicated in low chuffs and snorts. The darker one ducked his head, and then shook it with a sneeze. The lighter one flicked his ears back and forth a few times, and then turned back to her. And then started toward her, slowly.

Amelia held her breath, gaze shifting between the two of them. Would the second one charge in at the last moment? A twofold attack while she was defenseless? Or was her worry needless?

The first one stalked closer, closer, grass crunching quietly beneath his oversized paws. As he neared, she caught the wild, musky scent of wolf, like a hide brought back from the hunt, before it had been cleaned.

Amelia nearly snatched her hand back, sure it would soon be seized in fierce jaws – but at the last moment, as the wolf closed the final distance, sniffing audibly, she got caught in the blue of its eyes, and found she couldn’t move. Could only watch, tensed and breathless, waiting to see what might happen.

A cold, damp nose touched her knuckles.

A flash of light blinded her, and the air filled with a sound like ripping sailcloth.

Amelia lost her balance, and toppled backward with a shout of alarm. Landed hard on her backside in the grass.

A man stood over her, tall – very tall. Taller than the men in her company, it seemed, his broad shoulders blotting out the sunlight. Bare, gleaming muscled arms, and a fur coat collar, and a tangle of golden hair. A short-trimmed beard, and a locked jaw, and those same blue eyes, burningly intense, brighter than anything else in this dreamscape.

He was beautiful and terrible. His gaze held her fast as a snare, and a shudder started up deep inside her, rippling out in resonant waves that left her fingers digging into the tangles of grass beneath her.

He was a man, but he gazed on her as an animal would, puzzled by her presence…by her humanity.

He tilted his head, and when he spoke, his voice was low, and deep, undercut by a growl. It sent another shudder through her. “Amelia Drake?”

She wet her lips – his eyes tracked the movement – and managed to counter with, “That’d make you Leif Torstansson , then.”

A flicker in his jaw, and a faint lift of his brows. Surprise, she thought.

She said, “Oliver sent word you were coming.”

He frowned. “I–”

Amelia woke up.

Her eyes snapped open, just as a high, undulating call echoed away outside the window. The drakes.

Dizzy and out of breath from the dream, she flipped back the covers and staggered out of bed and across to the window. Out in the field, a dark shape fell from the sky, black silhouette against the gray-green of approaching dawn. A drake – Marigold, she thought, based on the size, and it was Alpha down below, head lifted, as he called for her once again.

She landed, and they fussed together, a moment, Alpha chastising her.

Amelia let out a breath and slumped down into the window seat. Marigold winging away on her own wasn’t that unusual.

The dream, though…meeting Prince Leif…now there was something far from usual.

She rested her temple against a bit of window molding, and tried to rub the goosebumps from her arms. He’d been so intense, so unreal, like a character from a fairy story: the strapping Northern warrior come to slay a monster.

He was out there, she thought, gaze lifting to the tree line. Out there heading her way. Would he be less intimidating in person…or more so?

~*~

In a thicket of wild roses, at the base of an oak tree with spreading, cradling knobs of roots, Leif sat bolt upright, hand tightening on the fistful of hair he’d fallen asleep holding. Face-down across his legs, Ragnar grunted and whined and tried to bat him away.

Leif released him, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, until he saw white starbursts behind his closed lids. When he lowered his hands, he was surrounded by the depths of the Inglewood, and all its attendant sights, scents, and sounds. Night birds flitted in the high branches, calling to one another. The sky gradually lightening through the gaps in the canopy.

But each time he blinked, he saw Amelia Drake, her hand outstretched toward him. Hello, there.

She’d offered her name, heedless of the risk. Offered her hand, though he might have bitten it off at the wrist. Gods, but she’d been incautious. Or stupidly brave. Lovely, too, up close this time, with her dark, gleaming hair, and her fine features, and her eyes the same blue as Tessa’s and Oliver’s.

She’d known his name.

She’d been frightened, but she hadn’t shown it dramatically; if he hadn’t been able to smell her fear, and feel the quick pounding of her pulse, he might not have known.

But none of that was the reason his pulse was pounding, filling his ears with a roar like the sea at high tide.

“Fuck,” Ragnar muttered, pushing upright so they were sitting across from one another in their nest of tree roots. He grimaced, plucked a twig from his hair, and worked a crick from his neck. “Good gods, why did I fall asleep like that?”

Leif didn’t point out that it likely had something to do with having come all over Leif’s foot while Leif’s cock was down his throat. It turned out four times apiece was all they could manage before they passed out. Instead, he said, “Ragnar,” and the scraped-rough sound of his voice drew Ragnar’s attention.

“What?” he asked, abandoning his hair – it was a lost cause, truly – and squinting at Leif through the dimness. “What do you–” It must have hit him, then, because his eyes went wide, and his face went slack.

“Her,” he said. “It was her – it was bloody her! In the flesh. Well, in the dream – that wasn’t a dream, or, not really, it was that place. Things get a little muddy for me, after a time. Oliver was there, and then–”

“Shut up,” Leif ordered, and earned a whine.

Rough hands gripped his thighs. “Leif, it was her.”

Leif knew that it was. Knew it well – was shaking because of it.

Weeks ago, he’d forced Ragnar to venture out to the Selesee general’s tent, and find the bowl and the strange, black elixir the Sels had used to show Ragnar the wonder and horror of Seles, and convince him to become a skinwalker. Together, they’d poured in the viscous black liquid, and leaned over the bowl; had stared down into its depths together. The vision they found there had involved sweat-slick skin, and low, animal sounds, heat, and effort, and a hunger unlike anything he’d known. There’d been a woman, there, walking toward him, and a strong arm around his waist, holding him back, possessive and uncertain.

The woman in that vision had been the spitting image of Amelia Drake.

“Leif,” Ragnar prompted, leaning in closer, his breath rapid and heated, striking Leif’s face.

“Shut up,” Leif growled, put a palm on his face and shoved him away.

Ragnar backed off, but he insisted, “That was her. That was the woman we saw in the bowl.”

“I know that,” Leif finally said. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“What? Of course it does.”

He knew the look he shot Ragnar fell short of stern; he was too rattled for that. “It wasn’t necessarily her,” he reasoned – pathetically; he’d felt that awful, breathless tug in his gut, something like destiny, something that had felt huge and inescapable. “I don’t recall exactly what the woman in the bowl looked like.”

“Yes, you do,” Ragnar accused.

“And the vision in the bowl could have been a lie. A trick some Sel shaman was playing on us.”

Ragnar snorted. “You know it wasn’t.”

“Explain it, then,” Leif snarled.

Ragnar sat back, hands stretched behind him, rolling his neck and shrugging his shoulders. One of them popped audibly, and he winced. “It means we were destined to meet her.” A grin stole over his face, sharp and devious. “Maybe even destined to fuck her.”

Leif kicked him, but he only laughed.

“Come now, cousin. Don’t tell me you misinterpreted that vision.”

“It wasn’t clear.”

“It was nothing but fucking. Which…” He trailed off, and gestured between them.

“No.”

“Oh, we can share tavern girls and whores, I can make your eyes roll back in the middle of a forest, but Amelia Drake? Oh, no,” he said, faux lofty, “gods forfend: we could never share her.”

“There’s a bloody big difference between a tavern girl and a duchess, and you know it.”

The grin only widened. “Not where it counts.”

Leif growled, deep and loud enough that the other wolves sent up inquiring whines and snuffles, and he was forced to settle. “We aren’t touching Oliver’s cousin. Tessa’s sister. Is that clear enough to you?”

Ragnar rolled his eyes. “It wouldn’t hurt to at least ask her.”

“Ragnar.”

“Fine, fine.” He turned around and laid back down amongst the roots, head pillowed on a tuft of moss. “Wake me when it’s time to leave, alpha.” He was snoring again within minutes, heedless of Leif’s turmoil.

We won’t, he swore to himself. We would never.

But somewhere on the other side of the forest, a beacon had been lit, calling to him.

He hitched himself up higher against the tree, and pinched his leg every time he thought he might fall asleep.

14

Marching with an entire army was a slow affair. It had taken an hour from the moment Erik cupped his hands around his mouth at dawn and called for the party to move out, to getting the whole train in actual motion. Despite the addition of the Beserkirs, it was a greatly reduced army, after the festival attacks, after the siege. Even so, the Phalanx itself and the baggage train behind stretched for miles along the road, and could only move as quickly as its slowest members. They had outriders, yes, but for the most part, the three drake-riders had served that role, flying before and behind and then doubling back, searching for threats from above as the march crawled like a vast column of ants along the river.

By the time camp was set up – another slow affair, with animals to be brushed down and watered, tents to be set up, fires to be built, haunches of venison to be dressed and set up on spits, thanks to the drakes’ hunting efforts – and Oliver was seated before a fire, scent of roasting meat in his nose and a horn cup of mistress-laced tea in his hand, he was thoroughly windswept, saddle sore, and running on limited patience

Náli, by contrast, who should have been sipping lavender tear, a fur clutched round his shoulders, swaying and drawn with fatigue, was as bright and energetic as anyone his age. In this instance, Oliver found it annoying.

“You’re not looking in the right place, then,” Náli said, on the neighboring log-turned-bench.

Oliver bit back a sigh, and stroked Percy’s nose where it rested beside him. The drake’s eyes were closed, but he crooned a low, pleased sound when touched. “Where am I supposed to look? It doesn’t happen intentionally – I fall asleep, and when I wake up, I’m there, no looking required. I don’t know how to willfully get out of the place, either.”

“That’s a problem.”

“Obviously.” Oliver took a long sip of tea, the heat of the liquor settling pleasantly in his belly. “Which is why I’ve asked you about it.” Though you haven’t been helpful, he wanted to say.

Across the fire, Tessa said, “Perhaps Ollie and I won’t be able to see it at all.” Alfie’s tail was coiled across her feet, an insufficient hot water bottle, given the way the drakes ran cold, but a sweet sign of affection nonetheless. “Maybe the doorway is at the bottom of your well in the fire mountain,” Tessa addressed Náli. “And we can’t get to it here, this far away.”

“Nonsense. It’s more concentrated in the well, yes, but it’s not a physical place. You find it here.” He tapped his temple, and adopted an expression Oliver thought was meant to appear wise…but which looked like that of a teenage prat lording his knowledge over them instead.

“Right,” Oliver sighed. “My question is how?”

“Someone’s in a mood.”

“Someone spent all day on the back of a dragon, and would like a bit of meat, and his bedroll, and to not wake up in the arms of the Selesee emperor tonight.”

“Well,” Náli began, rolling his eyes – and a large, gloved hand closed around his spill of silvery hair and tipped his head back. Alarm flared in his eyes, the briefest moment, before he recognized Mattias standing behind him, sweat beaded along his brow despite the cold, steam rising off the shaved sides of his head.

Náli went sheepish.

Mattias’s expression was stern…but undercut by a fondness too great to contain, one allowed to leak through the cracks in his façade, now that things were different with his lord. “Explain it to them the way you’d explain it to me,” he instructed, released his hair, and patted the top of his head.

Náli’s nose wrinkled up, but his cheeks had gone pink. “Explaining it to you would involve far few clothes, though,” he said over his shoulder, as Mattias gathered up more logs and moved to place them on the fire.

“Hm. Pretend you’re a pleasant person, then.”

“Hey!”

Percy cracked one glowing blue eye open, tilted his head, and let out a low chuff of greeting, heralding Erik’s arrival before he tousled Oliver’s hair fondly and dropped down on the log beside him. Oliver winced when he heard the pop and creak of his knees, and the low, bitten-back groan. Erik didn’t complain, though. Peered around Oliver to give Percy a scratch behind the horns, welcomed with a croon like a purr.

“Has he been of any help?” he asked, nodding toward Náli, which earned another hey of protest, as ignored as the first.

“No,” Oliver said, and leaned sideways against him, glad of his heat and solidity. Erik flicked his thick, fur-lined cloak around both of them without prompting. “I’m not sure he knows how to be helpful,” he said with a dramatic sigh, to goad Náli.

As hoped, it worked.

Náli drew himself stiffly upright and said, “Well, it’s not my fault you’re both no better than newborn babes when it comes to magic. Even Matti and the boys took to it faster than you.”

Behind him, tying back the flaps of their tent, Mattias frowned and shook his head in denial.

“Once you’re asleep, it’s too late,” Náli continued. “At least to start. I could find it, but you’re not used to it. You’ll have to cross over purposefully, and that means entering a meditative state – as you did when we magicked the torq for Ragnar.”

Ragnar’s name landed like a shower of sparks in the center of their group. Oliver flinched away from it automatically – especially when he recalled encountering a whining, bloody-mouthed, wolf-shaped Ragnar in the Between, sitting loyally at Leif’s feet – and saw Tessa cringe as well. Erik didn’t react outwardly, save the flex of his fingers where they rested on Oliver’s waist.

Náli’s mouth twitched to the side before he continued. “Do you remember that? You have to consciously withdraw from the physical realm. Open yourself to the magic that lives inside you, and see what it will offer.”

“It was…intimidating. Before,” Tessa said, and when she chafed her hands together, Oliver wondered how much of the gesture was because of the cold, and how much was the result of memory. That moment standing in the yard, prodding at the great reserve of glimmering power waiting, undetected, at the base of their skulls. He knew why Náli called the catacombs in the Fault Lands a “well.” It was like walking through a familiar room, one he’d known all his life, and suddenly realizing there was a trapdoor under the rug; like lifting it up, and seeing a great depth of gleaming water full of firefly glow, and sensing that if you fell in, you might never stop falling. It was the seat of his connection with Percy…but it was largely unknown, too, and he didn’t relish the thought of diving too deeply without some sort of safety tether.

He knew, though, as Tessa must know, that Náli couldn’t go along and guide them directly. They could interact with him in the Between, but getting there was a task they must face alone.

“Can the drakes help?” Oliver ask, resting his hand on Percy’s face. “You said Valgrind was guiding you, making the way easier. Can’t Percy and Alfie do the same?”

Náli shrugged. “Probably.”

“Informative,” Erik said, deadpan.

Náli started to offer a retort, then clearly thought better of it.

“Supper,” Rune announced, loudly and with relish, as he arrived with two boys carrying a wooden board stretched between them, laden with roast, sliced meat, and heels of bread.

Conversation came to a halt, as food was distributed; no plates, only dripping venison stuffed into bread, and the hems of their cloaks for napkins. The bread was already stale and going crusty at the edges, but the meat was fresh, and still pink in the middle, and Oliver was so hungry it tasted like a perfectly-seasoned party feast back in Drakewell. As he polished off the last bite, and licked the juices from his fingers, he knew a sinking sensation: the food they’d brought, like bread, and hard cheese, and preserved meat, would wane as they traveled, until they were forced to buy fresh supplies in the South, if there were any, or, continue to hunt, and forage. With spring coming on, there’d be apples and peaches on low-hanging limbs, and berries in the bushes along the roadways; deer and boar and hare to hunt, and spawning trout and salmon in the rivers. But that was if the Sels hadn’t scoured the land. If they hadn’t killed off crops and wildlife, the full-scale razing treatment, in order to starve out their army.

An unpleasant thought, one he could do nothing about, and so, fed and somewhat refreshed, warm from campfire and drink, he returned to their earlier topic.

“I want to try crossing over on purpose,” he said. “Tonight.”

Erik’s arm had come back around him the moment he finished eating, grounding and supportive beneath the thick layer of the shared cloak. “It’s getting late, and it’s been a long day,” he cautioned.

Oliver turned to face him, his strong profile orange with firelight, the circles beneath his eyes dark from lack of sleep. Oliver smiled as reassurance. “The days will only get longer, dear. Literally, as spring comes on, and, well.” Once they saw some action. By the time they were clashing with the Sels, Oliver wanted to have mastered his magic, able to slip between realms at will, sure of his strength, and hopefully in possession of a few tricks of his own, so that he could combat whatever in blue blazes the emperor had done to him on the other side.

He hadn’t told Erik about that bit.

He’d explained about the Between, about flying there, and even about his encounter with Leif and Ragnar, which had left Erik frowning and massaging at a spot between his brows. But he hadn’t mentioned the emperor, nor the way he’d been able to enchant not only Percy, but Oliver, too. Standing up for himself, and insisting on his autonomy was one thing; sending his lover into a blind rage quite another. If Leif thought he’d looked about to snog the emperor, he thought it best not to pass that information along to Erik.

Erik’s current frown was dark enough, even without knowing. He sighed dramatically, but nodded. “I need to speak with Birger about tomorrow.” He stood, hand lingering through the ends of Oliver’s hair until it had all slipped through his fingers. “Promise you’ll come to bed, soon.” It wasn’t a request. “It’s a long way to fall if you if you’re asleep in the saddle tomorrow.”

Oliver offered another smile, and waved him off. “Promise.”

When he was gone, Náli scoffed and said, “You’re strapped to the animal. Even if you fainted, you wouldn’t fall.”

Mattias leaned over his shoulder with a steaming pewter mug. “I doubt King Erik would see that as reassuring,” he said, dryly. “Don’t you come to bed late, either.”

Náli made a face…but was quickly smiling when Mattias sent him a look.

“Aren’t they adorable?” Rune asked, as Mattias departed, and Náli turned a sour look on him, and flicked a twig at him for good measure.

“What are you still doing here, your grace?” Náli shot back. “All the non-magical people have gone to do non-magical things.” He gestured to their small gathering, down to just the three of them, now, and Rune.

He wasn’t wrong: though most of the Aeretollean lords, soldiers, and servants were glad to have the drakes on their side, most were leery of approaching them. Their three tents were set in a semicircle around the fire, the drakes curled between, and the laughter and dense gatherings took place around other fires. A loud burst of song floated along on the wind, and Oliver watched Rune’s face fall in genuine dismay. He’d been poking fun at Náli – and, really, Náli was poking fun in return, in his own snide way – but he seemed genuinely unhappy that he couldn’t share in this with them.

Oliver traded a look with Tessa, who was frowning, a hand resting on Rune’s arm. “Stay,” Oliver said, and Rune’s look of surprise was so innocent and wondering, it reminded Oliver all over again how young he was. Tessa and Náli were as well, but there was a certain childlike innocence in Rune that he hoped never faded…but which he feared would, given their task; given the way the siege, and his injury, and Leif’s transformation had already dimmed some of his inner light.

“Really?”

“Why not?” Oliver said with a shrug. “Really, we ought not to be alone in case something goes wrong.”

Rune’s smile quickly reversed. “What could go wrong?” He glanced between the three of them, lingering lastly on his wife. “Is this dangerous? Like, properly, physically dangerous?”

“Not more dangerous than riding a drake,” Oliver said, and chuckled at the face Rune made.

From the corner of his eye, though, he saw the way Náli’s lips compressed, a subtle display that he wiped smooth when he sensed Oliver watching him.

Oliver made a mental note to ask him about it once they were alone, then stood. “Well. Shall we get started?”

~*~

For this campaign, Erik had chosen to have a central command tent separate from his personal sleeping tent, which was barely big enough for Erik, Oliver, and their belongings. Náli’s tent, therefore, with room for his entire Dead Guard to bed down around him, was the largest of the three, and thus the place where they decamped to work on their magic in relative privacy.

A small, copper brazier burned in the center, and furs were laid out over reed mats all around it. Náli snagged a small, collapsible camp chair of wood slats and leather from the wall, and dragged it over to one side of the brazier. “Rune, you sit here.”

Rune did, dwarfing the chair comically, and Oliver thought the Guard must look ridiculous in the thing as well. “Where will you sit?”

“Here, on the ground.” Nali folded down cross-legged onto the furs, and motioned to either side of him. “Come, you two. We’ll sit in a circle and join hands.” The last he said mockingly, but when he was settled, he offered up both palms, and his expression was serious, brows lifting. “Well?”

Oliver and Tessa sat.

Náli’s hand, Oliver noted, was much warmer than it had felt the last time he’d touched it, before he accessed his full power in the Fault Lands. The skin smooth and hydrated. Healthy. With his other hand, Oliver took hold of Tessa, her fingers small and cool, her new ring so large he had to adjust his grip for fear of mashing it into his palm.

“Now, then,” Náli said, and his voice had gone resonant, his face smooth and removed, chin lifted to a lofty angle and gaze low-lidded. He looked like an illustration of a shaman that Oliver had glimpsed in a book, once: wise and powerful and lazy with it, assured of his skills. It was a commendable performance…but perhaps not merely a performance. Oliver thought Náli’s petulance was the direct result of being forced to grow up far too quickly as a magic-user; he’d borne that mantle of cure for the realm’s hostility his entire life, laden with a responsibility no child should have been saddled with. His childish, bratty behavior was a stab at preserving something like misspent youth. “Close your eyes.”

“What about me?” Rune asked.

Tessa snorted.

Náli sighed. “You may sit silently and pick your nose for all I care. As I said before: only interfere if something appears to have gone wrong. If they start screaming, wake them up. Otherwise.” He released Oliver’s hand to mime turning a lock and tossing away a key at his lips.

Hands linked once more, Náli repeated, “Close your eyes.”

Oliver felt more than a little silly. He felt Percy rubbing up against his mind with a purr of inquiry, and thought, We’re going to try to cross over. Do you think you could help us?

Outside the tent, Valgrind bugled an entreaty.

“Quiet, you,” Náli called. Then, at normal volume: “Think of journeying downward, to a private, dark place. Set aside all your worries, all your preoccupying thoughts. Your sore muscles, your saddle chafing, your chapped lips – leave it all. Don’t think of your lovers, or your families. Think of nothing. Empty heads.”

A simple instruction, but one difficult to execute. Sickly since childhood, Oliver had grown up juggling thoughts like the most expert of May Day performers. Thinking of nothing was a challenge.

Náli breathed out a quiet sigh, and when he spoke next, his voice had become more conversational. “That won’t work, will it? What did we do before, with the torq?”

Tessa said, “The torq had this – it was if it had its own magic.”

“It didn’t, though. Not until we enchanted it.”

“It was a focal point,” Oliver guessed. It was strange having a conversation with his eyes shut, but kept them so. “Perhaps we need something to focus on.”

“Yes,” Náli said. “Think of your drakes, then, I suppose.”

Valgrind called again from outside, and Tessa giggled when Náli muttered a curse.

“I don’t bloody understand,” he griped. “I can’t talk to him with my thoughts the way you two can. What does he bloody want me to do?”

“Focus on him, perhaps,” Oliver said, biting his lip to keep from laughing.

“Stop smiling.”

“Aren’t your eyes supposed to be shut?”

“I can hear you smiling. Concentrate.”

They resettled. The chair creaked as Rune shifted his weight, dutifully silent, though goodness knew what he thought of them behaving like children still in the nursery.

Náli’s voice turned resonant again, a grasp at the proper ambiance. “Think of your drakes. Open your bond with them.”

That was something Oliver could do with little effort, now. The blue, pulsing place in his mind where Percy was linked to him was a familiar, safe place to visit, and he threw the door wide; welcomed in the purring, crooning gladness of a full joining, so often denied to Percy during the long days spent at the palace, and his nights wrapped up with Erik.

Sorry, old boy, he thought, with a twinge of regret. I’ll try to be more present when we’re not flying. But for now…

“Show them where you want to go,” Náli instructed.

Oliver pictured the Between, its hazy sky, and its waving acres and acres of dead-gray grass. Distant smudge of a mountain range, and shadow of a forest.

“You have to be certain,” Náli said, and Oliver wondered if their descriptions of the place would be enough for Tessa. She claimed to have been there, but had she? Or had it been a true dream?

No time to think of that, now. No time to doubt her, either. He felt another twinge of guilt.

A nudging from Percy brought his concentration back around. Focus, focus. He let the Between fill his mind completely, blue around the edges with Percy’s own vision of it. He allowed himself to want to go there, though it frightened him, a little; though there was no way of knowing what they might find there.

The world seemed to tilt around him, and his perspective flipped, suddenly. He’d been thinking of the grass crunching underfoot, the breeze playing with his hair, but then, everything shifted, and he was looking down at the plain from directly overhead. As if surveying a map laid across a table, he could see the tiny clump of forest, and a lake beyond, a black puddle. The ribbon of the river, twisting off toward the mountain range, the peaks naught but angular cones from above like this.

A bright swell of light radiated heat beside him, warmth like a summer day baking on a flat rock by the swimming hole in Drakewell. No, heat like a bonfire, much too close for comfort. He turned his head, and the light blinded him. Percy trilled, the sound inside his head – no, all around him. He couldn’t see, but he could feel the smooth, cool slickness of scales beneath his hands. He sat astride Percy, no saddle, no bridle; hot wind stripped his face, and he knew, then, that this was the doorway. The sun, always wreathed in cloud and dust, was the portal into and out of the Between.

The epiphany came with a chiming sound, a click of puzzle pieces fitting together inside his head, and a ring of bells.

Percy, go, he thought, sure now, and though he couldn’t see, he could feel the heave and flex of Percy’s sinuous body as he turned into the light, and dove through it.

Everything spun. He grabbed at Percy’s spines, fingers skidding along his scales, and pressed his face low to his neck in an attempt to hang on. He couldn’t draw a breath, thought he might be sick, couldn’t bear it another moment–

And then everything leveled off, and Percy’s wings snapped like sails as they opened, and the wind filled them. Oliver swallowed down his gorge, and blinked the tears from his eyes, and they were spiraling slowly down to the ground, where two white shapes awaited them.

Alfie and Valgrind, heads lifting as they shrieked a greeting that Percy returned.

Náli stood beside his drake, gazing up at them, shading his eyes against the sun. The portal? The doorway?

Tessa sat astride Alfie, and lifted a hand to wave at him.

Oliver sat up straighter, stomach still rolling over and over, and grinned. They’d made it through. All of them.

When he landed, he slipped down to the ground, thankful for the jar of impact, because it meant the world was no longer twirling around him. He was still swallowing convulsively, though.

“Is it always like that?” he asked Náli.

“Like being turned inside out, you mean? Yes. Let’s practice it again.”

15

“Refugees arrived in the night,” Edward said, leaning across the table to tap a place on the map. “From this town, here: Merryweather.”

It was happening more and more, civilians trickling into camp. Word was spreading, through their scouting missions, through falcons sent by the soldiers here to their loved ones back home, that the Inglewood manor had become a headquarters for the resistance.

Amelia bit back a sigh. “How many?”

“Fifteen,” Edward said. “Women and children, one old man leading the way with a lame leg. He said they were the first group brave enough to make the journey from there, but that he thought the others might follow, if the rains hold off. There are Sels camped out in their lord’s mansion, and they’ve raided all the surrounding villages; picked their grain stores and barns clean.”

She nodded. It was a story they were hearing more and more, as more and more Aquitainians sought to escape their occupiers. She didn’t blame them, and she wanted to help them – they had no food, and no chance to acquire more, with invaders watching their every move.

But their own supplies were limited. The winter stores were down to the dregs, and with the war on, the men dead, captured, or residing now in her own camp, the spring seeds had not been sown; Aquitainia’s rich, fertile farmland could feed them all, and the North as well…but only if it was farmed. Potatoes should have been in the ground already, and kale seeds, cold-weather lettuces. Green houses should have been heaving under the weight of tomato and pepper seedlings, garlic and onions, radishes and early carrots. The compost heaps, piled after a winter of mucking stalls, should have been turned, the rich, black contents loaded into baskets, and wagons, and spread over the fields as fertilizer. There was–

Too much to think about. To worry about.

Amelia massaged at the persistent headache that had been throbbing in her temples since she woke, and nodded. “Leda, could you–”

“I’ll get them settled,” she agreed, readily. When Amelia glanced her way to say thanks, she found the woman frowning at her in concern.

She forced her hands to the table and said, “Who is their lord?”

Reggie consulted a red, leatherbound ledger that contained the full list of the peerage. “Chalmers,” he read. “He’s dead. Died in the first wave. No heirs,” he said, before she could ask. “His wife was with child, and she apparently lost it when she heard of his passing.”

“Passing,” Connor said with a grunt. “That’s a nice way of putting it.”

Reggie tilted his head in concession. “Needless to say, there’s no one available to defend the Bridelands.”

“There wasn’t to begin with,” Amelia said, “not with Chalmers’ small forces.”

“It’s worse than that,” Edward said, tone grim. “The refugees say it isn’t merely a general and his troops installed at the mansion. They say a family of Sels has moved in. Mother, father, little girl. Finely dressed and unarmored.”

“Damn,” Leda murmured. “A lord and lady. Civilians.”

Amelia’s slim breakfast soured in her stomach. If the Sels were shipping in civilians, their invasion was no longer simply a military maneuver: they were colonizing. Confident in their ability to hold the west; sure enough in their defensive capabilities to think they could protect important Selesee peerage from Aquitainian forces. And that was who it would be: a peer. Some lord and his lady, as Leda had said. Paupers didn’t get first settling rights in this sort of invasion.

Her gaze fell to the map. “How far out have they pushed from the Bridelands? Their full force, I mean.”

“We have confirmed occupations here, here, and here.”

They were on the march. Winter’s harsh grip was easing, spring coming on warmer and fresher every day, and the Sels were on the move.

The lines on the map blurred, and she realized she hadn’t blinked for a time.

Connor said, “We’re going to have to carry out some sorties. Our supplies won’t last if we try to hold out here.”

“I know.”

“And they’re going to come for us. We’ve killed a fair few of their lads, at this point. They won’t let that stand.”

“I know, Connor.”

He lifted his hands. Don’t shoot the messenger. “I’m only saying. If they all come bearing down on us at once, we’ll fall, drakes or no.”

She sighed. “Gods, I hate it when you’re right.”

“It’s interminable, isn’t it?” Reggie asked, and Connor shot him a rude gesture.

Amelia took a bracing sip of her tea – sugared, for now, though the sugar was running low, and the tea leaves wouldn’t be far behind – and sat up straight. Spread her hands on the table. “Right, then. Sorties. We need to pick a target, and then reconnoiter, I suppose.”

“If I may?” Edward waited for her please do gesture, and then bent over the map again. “The Bridelands are the ideal means of accessing the Crownlands.”

“Yes, I agree.”

At its inception, Aquitainia had borne a tradition that involved the king of the land riding out across his duchies, attending ball after ball in search of a wife. Part fairy story, part truth, it had been a means of keeping the royal bloodlines refined, yet diverse enough to be strong, keeping inherited illnesses at bay. But at some point over the past century, the Bridelands – previously a narrow scrap of mountainous territory that sat along the Crownlands’ southern border, not even a duchy, but a region called “the elbow” for its shape – had become a destination for up-jumped knights appointed titles…but not lands. They’d settled in the Elbow, discovered a wealth of natural emeralds within the mountain caves, and had worked to become the very upper crust of nobility. Their riches had enticed the daughters of the wealthiest lords across the kingdom, and the knights-turned-lords had had their pick of the prettiest and fairest of the lot. The kings had stopped their tours of the countryside, then, choosing brides closer to home, brought up by mothers eager to raise future queens, all of them delicate mountain flowers bred for one purpose.

High altitudes and treacherous mountain paths had prevented a large-scale settlement – they had prevented the building-up of anything like a proper fortress, as well. Doubtless the Sels were working on that, but couldn’t have made much headway, yet. Up over the mountains, through the Bridelands, it was a short, clear journey to the harbor, and Aquitaine, and the jewel of the kingdom.

Without sufficient numbers to encircle the Crownlands, and without access to shipping routes to stop the Sels from sailing in any supplies they might need, Amelia couldn’t afford a war of attrition. They would need a quick, surgical strike of immense power, and would need to rely heavily on the drakes.

“The refugees from Merryweather may have brought us a gift,” Edward said. “From the town, under cover of night, we can launch a surprise attack against the chateau, just as we did with the tower. If we can capture it in secret, without the Sels here” – his finger slid along the road, toward the city of Bellweather – “knowing, we can lure them down, and then take this fortress. It’s the last checkpoint before heading up into the Bridelands.”

Reggie stood and leaned over the table to examine the route, and Connor followed suit, so the three of them were crowded together, shoulder to shoulder, looming over her.

“That’s not bad,” Reggie said. “If it all works out. Secretly, like you said.”

“You might have to wear something drab, your lordship,” Connor quipped.

“From your Leaf and Twig Chic collection, you mean?” Reggie shot back, and though sharp and feral, their grins were colored with true affection.

“Might have to grow a beard, too, if you’re able.”

Amelia let her thoughts wander, to the west, toward Merryweather, which would require a complete mobilization, and an abandonment of their current bolt hole. It would mean almost two weeks on the road, the slow, ponderous march of an army – one insufficient. She thought of stealing through the night in dark cloaks, with shuttered lanterns, and naked steel, stealth operations without the aid of the drakes, who wouldn’t like hunkering down at camp.

But her thoughts wandered also to the strange dream that still haunted her, two days later. Had it been a dream? A vision? Had she truly met prince-turned-skinwalker Leif Torstansson ? And his traitorous cousin-turned-packmate?

If Leif was headed their way – as Oliver’s letter had informed her, and her dream/vision seemed to support – then it could only mean he meant to join the war effort. Their war effort, one made joint by the marching of the Aeretollean Great Northern Phalanx, news of which had reached them at dawn on the leg of an exhausted falcon. The message – in Tessa’s hand – said they were leaving “this morning,” which meant the Northern march had begun four days previously. They wouldn’t arrive as quickly as the falcon had, but they were coming.

Leif would arrive first.

“Amelia?”

It was Edward saying her name.

She shook her head to clear it, said, “That sound good,” which caused them all to frown. She had no idea what she’d just answered to, but that wasn’t important.

She said, “Shouldn’t we consider waiting for the Aeretolleans? We need the numbers.”

Connor and Reggie and Edward all traded looks.

Reggie was the one who turned to address her, and she felt like a child, suddenly, seated before three headmasters of varying levels of sternness. It wasn’t a good feeling.

“We do need their numbers, yes, when it comes to the full assault. But perhaps the stealth mission will go more smoothly without them.”

She lifted her brows. “You’re suggesting we march while they’re still on the way? So they can, what, arrive at an empty manor, wondering if we’ve run off or been captured?”

“A small party could stay behind to greet them,” Edward suggested. “And inform them of our destination. They could meet us in the Bridelands and we could march uniformly from there.”

“Or have them come in from the north,” Connor said, tapping the map. “They could cross at the bridge and raise a big alarm, allow us to come in quietly from below.”

The other men nodded.

Amelia frowned. They weren’t wrong, but she didn’t like the idea of marching so soon. The others saw the Northerners as allies, but in a nebulous sense: they might come, they might not. For Amelia, it had become a family affair. Her mother had taken the chance of sending Tessa north, not knowing what might come of it. Now, Tessa was married to a prince, and Oliver was as good as married to the king, and though she’d not met any of the Aeretolleans, they were Amelia’s family, now. She wanted to trust and believe in them.

And if she was honest, she was painfully curious about meeting Leif. Each time she thought of him, she felt a low, warm pulse in her belly, a pull like she’d been hooked; a crackle of magic. It felt like she was meant to cross his path…though she’d never believed in that sort of thing before.

She’d not believed in dragons, either, once upon a time.

But she knew she couldn’t say any of that to the others. They’d laugh and call her fanciful.

She said, “Oliver’s last letter said his nephew, Prince Leif, had departed Aeres early, with plans to rendezvous with us here.”

She was met by three frowns.

Connor said, “Leif. Is that the one who’s gone crazy and thinks he’s a wolf?”

She frowned back. “He doesn’t think he’s a wolf – he is one. Or part of the time, at any rate. He’s a skinwalker.”

Reggie’s nose wrinkled. “Like in the old children’s stories?”

“Stories have real life origins,” she countered. “It’s old magic, yes, but Oliver’s seen his transformation with his own eyes.”

“Ah, yes, Oliver,” Connor said. “And there’s no chance he’s gone up north and had a little too much ice rose?”

Her frown became a scowl. “Ollie’s not a liar. If he says Leif’s a skinwalker, then that’s what he is.” And I’ve seen him, she didn’t say. “He’s stronger and faster than a regular man,” she continued, “traveling quick and quiet. If it’s a stealth mission you’re wanting to organize, then wouldn’t a man who can become a wolf be an asset?”

They couldn’t argue with that.

But Reggie said, “If he can.”

“He can,” she insisted. “And I’m going to go scouting across the forest and find him.”

“Not alone, you’re not,” Connor said.

“Oh?” she asked. “Gotten brave, have you? You can sit behind me in the saddle.”

His expression became stern. “We’ll make a proper scouting party of it, then. You can fly, we can ride.”

Amelia sighed.

Leda said, “I for one think Amelia ought to go on her own.”

Amelia slid a gaze toward her, wondering what she was up to, and earned a quick wink before the men turned toward her.

“You know how wolves are,” Leda continued, “touchy and territorial. If you lads ride up on them, making a great ruckus, they might get their backs up. Better to let a woman handle the first meeting: less chance of bloodshed that way.”

All three stared at her, Connor and Reggie openly gaping.

“Are you daft, woman?” Reggie finally asked. “Send a lamb to slaughter, why don’t we!”

“Ahem,” Amelia said. “I’ll have Alpha, if you recall.”

“Well, you’ll have us, too,” Connor said like a challenge. “Whether you like it or not, my lady.”

She rolled her eyes skyward. “Fine, fine. Try not to get yourselves killed.” She pushed her chair back and stood. “Be ready in the morning, right at dawn. A dragon waits for no one.”

~*~

“There’s something wrong with this forest,” Leif grumbled, and swatted aside a low limb that snapped back and struck him across the back of the head. He growled at it, to no avail.

Beside him, Ragnar gracefully ducked a similar branch without mishap. “Do you think so? I like it.” The way he tipped his head up to view the canopy, smiling faintly, chest swelling on a deep inhale proved that he did.

“Why?”

“I’m not really sure,” Ragnar said. They’d reached a tiny, chuckling stream, its water clear, its pebbles smooth and slick with algae. They stepped over it; the scent of water nearby proved a better place to stop and drink lay somewhere ahead. “There’s so much life here. You can tell it doesn’t sleep in the same way the forests do back home. There’s lots of good smells: deer, and hare, and birds! There’s so many birds.”

They’d spotted a group of tall, ground-dwelling birds the day before, with heads that reached their waists and long, red waddles on their throats. Turkeys, Leif recalled, from his lessons as a boy. The rest of his Úlfheðnar had been fascinated. The beasts had tasted good, in any event.

“She’s cautious, this forest,” Ragnar said. “She doesn’t know quite what to make of us, but she’s not hostile to us. To humans, sure: this is the sort of forest you could get good and lost it. She hides her creatures, keeps them safe, and kills the men who would come after them.”

Leif frowned. A skittering to their left smelled of disturbed moss, and something small and hot-blooded. A rat, he thought, one that sprinted away from them, its nails scrabbling up a tree trunk some hundred yards away and then falling still.

“Why do you think there’s something wrong with it?” Ragnar asked, and Leif’s frown deepened.

The problem was, he didn’t really know.

Their first foray into the Inglewood had been the night they’d found the timber-walled town where Ragnar had…serviced him…for the first time. Thoughts thus muddled, he hadn’t paid much attention to the forest itself. It was a forest: competing scents of animals and vegetation, the former ripening toward mating season, the latter beginning to grow new shoots.

But as the weather cleared, and the days passed, and they made their way steadily southwest toward the duchy of Inglewood – he hoped – a sense of unease had settled over him, as slow and choking as a wool cloak worn in a driving rain, heavier and more suppressive by the moment.

They’d encountered nothing magical, and nothing more threatening than a trio of lions slinking through the underbrush, quickly backed off by a sequence of growls from the entire pack.

But something was wrong. Something had his hackles up all the time; something chafed at him, left him looking over his shoulder, testing the air with his nose, sure he’d caught a whiff of something that shouldn’t have been present in this green and brown, manless sea of trees.

And all the while, he felt as though someone had stuck a fishhook behind his breastbone, and was towing him forward. Every night, the wolves would flop down to the forest floor and shift to human shape, complaining of sore feet and grumbling stomachs. He was pushing them at a grueling pace, most often on two feet himself, walking apace of Ragnar while the others ran ahead and ventured to the side in their wolf shapes.

Ragnar was the only one who hadn’t complained. Not even once. That alone was suspicious, as was the open, curious, not-at-all-mocking way he watched Leif’s profile now as they began walking up a gradual incline, using roots as toeholds.

“I don’t know,” Leif finally said. “It feels…like it’s watching us.”

Ragnar snorted, leaning forward to grab at a branch for purchase as the angle of the hill steepened. “Of course it is. Forests are full of all sorts of eyes, and they’re always watching.” He shot him a grin. “You spent too long in a castle, is all. It’s taking you some time getting back to being a living thing.”

A living thing. The phrase struck him as dramatic, and insulting…but not untrue. Before his turning, he would have thought anyone who said he wasn’t living was a few arrows short of a full quiver. Of course he’d been living: he ate, he slept, he laughed; he went riding, and he trained with his sword; sat in on council meetings and learned from his uncle, trying to absorb all the knowledge he would need when he was eventually crowned king.

But after he was turned, he’d become hyper-aware of all his senses. The crisp scent of an apple sliced in half; the sweetness of last season’s honey coating his throat when he took his tea. He’d realized how loud the world was, inside and out. And the need for sex had become damn near crippling. The way he could communicate with his pack without words, the way he could read every twitch of a brow or flicker of a pretend smile in a way he never could before; listen to the pounding of someone’s heart and smell their sweat, and know they feared him, though they pretended they were glad to see him.

There was hunting and hunting, Ragnar had said, that night by the river, when he’d let the wolf’s wants win out.

There was living and living, too.

And there was something bloody wrong with this forest.

They reached the top of the rise, and the loose, pebbled soil there slid from under their boots. Leif adjusted his stance to keep his balance, and Ragnar caught himself with a grip on a branch.

The trees here opened up for a span of at least two dozen yards. They stood on the edge of a wide stream, one that gurgled and tumbled down at the base of a ten-foot ravine. The banks were steep, and gleamed with the sort of slick mud that would send anyone stupid enough to brave it sliding straight down into the water to get swept downstream. Overhead, the trees arched together, interlaced like the peak of a sloping barn roof. The sound of the rushing water swelled up around them, drowning out the cries of birds, and the rustling of twigs and leaves.

“Fancy a swim?” Ragnar asked.

“No. We’ll head downstream, and find a safer point of crossing.”

Somewhere on the opposite side, a shivering howl rose up, and then cut off into a yelp, and then nothing.

Leif growled, and Ragnar echoed it, right away.

“We’ve got to get across now,” Leif said, and backed up the three scant strides he was able to.

“Wait. What are you–”

“That was one of ours,” Leif said. (Later, he would roll ours around in his mind, and decide what that meant between the two of them.) “Are you just going to stand there?”

“No, but–”

Leif ran forward, one, two, three strides, and jumped.

He hung in the air an infinite moment, arms pinwheeling, legs kicking forward, as if he could keep running. In that moment, an image from his childhood flashed through his mind. He’d been about seven, and Rune only four. They’d been tagging along with Bjorn as he went to inspect a section of forest being cleared for building timbers, and the tree stumps had proven too great a temptation. Leif had hopped up onto one, and then jumped across to the next. And then the next. Like elevated stepping stones, and much more fun than the ones in Mum’s garden at the palace.

“Leif, wait!” Rune had called, and Leif had paused long enough to turn and see Rune scrambling up onto a stump, trying to mimic him.

“No,” Leif called. “You’re too small. You can’t do it.”

“Yes, I can!” Rune insisted, biting his lip in concentration as he leaped for the next stump. He hung in the air a long moment, arms and legs pumping in the air – and then he dropped a few inches shy. Clipped his chin on the stump as he fell, and let out a blood-curdling scream that had brought Bjorn and the woodsmen running. He’d had a chipped tooth – but a baby tooth, thankfully – and a bloodied tongue and lip.

Leif pictured himself as little Rune, arms and legs flailing, the ground rushing up to meet him. He stood to gain worse than a chipped tooth and bitten tongue when he landed.

But then he heard more snarls, and snaps, and yelps from up ahead, and his mind cleared of all thoughts save getting to his pack.

He landed hard on the far slope, and the mud was even slicker and wetter than it looked. He skidded down, caught himself by a protruding root, and gritted his teeth as he sank down to his ankles, but clawed his way upward. There was a whole network of roots for handholds, and then toeholds, once he was high enough. The mud threatened to suck his boots off his feet, but his muscles were bunching and clenching, pushing, pulling him upward, adrenaline and wolf-strength powering him up, and up, and up, until he was clawing his way up over the top and onto flat, dry ground.

A curse, and a thump, and the sucking sound of wet mud pulling at feet proved that Ragnar had followed him successfully, and was climbing in his wake.

Leif stood, and took off running, letting his nose guide him forward. He smelled his wolves – familiar and musky – and blood. A scent that left his own blood boiling; left his nails pricking at his palms, and his teeth tingling as they lengthened. He wanted to shift…but he didn’t know what sort of threat he was running toward. Didn’t know–

Ah.

Men.

Their first sign of civilization in this wood, and it was accompanied by bloodshed and violence.

The crash of underbrush behind him heralded Ragnar at his heels, and he lengthened his stride, sucking in deep lungfuls of air and growling them back out.

He ducked a branch, leaped a stand of bushes, and arrived upon a chaotic scene.

Blood slicked the forest floor, glittering crimson in the dappled sunlight. One of his wolves, Harald, lay flat on his side, ribs heaving as he fought for breath, whining and blood-splashed, while another, Vidar, stood over him, head tucked, hackles raised, teeth bared as he snarled at a human dressed in drab browns and grays, a bloodied sword held across his front. A second human stood behind the first, clean sword raised up over his shoulder, braced for attack. The first had dark hair, the second gold, and their postures mimicked that of the wolves in every way, down to the bared teeth.

Leif growled, and four pairs of eyes swung his way.

The brown-haired man didn’t look the part of any Southerner Leif had ever seen. He wore his hair long, parted in the middle and wavy down over his shoulders. A scruff of untrimmed beard stubble lined his jaw, and his clothes were nothing like the finery Oliver and Tessa had arrived wearing. A commoner, then; perhaps a woodsman.

The man behind him, however, was dressed similarly, but bore the clean-shaven cheeks, artfully tousled blond hair, and bright complexion of a finely-bred lordling. A gilded, taller, stronger Oliver, down to the blue eyes.

Vidar’s ears flicked back, and he whined at Leif in unhappy question.

Leif extended a hand toward him. Hold. Stand down. He didn’t kneel to examine Harald, as he wanted to; kept his gaze locked with the dark-haired man. The one with the blood-wet sword. His gaze had gone wide, and wary, and his stance shifted, so his sword tip swung Leif’s direction.

“Who might you be?” he asked. And: “Are these your dogs?” His tone was very calm, and his gaze very aggressive, as it traveled over Leif’s muddied Northern clothes, his bare, gold-ringed arms.

Ragnar arrived behind him, with a snap of twigs and rustle of leaves. Leif felt the heat of his breath on the bare skin of his shoulder as he snarled at the men. “He’s the one who’s going to rip you limb from limb if you make another move on one of ours.”

(Ours again. Ours, ours, ours.)

“Stop,” Leif told him, and forced the growl out of his throat. Forced himself to stand upright, rather than in the bent-kneed half-pounce he’d adopted on instinct. He drew himself up to his full height, and spread his hands to show that they were empty. To the men: “These are my wolves.” He dropped his growl-laced wolf-voice, the one that had felt like a costume originally, but which had become his normal way of speaking as of late. Pulled on his Prince Voice, which was the one that felt costume-like, now. “I’ll ask you not to slash at them with your sword. Anymore.” He made a show of glancing toward Harald: still breathing, still alive; skinwalkers could heal from all but the most mortal of wounds, or so Ragnar had said, but Harald didn’t look good at the moment. “How badly have you injured him?”

The dark-haired man scowled. “They came running right at us out of the forest. They attacked us.”

Leif scowled right back, gratified by the way the man swayed backward the barest fraction. “I don’t see any blood on you.”

The man started to answer–

And Vidar shifted into his man-shape.

Where a snarling wolf had stood moments before, there now crouched a hulking young lad with tightly-braided brown hair, and various necklaces strung with animal teeth and claws. Leaves and blood were caught in his short beard, and his hands were shaped like claws, his nails long, black, and sharp.

The blond man gave a shout of surprise and toppled backward onto his bum in the dirt.

The dark-haired man’s head whipped around, his eyes bugged, and he murmured, “Holy gods! Skin changers!”

Eyes white-rimmed with panic, Vidar turned to Leif and said, “Alpha, they surprised us. They’d covered their scents with deer musk, and we were on top of them before we knew they were there, we were–”

Two sounds reached Leif, back-to-back, overlapping, both from behind him. First was the soft, but distinct twang of a loosed bowstring.

The second was the thump of impact; of an arrowhead piercing flesh, deafening amidst the shush of competing breaths and the crackle of stepped-on leaves.

Leif was already turning before he heard Ragnar’s startled grunt; had his arms up, and caught him as Ragnar toppled forward, his eyes wide, his lips parted on a gasp.

Leif got an arm around his waist, and guided his head down onto his shoulder with his other hand, his own heart knocking, a growl building in his throat.

The arrow sprouted out the back of his left shoulder; had most likely lodged somewhere in the bone, and the sight of it turned Leif’s vision red.

“Fuck,” Ragnar hissed. “Gods, that bloody hurts. Fuuuuuck. Shit.”

If he was speaking, then he was still alive, and the thump of his heart against Leif’s breast was steady and strong; the arrow hadn’t pierced it, then.

But someone had shot Ragnar. Leif’s packmate. Pack, mine, mate. Someone had dared to shoot what was his.

The anger he’d felt upon sight of Harald down on the ground had been nothing compared to the red, hot, boiling rage that built in him, now. He growled – he snarled – as he turned around, Ragnar held against him with one arm, the other raised toward their enemies, nails growing to black claws. He could feel the prickle and push of hair along his skin; knew his eyes changed, by the white-faced shock on both the men. His voice wasn’t human when he said, “You’ll pay for that.”

The blond man scrambled to his feet, sword lifting again.

Vidar started growling, following his alpha’s lead.

Overhead, a high, shrill shriek ripped through the sky, and a sudden, forceful breeze gusted down from straight above, sending dry leaves scattering, blowing their hair into their eyes, stirring the branches so they swayed and cracked. It was like a cyclone had dropped down on them from out of a clear, blue sky.

No, not a cyclone. Leif knew that sound, and it echoed again, a cross between a scream and a whistle.

A drake.

Leif tipped his head back and saw a wide, black shape blot out the sunlight. The tree tops bowed, and he heard one snap, as the wind intensified, and the shadow lowered.

“Shit,” one of the men said.

Shit was right: the beast was landing.

“Move,” Leif barked at Vidar. “Take Harald and move!”

He saw his wolf rush to comply and he concentrated on dragging Ragnar back out of the way. He earned a curse, and a hiss of pain, but Ragnar got his feet under him and kept conscious. Leif drew him back, and back, through a holly bush that scratched their skin and tore at their hair.

In the place where they’d all stood, the shattered top of a tree plummeted down and stuck in the damp ground like a thrown spear. The snap of branches was loud and rapid-fire. He glimpsed black claws, and sleek, black legs, and another tree was uprooted; it tipped sideways and went down with a great crash, dragging saplings and low limbs along with it. Dirt kicked into their eyes, and Leif swiped it away with the back of his hand, grimacing against the wind, blowing right in their faces, now.

There was a loud thump, and a rumbling that moved through the ground.

The wind cut off, suddenly, with a sound like a snapping sail, and with a chittering, grumbling, growling vocalization similar to that of the cold-drakes, but quicker, and more aggressive.

He blinked grit from his eyes and beheld a drake so black it gleamed green and violet where the sun struck it. Glowing red-gold eyes, and sharp horns, and a long, serpent tail that whipped back and forth in agitation, snapping off yet more branches and flicking leaves from bushes.

It was bigger than Percy, and when it lowered its head to scan the forest around itself, Leif saw smoke curling from its nostrils. This one, undoubtedly, wouldn’t be breathing ice.

A shock of bright red drew Leif’s gaze to the animal’s back, and it was only then that he noticed the black leather and silverwork of a bridle, and a harness, and a saddle. And in that saddle sat a rider, in smooth black armor, and gleaming mail, with a black helm crested by a dyed horsehair tail of blood red.

He'd grown used to Percy, and Alfie, and Valgrind. Didn’t trust them, necessarily, but wasn’t alarmed by the mere sight of them. Didn’t feel the urge, as he did now, to crouch down on all fours, press his back into a corner, and growl.

“Holy gods,” Ragnar breathed beside him, wheezing from the pain. “Look at – it’s – holy gods.”

The drake’s head whipped around toward them, stretched out on its neck so Leif felt the forceful exhale of hot air, breath that smelled of blood.

Leif snarled.

The drake snarled back, knife teeth flashing as its lips peeled back.

A clear, feminine voice called out, “Alpha, no.”

Alpha.

The word struck Leif like a slap. He felt it reverberate through Ragnar as well, the way he shuddered in the loop of Leif’s arm.

Only Leif’s pack used that term, and in their voices, it carried the heft, the warmth, the reassuring, satisfying awareness of his status. Burden and pleasure both. He was in charge; the pack was his to lead and protect.

He’d never heard an outsider say it, least yet a woman.

The voice said, “Stand down,” and the drake snorted loudly, and pulled back. It – he – settled, half-crouched on its haunches, and the armored knight – the woman – swung gracefully down off his back and landed with a crunch of leaves and a chiming of armor. She reached up with one hand and patted the drake’s shoulder, who in turn craned around to nose at her, crooning an inquiring sound.

“Yes, it’s all right,” she said. “Be a good boy, Alpha.”

Alpha. The word sent chills down the back of Leif’s neck, but it wasn’t meant for him.

Ragnar’s laugh was more of a cough. “Heh. The bloody dragon’s named ‘Alpha.’”

He hadn’t spoken quietly, and the woman turned to face them. She gave the drake’s nose one last pat, then reached to unbuckle and draw off her helm. A dark braid spilled over her shoulder, and her face, once revealed, was familiar.

Ragnar sucked in a sharp breath that became a hiss.

Leif felt as though he’d been slapped again. It was her: the Amelia Drake from his and Ragnar’s shared dreams. The fine features, and high cheekbones, reminiscent of her sister, but sharper, harsher. Her eyes were the same blue as the other Drakes, vivid in the shaft of sunlight she stepped into, and her lips were painted a false red that made him think, absurdly, that she’d bitten someone.

She flicked her braid over her shoulder with a toss of her head, and strode toward them, helm under one arm, other hand resting on the pommel of her sword.

Ragnar was still wheezing, but Leif heard his attempt at a deep inhale; sensed his interest. Had he been on four legs, his tail would have been wagging.

Leif growled at him under his breath – and tightened his hold around his waist. He smelled terribly of blood, and his grip on the back of Leif’s tunic was weakening by the second.

Voices sounded behind them: a man saying, “Hold, hold your fire!” Another calling out, “My lady! My lady, they are magicked! Take heed!”

When she’d nearly reached them – close enough for Leif to smell her sweat, the herbaceous soap she’d used to wash her hair; her skin, and the dirt under her nails, and the paint on her lips, and the femininity of her, more alluring than any of the women he’d shared with Ragnar on the road – the dark- and light-haired men swooped in on either side of her, bracketing her. The blond threw an arm across her middle, barring her path, and Leif bared his teeth; that little bollocks shouldn’t be touching her.

Ragnar chuckled again…but it turned into a whimper, and he tucked his face into Leif’s neck, whining quietly in pain.

It took every ounce of self-control, every shred of Leif’s remaining humanity to stand rooted, holding Ragnar, listening to the clumsy crash of men walking toward them through the brush, when all he wanted to do was shift to four legs and start tearing out throats.

The dark-haired man said, in what he must have thought an undertone, “They’re…I don’t know. Enchanted. Cursed. We watched those two turn from wolves to men.” A nod toward Harald and Vidar, who now stood a hundred feet away, both man-shaped, huddled together, Vidar’s teeth bared. “And that one” – Leif this time – “is big as a barn and meaner-looking than your drake. Stay back, Amelia.”

Amelia. He’d known it was her – of course it was her, who else could it be? – but that confirmation, the sound of her name, struck him hard and left his insides tightening. Anticipation? Anger? Lust? He couldn’t parse it. But he wanted her closer, as badly as he wanted the others gone, and for that man to stop touching her.

A low, guttural growl that didn’t belong to any wolf rippled through the clearing. The drake. When Leif tore his gaze from Amelia Drake, he found her dragon watching him with narrowed, red-gold eyes. Suspicious.

The woman – Amelia – sighed, recapturing his attention. She brushed the blond’s arm away. “Stand down, boys.” Then she looked straight at Leif. Their gazes locked, and a low, insistent humming started up in the back of his mind. His skin itched and prickled worse than ever. He envisioned his wolf pacing circles inside him, snarling and whimpering in turn, wanting out. His wolf wanted her, more fiercely than he’d wanted the paid girls, a basic, stomach-churning want that could render him dumb and stupid if he didn’t fight it with all he had.

He swallowed, and he could taste her scent, now, as she started walking again. She tasted like magic.

“It’s all right, Connor. Reggie,” she said, head only half-turning to speak over her shoulder as she moved, her attention fixed squarely on Leif. “Prince Leif and I have already met.”

In a dream. A dream in which all his senses had been dulled by distance, and by the oppressive magic of that other plane. Now, though, now she was filling his nostrils, his lungs, his head.

She took another step, and another. The humming got stronger, louder, his wolf more insistent, his wolf feral–

And then she arrived in front of him, boot heels clicking together, chain mail chiming as she settled. She tipped her head back, now that they stood close, to maintain eye contact. Her pale throat was bared, unguarded, as though she had no idea the danger she was in…or wasn’t worried about it. She had a dragon, after all. Had them surrounded.

She presented the portrait of confidence…though he could smell the flicker and static of her nerves; could hear the rapid tattoo of her stressed heartbeat. He thought perhaps he imagined the hitch in her breath, and the faint trace of feminine interest on the breeze that wrapped her scent all around him like a suffocating quilt.

“Hello,” she said, and then shifted her helmet around, and offered her right hand. “Lady Amelia Drake. Duchess of Drakewell. And you must be Prince Leif. Sorry about your man.” She tipped her head toward Ragnar, who’d gone eerily silent save the rough saw of each breath.

Leif started to respond – and then realized that he’d forgotten how. The wolf was right up in the front of his mind, using his eyes, drinking her in with his nose, and he couldn’t begin to form any words – let alone civilized ones.

Her gaze sharpened, as she stared at him…and it was a stare that went on and on, as he struggled, and grappled, and for the life of him couldn’t manage to voice any of the things he was thinking, most of which involved getting her on her back.

Finally, he eked out a croaky, “I…”

And Ragnar coughed blood all over her boots, and fainted.

16

“Do you remember how I thought this was a terrible idea? Well, now that we’ve seen the bastard, I can unequivocally say it’s a fucking terrible idea,” Reggie said, two hours later.

They’d left the forest for the adjacent field, and set up a temporary camp from the few packhorses the ground troops had brought along. The sun was setting, and her own tent had been converted into a sick ward, the injured wolves being looked over by one of the men who claimed to have a bit of physician training. Through its open flaps, she could see the two wounded resting on cots, both sitting upright, conscious in a way that no human should have been, given their injuries, with Prince Leif standing watch over the proceedings, thick arms folded over his chest, gaze as stern as that of any barbarian in the storybooks she’d read as a child. Even from a distance, the sight of him left goosebumps prickling on her arms that she hastily chafed away before turning to Reggie.

“They can most likely hear you, you know.”

He made a face. “No, they can’t.” Then: “Can they?”

They both glanced over, and slowly, Leif’s head turned, piercing blue gaze resting on them a moment before he turned back to his men.

“Gods,” Reggie breathed. “That’s bloody uncanny.”

“Wolf hearing,” she said, and then shook her head like that might help to clear it.

She was…struggling. Fuzzy-headed in an uncharacteristic way, as though she’d drunk too much wine; or like that time she’d fallen from a tree as a girl and cracked her head a rock.

She hadn’t seen any of the skinwalkers shift, the way Connor, Reggie, and the others had, but she didn’t need to. Though she didn’t share a bond with any of them, the way she did with Alpha, she’d been able to sense their magic. A humming in her mind; the lifting of all the fine hairs on her arms. Something unspoken and indefinable for anyone who wasn’t magically inclined; a sense of knowing. They weren’t the same, but they had tread some of the same paths; could reach a plane that other humans couldn’t. She’d known that they were shifters, and what that meant physically; she hadn’t counted on the way it would feel to be in their presence.

Reggie or Connor would have said it was all the same: drakes, men who could turn to wolves, any other sort of magic. But for her, it was all quite different. She was a Drake, a descendant of the first dragon-riders. She could bond with them, communicate with them. She knew them. Not to mention she’d spent her whole life cultivating relationships with horses, more than a few as difficult as her own Shadow. Though the mental link was new, the same principles applied to the drakes: a strong bond built on trust, mutual understanding, and fairness. Riding was riding, it turned out, once you stripped off the more fantastical elements.

But she knew nothing of the wolves. Of Leif and his…pack, she supposed. Yes, they would be a pack, and not a party. He’d called them that, his injured two: my packmates. His voice had been gruff – even deeper than she remembered from the dream – and his tone matter-of-fact, but she’d found it shockingly intimate, that phrase: my packmates. It implied something beyond friendship, beyond brothers-in-arms. Brothers, she’d heard some of the soldiers call one another. That was this, yes…but she’d heard them communicating, even in their man-shapes, in a series of low growls, and huffs, and inquisitive whines. Looks passed between them, meaningful and intense; the sorts of looks she didn’t feel she ought to be privy to.

Amelia understood animals – or, at least, she thought she did. But how did one understand an animal who was also a man?

“You’re not even listening to me,” Reggie accused, and she realized, belatedly, that her gaze had wandered back through the open tent flaps, resting somewhere in the region of Leif’s impossibly broad shoulders, currently rolled forward, as he leaned over the cot and spoke to the man – the wolf? – who’d fainted before. Who’d spat blood all over her boots. The equally big, handsome skinwalker with the sun lines, and the sharp smile, and the same blue eyes, but with hair a shade darker, wilder, and braided up with the dull ivory of old bone. He wore a necklace of animal teeth…and currently held Leif’s undivided attention, leaning not-so-subtly into the hand Leif had rested on his good shoulder, while Amelia’s man tended to the wound in the back of the other.

“That must be Ragnar,” she murmured. “The cousin.”

“What?” Reggie said, and then shifted to stand beside her, rather than across from her, joining her in looking. “Who? That other blond?”

“Mmhm. Oliver warned me about him.” Even in the dimness of the tent, she could see the wink of bright silver at his throat, the torq of which Oliver had spoken in his letter, preventing him from shifting, binding him to Leif.

Leif’s head whipped around, hair fanning, gaze landing on them, and Amelia hastily turned away, dragging Reggie along with a grip on his sleeve.

“And here you were warning me to be quiet,” he muttered, as she marched him across the field toward the patch of flattened grass where Alpha had stretched out to soak up the day’s last, slanted sun rays.

He cracked one sleepy eye and whuffed a greeting, before closing it again. Amelia steered Reggie around to the far side of him, and used Alpha’s broad side as a shield.

“I know, I know,” she said. “It’s hard to remember.”

“Told you.” They finally stopped, and Reggie folded his arms and squared off from her again, head tilted at a superior angle. “Just as I told you–”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said, and his lips pressed closed in an unhappy line. “You said it was a bad idea, yes, and Connor, too, and I said we need them, and we do. None of that has changed.”

His brows shot up. “Seeing them be bloody great wolves doesn’t change anything?”

“No,” she insisted, even if her stomach was quivery, and her breath unsteady. Technically, it wasn’t the wolf thing that made her unsteady, but the whole bloody great sight of Leif. That crackle of electricity and wildness he put into the air.

“They nearly killed us,” he said, growing serious.

“But they didn’t. And we nearly killed them.” She frowned. “After I expressly told everyone to be on the lookout for them.”

He shook his head. “They came out of nowhere. We didn’t hear them – not even Connor, who knows these woods and its creatures like the back of his hand.”

“Not even Connor, huh?” she couldn’t help but tease, gratified by his instant blush. “Gotten familiar with his hands, have you?”

“Fuck off.”

“Hm, no. But I think he can help you with that, if you like.”

His blush turned hectic…but not in a good way. His throat jumped as he swallowed with obvious difficulty, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. Too late, she realized that he was insecure about whatever he had going with Connor, and it went far beyond simple embarrassment.

Her smile faded. “Reg–”

“Don’t.” The hand he lifted trembled, ever so slightly. “Just – don’t.” Another rough swallow. “Please.” The last strangled-sounding, drawing her gaze to the scar on his throat, which he immediately moved to cover with his hand.

“Reg.”

His eyes had gone big, a little wild…a little wet. They widened further still, somehow, at the sound of crunching grass, and approaching footsteps.

“Here you are,” Connor said, joining them. His voice was easy, but Amelia noticed the way his gaze snapped to Reggie, and the way Reggie shook his head, once, and ducked it, massaging his throat a last time before dropping his hand. “I thought I’d go in and make a formal introduction. Smooth things over.”

“And?” Amelia asked.

His grin was sideways and wry. “I don’t think things are all that smooth.” His gaze darted again to Reggie, and his smile slipped; with Reggie’s head still down, he mouthed, What did you say to him?

Amelia pointed at herself. Me?

Connor frowned.

“The two of you are about as subtle as this dragon,” Reggie said, and Amelia jumped, caught-out.

His face, though, when she looked at him, proved its normal color, his eyes their normal size, and his normal air of superior smoothness restored. That was a relief.

“Yes, well, neither are the two of you,” she countered, “when you’re brandishing swords at our new allies.”

“If they’re to be our allies,” Connor said.

She sent him a look. “What did you say to them?”

He held out his hands, all innocence. “Nothing offensive! I do have some manners.”

“Uh-huh,” Reggie said.

“Hush, you.”

“Connor,” Amelia prompted.

“I walked in, and offered my hand – same as you – though he wouldn’t take it – again, same as with you. I introduced myself, and I said, ‘Sorry about your men, but you can understand why we leaped out of our skins.’”

“You didn’t,” she said.

“I gutted one and Angus shot the other. What was I supposed to say? ‘No harm, old chap. Dust yourselves off.’”

She bit back a sigh. “How are his men?”

Connor brushed his hair back, and his expression went momentarily wondrous. “Healing. Right before my eyes. Phillip barely got the arrow out before the skin started reknitting.”

The news lifted her brows – but quickened her pulse, too. Stirred that humming, crackling feeling that shifted beneath her skin. Magic. That dangerous draw that left her wanting to peer at Leif again. Maybe even closer than before…

Gods, she was behaving like some sort of silly maiden at a ball.

But was old and experienced enough to recognize it wasn’t simply fascination that had hold of her. No, the heat kindling low in her belly was something far warmer than curiosity, though it baffled her; attraction wasn’t something that sparked and flared on first contact for her. She’d not felt so much as the faintest stirring of anything like want since Malcolm.

Mal…

Thinking of him didn’t bring its usual wave of grief.

She was buzzing too strongly with the proximity to magic and mystery for that.

“…melia?”

“Yes?” Damn, but it had happened again: she’d gotten lost in her thoughts. Lost in thoughts of arms bared to the cold spring air, and burning blue eyes, and low, lupine growls through human teeth…

Argh! She was being ridiculous.

She gave herself a mental slap, stood up straighter, shoulders back; pushed authority into her voice, and said, “Yes?” again. More firmly.

Connor and Reggie exchanged a hard to decipher look, and then turned to her as one. It was infuriating, really.

Connor said, “I don’t think they took a shine to me. You’ll have to be the one to forge the alliance.”

~*~

Alliance forging wasn’t something to be done hastily, so Amelia took half an hour to gather her thoughts. That was what she was going to tell anyone who asked her why she paced the length of Alpha, nose to tail, for a half hour while the sun dipped below the tree line. It sounded better than saying I’m nervous, and I’m stalling. Should she mention the dreams? What if Leif hadn’t had them as well? What if they’d been totally one-sided?

But how could she have possibly imagined what he looked like? From the exact shade of his eyes, to the color of the fur on his tunic collar.

Ragnar as well. He’d been a wolf, in that other place, but one with a pelt the same deep gold as the man’s hair; the eyes were the same, the piercing blue he shared with his cousin.

That couldn’t be a coincidence. They had to have been there with her, in that dreamscape; and given the way they’d stared at her, they remembered it, just as she did.

But what did that mean?

Alpha finally sat up, and made an inquiring sound, and Amelia realized it was full-dark. That his eyes glowed like embers, and that torches burned on stanchions around the perimeter of camp.

“I suppose I’ve wasted enough time, haven’t I?” she asked him.

He opened his mouth and bleated a cry that sounded accusatory.

“Oh…” she muttered. “You’ll come and save me if they try to eat me, right?”

“Kirik!”

She sighed. “Very well.”

Other tents had sprung up in the crushed grass, cookfires burning merrily, men gathered round them with flasks and dripping legs of rabbit. A few called respectful greetings, and she lifted her hand as she passed. The tent that was meant to be hers – and, really, she didn’t need a fancy tent, though her generals insisted a leader always had the largest, finest tent – glowed from within with lantern light, and as she approached, she realized the dark shadows clustered around it were not merely shadows, but men.

Wolves.

Leif’s pack.

Her pulse quickened, and she forced her breaths to be even and slow, held her posture regal and fearless, though her skin crawled.

A few paces from the closed flaps, one of the shadows stood, and coalesced into the shape of a tall, broad-shouldered man who towered over the men of her company. She pulled up short, and held her ground while he stepped into the torchlight, and she was stupidly proud of herself for not shrinking back.

Gods, but these Northmen were big.

This one wore his dark-brown hair loose on his shoulders, save the places knotted with beads of bone, a dull ivory in contrast to the gemmed and silvered beads Oliver and Tessa had described in their letters. Trophies, she thought: bones from kills. Human or animal, she couldn’t be sure. He stood with his shoulders rolled forward, hands hanging too far from his sides, a pose made for springing; it was all too easy to envision him lunging forward, hands reaching, hard mouth thrusting out into a muzzle.

He spoke first, which startled her. A rough, “My lady.” His was a voice rarely used.

“Good evening,” she greeted, channeling her mother’s cool, most commanding tone. (She hoped she managed, anyway.) “I’d like to speak with your–” Not prince. They didn’t call him that. She’d caught snatches of their reverence, as they murmured to him. “Your alpha. If he’s available,” she amended.

Alpha. She’d named her drake that, yes. But it felt strange to refer to a man that way.

Not a man: a wolf.

The wolf before her regarded her a long moment, then turned, and pulled aside the tent flap. When she didn’t move right away, he offered a quick, ungallant hand gesture, and she understood that he was letting her in.

“Oh. Thank you.”

She had never thought much about the courtly manners around which she’d grown up, but clearly she was used to them, and expected them unconsciously. Watching someone operate outside of those social norms was jarring.

Things like manners flew out of her head, however, once she’d stepped inside the tent, and the flap rustled shut behind her.

Two things struck her straight off: the temperature, because the brazier hadn’t been lit, and the interior was as chilled as the air outside, her breath misting white before her as she let out an unsteady exhale. And the smell: not a bad one, but a distinctly wild one. The faint, oily musk of animal fur; pine, and snow, and deep, cold water. It didn’t smell like a tent full of sweaty, long-traveling men.

Because it wasn’t.

The prickling at the back of her neck wasn’t pleasant, but she held herself stiffly upright and surveyed the space. Wolves used lanterns, apparently, or had at least not doused the ones her men had set out.

The cots were empty, though.

She walked forward, drawn by a sudden pulse of worry, to stand between the two. “Shit,” she murmured, “where…”

A shifting of fabric drew her attention to the far corner of the tent, its well of shadow. One of the injured wolves, whose name she didn’t know, lay on his side, half-curled around the seated form of another. Their pose was immediately recognizable: one packmate sitting vigil over another. When she locked gazes with the one sitting upright, she read the clear warning in his: stay back. Then, to her surprise, a low, rumbling permeated the air.

A growl. And not one created by any human. A purely animal sound of warning, impossible and primal and unmistakeable.

“Knock that shit off, Vidar,” a voice said right behind her, and Amelia wasn’t proud, but she flinched. The strangeness of it all – the scent, the sight of men cowering on the floor when there were cots ready; the hugeness of them, the confusion inspired by her dreams, and seeing Leif in the flesh, finally – had strung her tight as harp wire, and so she jerked, and bit down on a gasp, and felt her face heat in embarrassment afterward.

It wasn’t Leif, but Ragnar who paced slowly around her so he stood sideways before her, his gaze trained on the corner.

The growling cut off. She was aware of the seated wolf – Vidar – bending his head, respectful and subservient, but her attention was fixed on Ragnar.

Stripped to the waist, the lantern light painted him like a gilded marble statue. He was all muscles and scars and a dusting of dark-gold hair. More remarkable was the way he stood fully upright, hands on his hips, as though he hadn’t been shot through the shoulder by one of Connor’s marksmen hours before. He’d forgone a bandage, and so she could see the shiny, pink puckering of the wound just to the right of his left shoulder blade. A near-miss, and a rare one. More remarkable still: Connor had been correct about the healing. The wound was closed. It looked weeks old, rather than the pulpy, fresh mark of a just-pulled arrow shaft.

The prickling on her neck became painful in its intensity.

Then he turned to her, and it somehow got worse.

His eyes were indeed the exact same blue as Leif’s, but brimming with mischief, his lips mobile, a repressed grin presenting itself as the smirk she’d expected. Had he been Southern, all in silks and pomaded to within an inch of his life, the matrons would have called him a rake. As a wild man with a silver collar and a mane laced with bones, she called him dangerous.

“Don’t mind Vidar. He’s a bit jumpy is all,” he told her. “He gets a little worked up where Harald’s concerned.”

“H-harald?” Her voice cracked embarrassingly, and his grin sharpened at hearing it. She schooled her features, grasped desperately for authority, and said, “He’s not dead, is he?”

Her question seemed to please him, for some reason. “Oh no. He’ll be fine in another day or so.” His gaze cut dramatically toward his packmates, then back, and he leaned in, suddenly, tone dropping to conspiratorial levels. “Poor Harald: not all of the lads are as resilient as me.”

Up close, the animal-musk smell was more intense, his eyes even bluer. Amelia wasn’t sure if she wanted to take a step back, or–

Another growl cut through the tent, this one sharp, and forceful, and left Ragnar ducking his head and stepping neatly back from her, his expression wiped clean.

Leif stepped into the space he’d vacated, and his presence was as overwhelming as it had been in the trees, in the moment she’d first approached him.

With his attention on Ragnar – who was shrinking down even further, making himself small in a show of deference to his alpha – she had a chance to study him without being studied in return.

His hair was lighter than Ragnar’s, a true, coin-grade gold, and though snarled and snagged with bits of twig and leaf from the forest, had been braided at some point, three braids arching over each ear and falling onto his shoulders, the ends marked with fine, carved silver beads.

His sleeveless tunic revealed that he wore the same sort of thick, gold arm bands as Ragnar – and that the arms within seemed ready to burst the metal, so thick were the muscles there. Likewise, the leather ties of his tunic strained in the front, a deep V of bare chest visible, bronzed by time spent in the sun. Boots caked in mud, and trousers fitted over strong thighs…a Northern hero straight from a storybook. The big, strong barbarian here to save the day.

Then he turned his head and caught her staring.

The fall of his gaze was as thrilling as it was terrifying. He locked eyes with her, and there was no question she’d been snared by the gaze of a predator. The closest point of comparison was the night she’d met Alpha and his females; the fear, the sense that she was staring down death, and somehow surviving it.

Stop! she scolded herself. She would have expected this sort of behavior from one of the silly girls at a springtime ball or house party; would even have expected it from her sister. But Amelia didn’t do this. She didn’t get overwhelmed, not in anyone’s presence.

She blinked and tried to school her expression, as he turned to face her fully.

Scratch big: Northmen were massive.

“My lady,” he greeted, with a voice like a rockslide. (Gods, no wonder Oliver and Tessa had both been swept away by members of this family.)

She had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. “Your grace,” she returned, but he shook his head before she could continue.

“Leif will suffice.”

Behind him, Ragnar grinned, and then smothered it in his palm.

Amelia didn’t flatter herself into thinking he was establishing some sort of intimacy. His refusal of his title – and Ragnar’s reaction to the fact – told a story of inner turmoil. As Oliver had written: a struggle between the prince and the pack leader; the self he’d thought to become, and what he’d been turned into instead.

“Leif, then,” she said with a nod. “I’ve come to check on your men and see if you require anything else in the way of bandages or medicine, but it would appear as if a miracle has taken place.” She gestured to Ragnar, who sent her another of his dangerous grins.

Leif didn’t turn, but snapped his fingers, and Ragnar subsided; then turned around and walked over to speak in low tones with the other two wolves in the tent. It was a small interaction – Leif and Ragnar hadn’t even made eye contact – but so inhuman that it left her chest feeling unaccountably tight.

“Not a miracle,” Leif said. “Wolves heal more quickly than – humans.” She noted the way he tripped over the word.

She offered what she hoped was a disarming smile and said, “I imagine wolves do most things more quickly than the rest of us.” She put a teasing note into her voice, hoping to draw him out.

But he remained stern, his brow furrowed, his jaw set in hard lines. Utterly charmless.

She stopped trying to smile. “Regardless, the offer stands: if there’s anything you need–”

“We’re fine.”

Charmless and rude.

“Food, then. Connor’s men have been hunting, and–”

“We can hunt for ourselves.”

She frowned. “We have more than enough – and I insist on sharing,” she stressed, when he would have interrupted her again. “It’s the least I can offer after our less-than-friendly meeting.” A less-than-friendly meeting that could have justified his current behavior…but she didn’t think that was the case. This was merely him, she thought. The wayward prince Oliver had warned of…potentially in thrall to his cousin, even if Ragnar was the one wearing a collar.

“I don’t know how it’s done up North,” she said, “but in the South, we pride ourselves on hospitality.”

That finally garnered a reaction. He lifted a single, burnished brow, and his nostrils flared slightly. He didn’t smile – was perhaps not capable, given the tautness of his cheeks and jaw – but something in his face shifted; some tiny spark of amusement lurked in his eyes, easy to miss had she not been so fixedly caught in his gaze. “Have Tessa and Oliver not written? Have they not told you ‘how it’s done up North’?”

“Oliver wrote to tell me of King Erik’s frigid welcome upon their arrival,” she said. “It would seem his nephew is equally cold-blooded.”

In the corner, Ragnar barked a laugh.

“Hm,” Leif hummed. “A man gutted and a man shot. I suppose I should be feeling welcome.”

“Those were accidents. Connor’s already apologized for it.”

“Connor,” he said, with a trace of mockery, “is undisciplined and unapologetic. He also behaves as though he speaks for the entirety of the Southern resistance forces.” That single brow popped again. “Is that true?”

Charmless, rude, and infuriating. “Connor is one of my most trusted generals and advisors. His word carries…weight. Here.”

“The greatest weight?”

She fought not to make a face; her mother had cautioned her on just such a thing. Your father, and brother, and your men at arms here at home find it charming and funny, but battle-hardened soldiers will not. Northmen will not, Katherine had said, not with her usual lecturing tone, but with true fear shining in her eyes.

She said, “I am the commander of our company. Connor is, as I said, an important advisor and general. As is Lord Reginald, whom you’ve met, and Lord Edward and Lady Leda, whom you will meet back at the manor. That’s assuming you mean to travel with us back to the seat of the duchy and join our forces. That is the reason you’ve come, isn’t it? Or were you traipsing through our woods on a personal quest?”

Chew on that, wolf man.

But young though he may have been, he was a prince, also, trained and true; and before the wolf had stripped him of manners, he’d learned how to handle these sorts of tenuous conversations with aplomb. He inclined his head in the first show of deference. The first hint of anything like respect she’d seen from him since Alpha first landed amongst the snapped-in-half trees.

His voice evened out, more polish, less gravel, when he said, “My pack – my men and I have come ahead of the main Phalanx as emissaries, yes,” he said, conveniently leaving out the part about coming without permission, against the king’s wishes. “It was our intention to rendezvous with you and your men so that we could discuss our common enemy, and a possible alliance.”

“Possible alliance? Was your intention? Has something changed?”

Before he could answer, Ragnar stepped up beside him. Hooked an arm over Leif’s shoulder, casually intimate, though Leif stiffened beneath his touch. “Don’t go turning the lady away on my account, cousin.” His gaze raked Amelia head to toe in a bold assessment of the sort she’d rarely received from other men – and never received in a manner as salacious as this.

Her face heated…and her belly, the low, slow-coal warmth of arousal she hadn’t thought to feel after Mal. She tamped it down, as Leif turned and growled at his packmate.

Unbothered, Ragnar met his gaze and gestured at her. “I’m only saying. She–”

“Mind your tongue,” Leif snarled, and his tone not only quelled Ragnar – he stepped back, hands lifted – but sent a hard shudder down Amelia’s back. To her, he said, “We shall discuss an alliance. Perhaps as we travel.” Clipped tone, gaze withdrawing, dismissive.

“Yes,” she said, aiming for regal, and falling far short. “That will be fine. Let me or one of my men know if you require anything else tonight.” She spun, and marched from the tent – the dark-haired wolf moved to lift the flap for her – and didn’t stop walking until she was tucked away safe and hidden against Alpha’s side, where hopefully no one could hear the quick pounding of her heart.

~*~

Leif waited until Amelia had been swallowed by the dark – he could still see her, but no human could have, at this distance – then he rounded on Ragnar with a snarl.

The bastard had the nerve to chuckle. “You’re angry, alpha.”

Leif swiped at him, and Ragnar stepped neatly back, so his hand whistled harmlessly through the air.

Both of them knew that Leif could have gripped his hair, or his shoulder, or his throat if he’d truly wanted to – just as they knew that Ragnar would have gone down on his knees, head bowed in submission if it had been truly required.

Leif had grown far too lenient.

That was, perhaps, why he growled loudly and sharply enough to have Vidar scrambling to his feet. Leif caught sight of him, and tipped his head toward the tent flap. “Leave us.”

“Yes, alpha.” Vidar roused Harald, and then helped him limp from the tent and out into the night. They would be more comfortable out there bedded down in the cool grass anyway, curled up beneath the stars. For his own part, the confines of the tent were making Leif’s skin itch. It smelled of her, of Amelia. Her saddle bags, and extra cloaks, and furs, and somewhere, buried amongst the luggage, a spare pair of trousers blotted with her sweat and the dewiness between her thighs.

The wolves stationed outside could doubtless hear them, but for Leif, the semblance of privacy was enough. When they were alone – in body, if not in hearing – he put a hand in the center of Ragnar’s chest, and pushed. Not hard enough to knock him down, but it moved him back until he hit the tent’s center support pole, where he landed with a wince, a hiss, and a grin.

“I’ve just been shot, you know,” Ragnar complained, but his head was tipped all the way back against the pole, throat stretched and exposed, the torq gleaming in the lantern light. I yield, alpha. I’m yours. “You could show some care.” His lower lip jutted out in an exaggerated pout.

Leif bared his teeth, and the pout disappeared. They both knew that Leif had stood over him the entire time the Southern medic tended to his wound, flushing it and smearing it with unnecessary salve; that he’d growled and snapped at Amelia’s “general,” Lord Connor, until the man had wisely beat a hasty retreat.

“You’ve gotten too bold,” Leif warned, without any heat behind the words.

Ragnar grew serious – it was always eerie, when he did that, when the charmer and the clown dropped away, and left behind a sort of lethal intensity more acute than Erik’s most serious, kingly countenance. Erik might have been stern and broody…but Ragnar burned with a kind of murderous, bitter heat that still staggered Leif, at moments. Moments like these.

When he swallowed, the torq jumped, flash of silver in the low light. “And you’re still denying what you really are,” he countered. “What you really want.”

Leif’s heart began to hammer, and the flicker of Ragnar’s lashes said he heard it. “How would you know what I want?”

No grin this time; no more teasing. “I know you want that woman. I know you scored your own palms just now to keep from grabbing her.”

Leif passed a thumb over the claw marks he’d left in his palms – and then balled his hands into fists to hide them. “That’s just base, animal instinct.”

“Yes. That’s the most important kind. That’s the truth.”

Leif leaned in close – not because he had to; they both knew that, too. “What would you have me do? She’s not a paid whore. I can’t throw her down and mount her.”

“You could start by asking her. You smelled her; you heard her heart galloping. She was excited.”

He had smelled her, had heard her. Had watched her tip her head back, and draw herself up, as brave and stubborn as her sister and cousin, but with a steely undercurrent. “She was afraid,” he countered…but there’d been something else, there, too. A spark of interest. Perhaps against her will. A hectic, trapped-bird emotion that had manifested in the flicker of her lashes, the clench of her jaw, the flutter of the visible pulse in her throat. He'd wanted to put his mouth there, in that hollow, and taste the racing of her heart, the anxious sweat that pricked along her skin.

Gods, but he was an animal.

Ragnar cocked his head. “Fear and excitement aren’t all that different.”

Leif took his double meaning. How often had he confused the two emotions within himself? “Stop splitting hairs,” he growled.

“Stop bloody running,” Ragnar shot back. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. You want her, she wants you…”

“It’s by its very nature complicated. She’s Tessa’s sister–”

“So? Does Tessa’s sister not like a good fucking? Same as everyone else?”

“Stop it.”

“We dreamed of her,” Ragnar said, a growl rumbling in his chest, where they stood near enough for Leif to feel it in his own. “We saw her in the Sels’ awful bowl. That was her, Leif, in that vision, you know it was. She was…”

Leif could feel it, as sickening and alluring as it had been standing that day in the Sel general’s tent: the tug of magic, the promise of a future he couldn’t predict. Maybe true, maybe a trick. Amelia backlit by fire, and Ragnar’s claws gripping him from behind. He still didn’t know what it meant, couldn’t know. And that made him afraid. Excited. A nauseating blend of both.

“We’ve seen her, over and over we’ve seen her,” Ragnar continued, “when we go walking on the other side. She bloody spoke to you there! That means something. It has to.”

Leif agreed, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

He turned away, and put some distance between them, though his skin crawled, wanting close again. “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered, shaking his head so his hair fell over his shoulders and shielded his face, for all the good that did. Ragnar could read every tense line of him, every note of his voice. It was impossible to hide from him – perhaps that was why he continued to lie to himself. To both of them. An attempt to preserve some sort of privacy. “This is a war.”

Ragnar straightened from the pole, and took a step toward him, voice growing eager. He was always doing that: pushing into each and every crack that Leif revealed, angling in like the wolf he was toward his soft spots.

“Yes, it’s a war. Isn’t that all the more reason to take what we want now, while we still can? Must it be nothing but war, without any pleasure?” He stepped closer, and gripped Leif’s biceps lightly, just beneath the golden band he wore there. “You know that it helped, the women on the road.” Even closer, his voice dropping, note of hunger creeping in. “I helped. Do we not deserve to feel good, if we are to die in war?”

Leif turned his head, and saw the feral gleam in his eyes, his own heart knock-knock-knocking in time to the pulse visible in the side of Ragnar’s neck.

“We.”

“What?”

Leif said, “You said we. You said, ‘Take what we want.’”

He watched Ragnar comprehend his mistake, the flash of fear in his gaze, quickly-smothered, but evident in the sudden souring of his scent.

Leif managed to keep his voice very even, and very human, when he said, “Do you want Lady Amelia, Ragnar? Is that what you’re saying? We. Does that mean you want to share her?”

Ragnar debated a moment; wet his lips; took a deep breath. Said, finally, “We’ve shared the others.”

He didn’t dodge this time, when Leif shoved him. Fell easily down so he sat on his backside in the trampled grass; tipped his head back and looked up in the face of Leif’s low, nasty snarl. “No one is sharing Tessa’s sister,” he snapped. “Not you, not me, no one. She is an ally, and she’s heading an army, and this is war. If you need to fuck something, find a camp follower. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

Another painful-looking tug of the torq, as Ragnar swallowed again. “Yes, alpha.” Respectful…but not meek. And not, Leif didn’t think, the slightest bit deterred.

~*~

Amelia wasn’t sure she’d be able to fall asleep, but the heat of Alpha’s side, and the regular rise and fall of his ribcage as he breathed soon lulled her, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself in the gray-washed field of her dreams, where she’d first seen Leif and Ragnar. She stood beside the lake, its water smooth and dark, the grass standing tall and the trees still; no breeze, for once. Alpha gave her a cracked-eyed, sleepy look, and then settled with a snort of steam. No threats, then.

And no wolves, either, Amelia saw as she turned in a circle. The hazy sky stretched cloudless overhead, and for the moment, they appeared to be alone.

Until, suddenly, they weren’t.

A low pop, like the release of pressure in her ears when she climbed out of the swimming pond as a girl, sounded, and, as if by miracle, she found herself face-to-face with her sister.

“Tessie?!”

Tessa wore a rich, crimson velvet dressing gown belted tight over what was likely a finely-stitched nightgown, if the embroidery at its visible collar was anything to go by. Somehow, Amelia had forgotten the exact, rich russet shade of her hair, which spilled down her back past her elbows, loose save a neat braid behind each ear, the ends threaded with gleaming beads. Her skin, always so pale once she was old enough for Mother to worry about her time outside, insisting she carry a parasol so she wouldn’t freckle for the spring balls, was rosy now across her cheeks and bridge of her nose with fresh sunburn. She had a glow about her; she looked healthy. And, as she spotted Amelia and burst into a wide smile, happy.

“Lia!” she shrieked, and surged forward, hiking her skirts up against the long grass with one hand, waving madly with the other.

Amelia rushed to meet her.

Dream world or not, Tessa was real enough, warm and so much firmer than Amelia remembered, when Amelia clasped her in a tight hug and felt the new smoothness of muscle in her sister’s arms and back.

“What’s this?” Amelia pushed her back and squeezed her arms. “Have you been exercising?”

Tessa’s smile was so wide it looked like it must hurt. She giggled, and blushed, the sunburn going nearly as crimson as her dressing gown. “Well, yes. I’ve been training, some. Náli’s teaching Oliver how to sword fight best while being – well, slight, we’ll say. And Estrid’s been helping me, too, with bow and blade. And then there’s all the riding–”

So many words that Amelia was struggling to rectify with her sister, but a spiel interrupted by a sound that Amelia knew right away: the cry of a drake.

Amelia peered around Tessa and saw a pearly-white drake with blue eyes. Slightly smaller than Alpha’s females, but similarly formed, all smooth scales, elegant neck, and whiplike, spade-tipped tail. She was saddled, as Alpha was, and the chains on her bridle jangled as she shook her head, and then lowered it, snorting in defensive uncertainty.

Tessa glanced over her shoulder, and called, “It’s all right, girl.” To Amelia: “This is Alfie.” Her voice was proud, brimming with affection. And Alfie, in turn, was very worried about her mistress, stalking forward with her head low, and wings half-spread, fussing in a series of little growls and clicks and inquiring noises.

Belatedly, Amelia wondered if the two drakes might clash. She whipped around to see that Alpha was sitting up on his haunches, head cocked, gaze riveted on the white female…but posture otherwise nonthreatening. He felt superior, here, rather than worried.

Friend, she thought, firmly. Sister.

“This is Alpha,” Amelia said, stepping in front of him, and stroking his muzzle when he leaned down to blow warm air across her face. “And he’s going to be a good boy, isn’t that right?”

A forceful exhale blew her hair back, but he sent acquiescence through their bond.

When Amelia turned back, Tessa was cradling Alfie’s head, and stroking her behind her horns. The drake’s wings had folded, thankfully, though she still gazed at Alpha with open skepticism.

“This is only my second time coming here intentionally,” Tessa said, with the air of an embarrassed confession. “I didn’t expect to see anyone – and certainly not you! But what a happy accident.” She frowned at her drake. “I’d hoped our drakes might get along, when we finally meet again in person.”

“They will,” Amelia said, though she had no idea how the females would react to the cold-drakes. Alpha was very much, well, an alpha, self-assured and confident, and facing only a lone female now, besides. Who could predict what they’d think when all eight of them were together, family versus family, subspecies against subspecies? Most worryingly: male against male, between Alpha and Percy. But reassuring Tessa of uncertain outcomes was an old, hard-to-break habit.

“But what do you mean by ‘here’? What is this place? And are we really here together? Or am I imagining you?”

Tessa’s face lit up. “It’s real! Náli calls it ‘the Between.’ Apparently, it’s the realm of the dead.”

“Realm of the dead?”

Alfie settled down, lying upright with legs folded beneath her, like a horse. Tessa gave her one last pat, then moved away and beckoned for Amelia to follow, until they were equidistant between the two drakes. She settled down cross-legged in the grass, heedless of the beaded edge of her dressing gown, and patted the place beside her.

“Here, sit. I can tell you all about it. Or.” She rolled her eyes. “What Náli thinks I’m ‘fit to understand.’”

Amelia sat. “He sounds like a right wanker, this Náli.”

“He is,” Tessa said, and Amelia bit back a snort, because the Tessa she’d known pre-journey, pre-North, pre-wedding would have acted scandalized and protested calling anyone such a thing. “But that’s mostly a façade, I think,” she said, “and he’s not so bad once you get beneath it. According to him, this is technically the place where dead who haven’t crossed fully beyond the veil linger…”

Tessa talked, and Amelia listened, and it became quickly apparent that, though Tessa insisted Oliver knew much more than she did, that she still had much to learn, Amelia was leagues behind when it came to magical understanding.

“But we’re not dead, and so we can’t see the dead who linger here,” Amelia said, once Tessa had worked through her explanation.

“That’s Náli’s theory, at least. He can see the dead – or could. Most have moved on, he said, since the emperor appeared.” Tessa rubbed at her arms, as if to chase away a chill, and peered up at the sky. “Not even Náli knows everything.” She looked back at Amelia, expression gone unusually grave. “That’s the thing that frightens me about magic: we can’t know exactly how it works, or how it might be used against us. Even what we ourselves are capable of.” She shook her head. “I never would have believed that I could do something like magic an object, the way we did with Ragnar’s torq.”

A vision of matched pairs of blue eyes reared up to the forefront of Amelia’s mind, a sharp grin, a stern frown, and she resisted the urge to chafe her own arms, and rub away the goosebumps that had sprung to life there. “Speaking of Ragnar…”

Tessa whipped toward her, eyes getting big. “Have they reached you? Have you met them?”

“Yes, and yes.”

Tessa’s eyes got somehow bigger. “Oh! Are they well? How is Leif? Is he injured? Oh, Erik and Rune will be so relieved to hear that he’s found you. They’ve worried terribly over him, and so have I, of course, and Oliver as well. I shall have to send a falcon back to Aeres to inform Revna – that’s Leif’s mother, my mother-in-law, actually, and–”

“Tessa.”

Tessa stopped talking, and her brows drew together. “What? What is it?”

“Nothing’s wrong – well. I don’t know. It might be. Leif is alive, at any rate, and Ragnar is healing – or is healed, I suppose. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Healed from what?”

Then it was Amelia’s turn to talk, and Tessa’s turn to listen, and by the end, Amelia’s pulse was pounding as if she stood right in front of the two men, still, craning her neck to look up at them and wondering why it felt almost pleasant to be peered at like a tasty rabbit at supper time.

Tessa winced when Amelia explained about Ragnar’s injury. “Poor Ragnar – though, everyone here would look at me askance if they heard me say such a thing. Ragnar is…not well-liked.”

“Didn’t he leave Ollie, Erik, Leif, and Náli for dead?”

“He, um, well, he lured them up into the mountains and left them with a clan of cannibals, actually.”

“Ah. Hard to be liked after that.”

“Not to mention he’s the one who turned Leif.”

Amelia started to offer another smart remark, and found she couldn’t. Swallowed instead, and worked to keep her expression neutral. “How did he manage that? Turning him, I mean?”

“I don’t know how the magic of it works, but I know a bite was involved. You may have seen it.” She gestured to her own side, and then her cheeks pinked. “Or, well, no. I haven’t seen it either. But apparently it’s here, along his ribs.”

“Hm. Did he do it on purpose? Was it a heat of battle sort of thing? Or did Ragnar turn Leif intentionally? Him specifically?”

“Only Ragnar knows that,” Tessa said, shaking her head. “But I think Erik suspects as much. It’s why he was so reluctant to allow Ragnar out of the dungeons, and why even then, it was only if we made the torq to bind him.”

“It stops him from shapeshifting, yes?”

“Yes. He could still slay a man with a bow or a sword in his human shape, of course, but Leif assured us all that he wouldn’t do such a thing unless instructed to.” Tessa sounded doubtful.

“Have you seen them together? Leif and Ragnar?”

Tessa’s frown deepened. “I saw them the day we magicked the torq. And I’ve seen them from the window, walking the palace grounds.”

“But have you seen them up close since the torq was put on?” Amelia pressed. “Have you watched them interact?”

Tessa didn’t answer the question, but a light came into her eyes, one of dawning understanding. Tessa had always been a perceptive girl, but sheltered, carefully shielded from life’s more unsavory realities. She’d never before looked at Amelia the way she did now, as though she’d realized she was about to hear something unpleasant, but was braced and ready for it.

“Why?” she asked. “Lia, what have you seen?”

She hadn’t expected to be asked so directly, and with that face pointed at her no less, and so she hesitated, caught off guard. Second guessed what she’d seen.

And what had she seen? Leif standing vigil while Ragnar was patched up; Ragnar pushing to see what he was allowed to say, and being rebuked for it. Her mind kept snagging on the arm Ragnar had hooked on Leif’s shoulder…and on the way, when injured, when she’d first approached, Ragnar had tucked his face into Leif’s neck and whined.

Amelia shook her head. “I don’t know. But their connection is…strong. It’s palpable.”

Tessa bit at her lip, and murmured, “Oh no.”

“They’re walking upright, and they’re speaking – but there’s no mistaking them for men, Tessa. They’re animals, now, through and through.”

But Tessa said, “I think it’s only the adjustment that’s been hard for Leif. He can’t really trust Ragnar, not after everything. He’s still learning what it’s like to be a wolf. He’s a good man, Amelia. I’ve seen as much.”

“Maybe before he was turned,” Amelia said. “But whoever he is now, I think the Leif you met at Aeres is long gone.”

And in his place, Amelia had met something powerful, and frightening, and, wort of all, powerfully alluring.

~*~

“What do you make of them?” Reggie asked, where he stood at the tent’s entrance, peering out at the dark. He’d stripped off his gauntlets and mail and tunic, and stood now in an unlaced shirt, the torchlight beyond the tent haloing the trim shape of his torso through the material. His hair was rumpled and wavy from the day’s sweating, and Connor wanted nothing more than to knot his fingers in it and drag him down so he could taste the wine off his tongue.

He'd asked a serious question, though, and since it was their first chance to speak privately all day, Connor stretched his arms overhead until his spine popped, resettled on the bedroll, and gave the topic a bit of serious thought.

“Firstly,” he said, “I think it’s unnecessary for men to be that large.”

Reggie snorted, and turned, letting the tent flap fall shut behind him. It turned the light beyond the canvas into a soft blur, bringing forth the gold of his hair, the blue of his eyes, the dark streaks of dirt and dried sweat that framed the scar on his throat, as lovely as every other part of him to Connor. That scar meant he’d been through an ordeal, and come out on the other side. Scars were far lovelier than perfection, in his eyes.

“Jealous?”

“Hardly.” Connor hooked an arm behind his head, and let his legs fall open a little wider, so his breeches clung to the shape of his soft cock in front. “I think I’m more than adequate, and I think you’d agree.”

Reggie put on a pretentious tone, and scoffed, but Connor didn’t miss the dusting of pink along his cheekbones. He tugged off his boots, lined them up along the wall with Connor’s, and padded across the crushed grass in his wool stockings to join him on the bedroll. Where once he might have hesitated, or fidgeted about it, he now lied down straight away, on his back beside Connor, hands linked over his stomach. It was a small bedroll, and so they overlapped by necessity. Connor hooked their ankles together.

Reggie said, “I think those two could break a man in half.” He didn’t sound exactly frightened by the idea.

“And what about a woman?” Connor said. “The leader – the oh-so-charming Leif – and his second in command – clearly a relative, to look at them–”

“Cousins, he said.”

“Yes, well, I wasn’t listening all that carefully. I was too busy being horrified by the very obvious and animal way they were sniffing after our lady.”

Reggie half-rolled, and pushed up onto his elbow so he could shoot Connor a lifted-brow look. “Our lady?”

“She’s our commander, isn’t she? In this situation, she’s our lady and we’re her loyal subjects.”

The brows stayed lifted. “And you’re thinking of her in purely professional terms now, are you?”

Connor was well-aware that he was not what anyone would call a reassuring man. He could put someone at ease in bed, but out of it, he didn’t tend to inspire confidence. It seemed he said something at every turn to get Reggie’s back up – though some of that, he thought, was just Reggie himself, his old wounds and traumas; he would have bristled beneath anyone’s touch.

Still, Connor wanted to get it right. He found he didn’t like it when his words sent Reggie off into a whirl of self-doubt.

He met the cautious blue gaze now and said, firmly, “I have only ever regarded Amelia as an ally, a friend, and, now that she’s the possessor of five drakes, my superior in the command tent.”

“Where do library seductions fit into that?”

“Into me being drunk, and sad, and lonely, and wanting a bit of cold comfort. Had I known you were willing…” The souring of Reggie’s face told him he was venturing down the wrong path, yet again, so he swerved back to course.

He reached to cup Reggie’s jaw, smoothed a thumb along the fine-grained skin of his cheek. “War makes idiots of all men, and I wasn’t exactly brilliant to begin with.”

“Agreed.”

Connor pinched his cheek, earned a smile, and then went back to stroking it, his touch as soft as his voice when he said, “But I’m very clear-headed when it comes to you, sweetheart. Rest assured my gaze isn’t straying anywhere else. How could it?”

Reggie blinked, and Connor had the pleasure of watching his pupils expand to drink in the compliment.

He had no idea where this thing between them was going, if it could go anywhere at all. Either of them could die tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. But he was lovely, and warm – and fierce, and brave, and hurting, and he did, it turned out, when he leaned down to kiss Connor, leaning into the support of his hand, taste like wine. That was enough for now.

17

“On your left – your left,” Náli barked, and slashed with his long, slender sword.

Oliver barely managed to get his own blade up in time and gritted his teeth against the resounding clang of steel meeting steel. He was getting better at blocking – he didn’t miss, now – but could still only splutter a protest when Náli did a little swivel with his blade, and disarmed him with an effortless flick of his wrist. Oliver watched his sword go sailing through the air and land with a soft plop in the snow.

At least Náli was graceful enough not to crow with triumph this time.

Oliver propped his hands on his hips and attempted to get his breath back. “How do you keep doing that?”

Mattias, observing from a log, hopped up and went to fetch the sword. Oliver didn’t like being waited on like that – by Náli’s man no less – but he was exhausted at this point.

When he wiped the sweat from his brow, his palm came away far wetter than it should have, given the coldness of the dawn. He frowned, and tried to work the shakiness from his fingers through a couple of wrist stretches.

“A little bit of practice,” Náli said, smug, flipping his bright hair over his shoulder. “A little bit of natural talent.”

Mattias thumped him lightly in the back of the head as he passed – “Uncalled for!” Náli protested – and came to offer Oliver his sword, pommel-first. He made the simple act of flipping the sword around and catching it by the blade look like the most intricate dance step.

“Thanks,” Oliver murmured, face warm.

Mattias offered a small, close-lipped, but reassuring smile. “I first put a sword in his hand when he was two. Granted it was wood, but we started early. He could disarm Klemens before he could write his own name.”

On the sidelines, Klemens groused, “That was one time, and I was fifteen, and hungover.”

Náli aimed his sword at him, grinning. “Still counts.” He turned in a circle, working through a series of stretches, and then faced Oliver again, falling into his ready stance. “Let’s go again.”

“No.” If he sounded petulant, so be it; they’d begun training by torchlight, before the sun had begun to flirt with the horizon, and were at it still, past breakfast, while camp broke down around them, and the Phalanx prepared for the day’s march. He felt unsteady inside; tired, yes, but quivery as well. Almost like he had when he’d been plagued by marsh fever, those early warning days that had always meant a full-blown fever was less than a week away.

But that wasn’t possible. He hadn’t relapsed since bonding with Percy. He even now carried the heavy sapphire he’d found on the wall of the Fangs’ cave in his pocket, a reassuring talisman for his continued good health.

Náli cocked his hips and fixed him with a serious look. “No? And what will you tell the emperor when he swings his great longsword at your head? No? No, thank you, I don’t want to fight today.” A mischievous sparkle entered his eyes, highlighted by the rosy dawn light. “Perhaps you can seduce him, the way you did Erik. Then you never have to lift a finger – or, well, maybe a–”

“Fine,” Oliver gritted out, and all his focus went into keeping his arms steady as he slid back into the proper stance. “Let’s go again.”

Náli’s grin was sharp and victorious, and he flowed immediately into an attack without asking for confirmation.

Oliver dodged – right, this time, because Náli came at him from the left. Side, side, back, block, clang. He gritted his teeth and pushed forward, using his slight height advantage the way Mattias had encouraged.

Náli grinned – but was forced to step back, and disengage. Light-footed as a snow fox, he got free of the clash, and circled, looking for a new opening.

“Better, Your Lordship,” Mattias called. “Search for openings. Weak points.”

Náli’s gaze was trained on Oliver – on his feet, to be exact; shit, Oliver had been watching Náli’s torso rather than his feet, the way he ought to. He forced his gaze down. “Who are you helping, here?” Náli called.

Mattias said, “The one who needs it more.”

Oliver watched snow-dusted boots step to the side, the side…Now!

He had his sword up, and was moving, rushing to meet Náli, before the strike could come. He offered a strike of his own, instead, right at Náli’s middle.

Náli parried, but not without a huff of surprise, and a grunt of effort.

Oliver shifted back, and this time, he was the one smiling.

Náli’s smile was half-grimace. “Don’t go thinking you’re better than me.”

Oliver laughed, and blinked the dark spots from the corners of his vision. He needed breakfast, he reasoned. A bracing cup of strong tea. “I wouldn’t–”

The clearing between the tents, the trampled snow, the drakes crunching up deer bones a distance away; their audience, and the shouts of the men calling orders, the lowing of the reindeer, and the hustle and bustle of a disassembling camp…gone. All of it.

Oliver stood on a floor of polished black marble, its surface gleaming beneath the glow of the cressets burning on the walls. Walls made of a glossy, rosy stone veined with white and green. He turned, and found that the room was a perfect circle, the torchlight reaching high overhead to flicker across the domed, glass panels of a see-through roof. The walls weren’t walls at all, but a series of arches, save where a man-high fireplace blazed along one five-foot stretch. Beyond the arches it was dark, and all was silent save the crackle and shift of the logs in the fire.

A round table sat just to his left, in the center of the solarium – that’s what it was. He’d not seen one in person, but had pored over architecture books in the library at Drakewell. Accordingly, the table was littered with star charts, and maps. Aquitainia, he saw.

By the fire was a chair, and in it sat Romanus Tyrsbane.

Oliver took a slow breath in and released it just as slowly. Willed his racing heart to calm. This wasn’t real – he knew it wasn’t. He wasn’t truly here, standing in the solarium at the Aquitainian royal palace. It was real in the sense that it was happening – but it was happening in his mind.

Against his will, without warning, the Emperor Unchallenged had dragged him out of the physical realm and onto this plane – whichever one it was – instead.

The scene was far removed from their last encounter. No drakes, no field, no obvious threat. The emperor sat facing the flames, a glass of dark wine held loosely in one hand, and he turned his head toward Oliver after a time.

Long enough for Oliver to have realized what was happening, and close his mouth, and regulate his breathing somewhat.

“Hello,” Romanus said, quietly. His voice was low and deep, resonant; it seemed to spread through the room like smoke, dissipating in the dark archways and curling up toward the glass ceiling. An insidious sort of reach; it curled round Oliver’s throat, hooked him by the ears and drew him forward unconsciously.

He halted three steps from the emperor’s chair.

Romanus watched him, lilac eyes passive and unaggressive, mouth soft in his pale, pale face. His hair lay like a shining spill of milk over one shoulder, leaping with firelight, and rather than armor, he wore a finely-wrought golden tunic, its ivory ties set off-center in a way that highlighted the broadness of his shoulders and chest, the narrowing of his waist, even while seated. His trousers were dark and soft-looking, tucked into buttery black boots with gilded tops over each knee. A massive amethyst winked on the ring on his first finger when he raised his wine to his lips and took a sip.

“Won’t you sit?” The lilt of his accent lent the question a certain lightness – and an authority. It was a request, yes, but one he expected Oliver to obey without question. He’d conjured this moment, after all.

Oliver waited a moment, debating. Noted the table at Romanus’s elbow, the crystal decanter, the spare glass. Considered trying to claw his way back to the waking world, but knew he’d never manage. He decided that it was better to appear composed and in control of both his senses and temper in front of this man, and so he nodded, and murmured, “Thank you.” Took the chair across from the emperor, and arranged his traveling tunic over his knees. Crossed his legs and rested his sword over his lap, marveling internally that he’d been able to keep it.

Once he was settled, Romanus poured a second cup of wine, and Oliver leaned forward to take it with another murmured thanks. Their fingers brushed, in the exchange, and that was real enough – as were the goosebumps that broke out down his arms in reaction. The emperor’s skin was smooth and cool, firm as the marble underfoot.

Oliver sat back, and peered into his glass. The wine was a translucent, rich plum color, and its bouquet fruity, when he sniffed it. Saliva pooled on his tongue in anticipation, and he swallowed it down and rested the foot of the glass on his knee, undrunk.

One corner of Romanus’s mouth twitched. “It isn’t poisoned, I assure you.”

“Enchanted, then. One can never be too careful in this sort of situation.”

Romanus tilted his head, as though studying a fascinating insect specimen, pinned and wriggling under glass, a mystery still. “What sort of situation would that be?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who brought me here.”

A slight lowering of pale eyelids, and then a subtle nod, easy to miss if Oliver hadn’t been studying him. “Yes. I did bring you.”

Oliver allowed his expression to ask a silent why?

Romanus swirled the contents of his glass, wine climbing up to the very lip, but not spilling. The deftness of the motion spoke to a larger competence; it was all too easy to imagine him outclassing Náli with a sword. Knocking his blade aside and bearing down on him like–

Belatedly, Oliver realized the emperor had begun to smile. A faint upward curve of his pale lips, stained faintly in the center from dark wine.

“Worried for your necromancer?” he asked.

Fuck. He can read my thoughts, Oliver thought, before hastily trying to wipe his mind clean.

“I can only read them because they’re so loud. And because you don’t yet know how to shield them from me.”

I can shield my thoughts? Oliver cursed himself the moment he thought the question, but Romanus nodded.

“With enough practice, yes.”

For a moment, in the face of new information, Oliver forgot their identities, their roles, their status as enemies, and leaned forward in his chair. “How? What sort of practice?”

The smile came again, so slight it wouldn’t have been a smile at all on anyone else. “Would you like for me to teach you?”

“Yes.”

18

Amelia thought it prudent to stay with the company as it proceeded back to the manner. She woke from her dream in the Between in a cold, nervous sweat, visions of wolves fighting men while she flew blissfully unaware overhead driving her straight to a saddle she hadn’t occupied in far too long. Shadow actually swung his head around and nudged the toe of her boot once she’d mounted, the look in his black eyes full of judgement.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” She stroked his neck and promised him one of their dwindling supply of shriveled apples when they returned.

She’d had a moment, when she’d first mounted, when it felt as if she’d grown so used to riding a drake that she’d forgotten how to ride a horse. A silly notion soon dispelled, but a guilt she feared she’d tend for as long as she split her time between mounts.

Since he’d come on this trip riderless – she liked bringing him along whenever she could, in case she needed to ride on the ground, as she did today – Shadow was frisky and full of energy. She let him have his head a bit, cantering up and down the line as it found the main road, and progressed along the edge of the Inglewood, toward the manor, and camp.

The sun was out, warming toward proper spring, and Shadow’s neck was steaming, and Amelia’s skin slick with sweat beneath her riding clothes and amor by the time she slowed the stallion to a swinging walk and settled in for the last leg of the trip.

Connor and Reggie rode six or seven lengths ahead of her, and she stifled a grin at the sight of the display they made: Strangers to Connor’s free side, and L’Espoir men to Reggie’s. The pale blue, white, and silver of a poncy lord, and then the shifting grays, browns, and greens of forest outlaws. There were no proper Dale men left, after the Sel occupation of the manor, and so Connor was making noises about granting land and titles to his woodsmen. A scandal that would have been the talk of the countryside once, but of which Amelia now approved. A lord, a general, needed men of his own, and Connor’s were exceedingly capable, even if their table manners were lacking.

Shadow tensed beneath her; his ears swiveled, and he let out a loud, warning exhale as he turned his head to the right. Not a warning for her, but for whomever was walking up beside them. The horse could strike out with his forelegs quick as lightning, and so Amelia tightened her reins and gave him a little tap with her spur to hold his attention. Not yet. Not until I say so.

“That’s a fine beast,” a Northern-accented voice said.

Amelia gave another quick press of her fingers on the outside rein, and then turned her head as well.

Ragnar strode beside them, easily having caught up with and now keeping pace with Shadow’s long strides. He’d donned his sleeveless tunic once more, the leather hiding the scar on his shoulder, but not his muscled chest, exposed nearly down to his navel by the half-laced clasps. His hair was fluffed over the fur collar, fresh braids along his temples pulling it back from his face, and exposing a pink-and-silver, obviously healing, but very clearly new bite mark on the side of his throat.

The sight of that mark – which he could have hidden with collar and hair, but had chosen to reveal instead – halted her thoughts a moment. It could have come from any of his wolf brothers, but she knew it hadn’t. Leif had done that, and perhaps it had been a punishment, a chastisement…or perhaps it had been something else entirely, and the vivid picture that filled her mind sent a hot flush through her, head to toe. Part secondhand embarrassment, part shock, part hunger, the sort that left you a little sick to your stomach, heart pounding and palms clammy. She was no blushing virgin, but the two of them, their flagrant, though angry intimacy, their wolfish ways, and the intensity of their gazes – both very different in humor, but similar in intent – made her feel like one all over again.

It was rather infuriating.

He grinned, a lazy, slow-dawning smile that flashed his too-sharp canines, and which made her realize she’d been staring stupidly at him, without answering.

Shadow jigged, and she checked him with a firm hand and said, “I wouldn’t walk too closely, if I were you. He’s not keen on strangers.”

“I can tell. I suspect I’ll win him over in time. I tend to have that effect.” The cheeky bugger winked at her, and then folded his hands behind his back and faced forward, tone conversational when he said, “I always thought nice Southern ladies rode mares or traveled in pony carts.”

He was baiting her, and she knew it – but sometimes bait was too irresistible not to take. She snorted. “And I didn’t think you had one book to share amongst all of you in the North. How else could you form such useless prejudices about Southern ladies?”

He chuckled, and she could tell he was pleased with her answer. His gaze returned – but to Shadow, rather than her, an appraising look that traveled from plate-sized hooves to the stallion’s deep, broad chest. “We could use horses like him up North. We’ve all these big men, and all these shaggy little things. I bet he could make good time through the snow drifts.”

“The king rides a pony?”

His lip curled in distaste, and he faced forward again. “No. Not the king. He and his have the valuable beasts. But we in the clans have old stock. Nothing nearly so fine as what Erik rides out on.”

A wealth of history, of bitterness, of something nearly like longing was loaded in that one name. They’d not grown up together full-time, Erik and Ragnar, she knew, but Oliver had written that they’d been boys together at the Midwinter Festival each year. That there had been palace visits; that the starkness between the cousins had been driven home at every point: the bone-braided clansman in a hide tent, and the prince dripping gems, wrapped in fine velvets, with all the best weapons, and horses, and hunting hawks.

She kept her tone light when she said, “Do wolves ride horses, then? I thought perhaps you had no use for them – or the horses for you, come to that.”

His gaze cut over sideways, a snatch of blue brighter than the pale sky overhead. Curl at the corner of his mouth, little smirk of the sort that seemed to say look at me. “We seem to have lots of assumptions about one another, don’t we?”

“Yes.” Including the assumption she’d held that a Northern clansman would be one step up from a wild bear, all grunting and gesturing, with filed teeth and blue war paint. She wasn’t proud of that assumption, but her nurse growing up had possessed a vivid, fearful imagination, and no practical experience with anyone north of the Cask River.

She attempted to soothe her jangling nerves with a deep breath, and said, “Are you feeling better today? Your shoulder isn’t troubling you?”

He flexed his arm – wasn’t that a lovely sight? – and rolled both shoulders, face clear of pain. “Right as rain,” he said, and then patted his biceps, shooting her another sideways glance to see if she was watching.

She felt her own smile threaten. “You’re a bit of a peacock, aren’t you?”

“A what?”

“A peacock. It’s a bird. Great, colorful tail that fans out to impress the females.” She lifted an arm to demonstrate.

His grin deepened, and his head turned toward her another fraction, so she could see the dancing of his gaze. “Sorry. All I heard was ‘cock,’ darling.”

Amelia couldn’t help but chuckle, though she knew she shouldn’t encourage him. She’d pegged him as dangerous straight off, and perhaps he was even more dangerous than she’d thought.

Charming, though. Unlike his cousin.

“I’ve been warned about you, you know.”

“Aye?” He shrugged. “Your sister?”

“And my cousin. Oliver writes quite often.”

“Ah, yes, the lovely Oliver. I still can’t believe Erik made a move on him, you know,” he said, with a practiced air of confession. “What’s a stuffy, uptight ice king going to do with that bit of fire anyway?”

“Warm his hands, for starters,” she said, and his laugh was a bright, startled punch of sound.

“Ha! I like it. The fire runs in the family.”

“You should meet my mother.”

“Hm, maybe I will. Is she as pretty as you?”

As far as lines went, it was neither the boldest, nor the most creative she’d ever heard. But the way he said it, the bright spark in his gaze, left her toes curling and uncurling inside her boots. Her pulse was quick, but she managed to keep her face and voice neutral as she gave an offhand wave and said, “Oh, prettier. She has gold hair. Father’s side of the family is where all the red comes from. And here I am.” She flicked her braid over her shoulder. “Dark and plain.” She made the mistake of catching his eye, in time to watch his smile shift to a smaller, darker expression; less playful man, more wolf on the hunt.

“I wouldn’t say plain, love.” His look promised all sorts of alternative adjectives, ones that left her clothes chafing uncomfortably against skin gone too tight, and too hot.

A small, reasonable voice in the back of her mind was shouting, unheeded, upbraiding her for being moved and flattered when she had never been prone to that sort of thing before. Mal had been the exception – the only exception, she’d thought. And even then, he hadn’t been so…arresting. She had loved Mal, loved him still, missed him like a lost limb, but their love had always felt like a comfortable, broken-in pair of boots, even at its most heated. It had never felt illicit. Never felt like a spark that had the ability to raze her down to nothing but ashes.

She looked away from him, and fixed her gaze between Shadow’s ears. “You’re too forward, Lord Ragnar,” she said, flatly, even as her throat tried to launch itself up her throat. Her face was flaming, and she hoped her blush could be explained away by the sun’s heat.

“Aye,” he said, amicably. To her relief, the flirtation dropped off his voice. “But it’s not ‘lord’ anything.”

She risked another glance, and saw that he watched the road ahead, fingertips ghosting over the torq at his throat, frown touching his mouth. “Not anymore?” she asked.

“No, never.” His lips twitched, a rueful half-smile. “I was chief, though. I was alpha.”

The look on his face, that wry, make-the-most-of-it take on loss, told her that he’d turned Leif – Leif specifically – on purpose. But that he’d never guessed he would be unseated by him. It was a fitting reverse of fortune, she thought.

“And now?” she asked, half curious…half vicious, because charmed or not, she couldn’t allow this man – this skinwalker, this traitor, this murderer – to think that she felt anything like softness toward him.

He glanced toward her again, hand falling to his side, expression shuttering so that she could read nothing of it. A startling withdrawal into himself – or, more likely, a dropping of an act. Which was the real Ragnar? The clown…or this shifty-eyed creature who walked alongside her now?

“Now,” he said, “I’m the beta.”

~*~

Leif ran on four legs, swift strides eating up the distance, the rest of his pack – save Ragnar – ahead of him, spread out to either side. He didn’t like running out in the open along the road like this; liked the shadow of the drake falling over them from time to time even less. Alpha – he wasn’t sure he’d get used to that name any time soon, especially not with his wolves grinning and cackling over it, Ragnar worst of all, insisting the coincidence was fate at play – flew high for the most part, surging ahead and then dropping back, monitoring his mistress, definitely, but serving as a lookout with a unique vantage point. Occasionally, though, he would swoop down lower, so that his shadow swallowed Leif whole; when Leif tipped back his head, he saw the drake’s head cocked, a red-gold eye beaming down on him like an angry sun, assessing him, judging him. Leif had told the others they wouldn’t be snapped up and eaten unless Amelia wanted them to be.

All the more reason to, as Ragnar had said, play nicely with the Lady of Drakewell.

It irked him that he was struggling with that.

Mere months ago, had anyone in Aeres, from kitchen boy, to visiting dignitary, been asked which of the two princes was the more mannerly and polite, all would have pointed to Leif, and they would have been correct. Rune was friendly – but too enthusiastic. Too youthful, and impulsive. The day the Drakes had first arrived at the harbor seemed a lifetime ago, now; Rune bursting with questions as they met the two redheaded, pale-faced strangers; Leif apologizing for his forwardness while he tried to contemplate marrying the shivering, frightened girl wrapped in the too-thin cloak.

Were they to act out that scene now, he had no doubt that he would be the rude one. With his surly looks, and his low growls, and his clipped responses, all his concentration going toward tamping down the wolf, rather than offering anything like welcome.

As they marched, as Leif ran out all his feral energy on four legs, moving from dusty road, to the cool shade of the forest, back and forth, sniffing, snapping at the occasional fly, he found that, oddly enough, he was able to turn loose of some of the constant tension he’d been carrying. He’d stayed human for most of their trip, walking with Ragnar. To keep an eye on him, he would have said…but mostly for the company. Because he still didn’t quite understand the way the other man seemed to draw his attention, over and over. He could have blamed it on the torq, on alpha responsibility, on distrust. He’s had his hand on your cock, an unhelpful inner voice said. And his mouth.

While the wolf ran loose, the human part of his mind was able to mull things over in a way he hadn’t been able to while he was fighting his wild, instinctual side. He leaped a creek, and plunged down a hill, sliding through leaf litter with a wolf at each flank, and internally, he faced a truth he’d been avoiding.

He was lonely.

His family wasn’t the largest, but it was closely-knit, and they’d lived out of one another’s pockets since he was a boy. Throw in Bjorn, and Birger, Magnus and Lars, Olaf, and the local farmers and builders, their falcon master, and horse master, and all his instructors growing up, and he’d rarely been alone.

But then he was turned. And he no longer understood how to be around everyone he’d always known – because he no longer understood how to be himself, and their concern and pity had been unbearable. His need for sex, the urge to mate was overwhelming at times, yes, and he needed an outlet for that, at least until the increased urge had stopped feeling so new…but he craved companionship, too.

Ragnar was filling that need – with hit-or-miss success. At times, he was genuinely fun to be around, and the moment Leif thought that was always the moment he recoiled from the notion, plagued by rage and guilt all over again. But he was stuck with him, for better or worse, and he was familiar. Familiarity could be the hardest vice of all to break free of.

But now, here, there was Amelia Drake, and his wolf wanted to sink his teeth into her nape and mount her, yes; but the man part of him, Leif Torstansson , prince and heir, thought they might actually get on quite well. That she could be a friend. If he could wrangle his own base instincts and behave like the civilized royal he’d been raised as all his life.

A hare burst from a clump of ivy and darted deeper into the forest. His two flanking wolves broke off with excited yips, and plunged after it.

Leif felt only the faintest pull toward the game, the prospect of meat, and hot blood on his tongue. They’d eaten only an hour ago, a flushed covey of quail, more bone and feather than anything, but the fresh game didn’t entice him as it normally would have. Now, he was thinking man thoughts.

He sent them a warning bark – don’t get lost, keep close – and then shifted.

It was still dizzying, shooting up to two legs, his vision changing, his claws becoming fingers and all his joints popping back into their usual shape. But he was more used to it, now, and didn’t need to catch himself against a tree trunk. He shook his hair back off his face, plucked a handful of leaves from the ends of his braids, and let his nose carry him back to the road, and the column of sweaty, marching men.

A pair of woodsmen led the party, bows slung on their backs, basic, but sharp shortswords on their hips. Their drab, earth-toned cloaks and boots would make for excellent camouflage under the trees. A ways behind them walked bannermen in sky blue and bright silver armor, reeking of sweat from the day’s warmth and the heaviness of their armor. Behind, Lords Connor and Reginald rode side-by-side, more of their men behind them, finery versus function.

“That’s ridiculous,” Reginald was saying, gesticulating with a gloved hand. “It would never work.”

Connor gazed on the gleaming, golden lord with such fondness and softness that Leif found himself glancing away, feeling as though they were owed some semblance of privacy. They were lovers, then, and not only because they smelled of one another, and the musk of sex unsuccessfully washed off with a splash from the creek this morning. It was evident in the air around them, an energy, a sense, bold as a burning brand from the fire in the way one looked at the other.

It was a sight that relieved him. Neither of them, then, were Amelia’s lover.

Not that it mattered. Not that he would ever…not that she would…

He sighed. “Pull yourself together, man,” he muttered under his breath.

The lords passed, their men trailing along, ignoring their bickering, and their group left a cloud of dust in its wake. Soft, pale dust, that swirled, and parted, and revealed the black head and arched neck of Amelia’s massive stallion, Amelia herself sitting erect and expert in the saddle, reins held loosely in one hand, the other resting on her thigh in the pose of a skilled, relaxed rider.

Her helm with its shocking red plume was hooked on the back of her saddle, its crimson crest trailing down the horse’s flank and flicking in a rhythm to match his tail. Sweat glistened on Amelia’s brow, cheeks ruddy from the sun, and without the unnecessary red paint, her mouth proved shapely and soft pink. A nice mouth. Nice like all the rest of her. He knew a sudden sharp, but purely human urge to see her without her armor; to know the feminine shape of her, and the way a thin nightgown would cling to her.

He took a deep, bracing breath, ruthlessly pushed down his wolfish tendencies, and prepared what he would say to her, when he stepped out of the shadow of the trees and drew up alongside her.

Then he noticed Ragnar.

He caught his scent first, that familiar musk that now, unfortunately, always brought to mind sex, his mind filling with memories of their joint exploits, loins tightening, cock stirring on automatic impulse.

As the dust cleared, he caught sight of him, dark-gold head bobbing along above Amelia’s knee as he walked beside her stallion, his gait long, and easy, his posture open and relaxed. His hair was off his face, braided back by Leif’s own hands that morning, before the sun was up, before they traded places, and Ragnar worked a single knuckle bone into his hair in turn. Exposed, Ragnar’s face was visible, as was his expression, a blend of smitten and devious. He was enjoying his conversation with Amelia…and thinking of all the ways he wanted to drag her off her horse and make her moan.

Leif growled before he could help himself, and swallowed the sound with difficulty.

Ragnar heard him. A quick, barely-noticeable jerk of the muscles in his arms, fractional tilt of his head. Leif glimpsed the corner of his mouth lift, caught the fast, blue snatch of his darted gaze, and knew that whatever Ragnar said next would be for his benefit.

His voice floated across the road, and the strip of verge on which Leif stood. “Do they listen to you, then? All these men? They don’t chafe beneath the yoke?” Ragnar had on his most charming voice, the one that had always inspired a sigh, and a reluctant invitation to dinner from Erik. The one that always left Leif with his head tipped back, a jerked nod signaling for Ragnar to get on with it, before a hot, willing mouth closed over his cock.

Amelia arched a single brow, but the twitch of her lips betrayed amusement. She was charmed; everyone who met the man was. It was his blessing, and the world’s curse.

“They wouldn’t,” she said, “if I acted the simpering princess. My aim is to be fair, and to listen carefully to everyone’s contributions.”

Ragnar glanced up, just as Alpha blotted out the sun, a vast, bat-shaped shadow closing over them momentarily. “The drakes don’t hurt, I expect.”

Amelia tipped her head back as well, though unlike Ragnar’s, her gaze was fond as she watched her dragon sail ahead of their party with one mighty, audible flap of leathern wings. The portrait she made – slender throat, fine-featured profile, graceful, easy posture in the saddle, the breeze blowing loose strands of hair across her face that she swept back with an unconscious gesture – was quietly stunning, more devastating than any jewel-dripping lady in feast day finery.

But it was more than that. It was also the drake, and the horse, evidence of her communion with wild things, that tickled the wolf in him; had it sitting up and panting, ears pricked. The sense that if any woman could understand what he was, and welcome it besides, it would be a woman like her.

Not her exactly; he couldn’t allow himself to think that. To have that hope.

“No, they don’t hurt,” she said, and then she lowered her head, and scanned the edge of the forest.

He knew she spotted him when her spine stiffened, shoulders pressing back. Her free hand, resting on her thigh ‘til now, went to her reins, checking the jig her mount gave in response to her sudden tension. Her gaze met his, and he watched, with regret, as all the easiness in her face was shuttered behind a stiff and leaderlike mask. Her mouth flattened, and her eyes closed off, and she might as well have slammed a door in his face.

“Will your alpha join us?” she asked Ragnar. “Or would he prefer to lurk in the bushes?”

Leif clenched his hands into fists, and squeezed until the knuckles popped – saw Ragnar hear the sound, and snigger to himself over it. Fucker.

“I dunno, my lady,” Ragnar said. “He does like to lurk, my alpha.”

My lady.

My alpha.

Leif ruthlessly shoved down the buzzing warmth kindled in his gut by those titles, and strode out into the sunlight to join them.

Amelia’s brows quirked, and she stroked her horse’s neck and murmured soothingly to him. He settled, but his dark gaze was fixed now on Leif, and his knees snapped up a little higher on each step. Leif knew if he got too close, or made a sudden movement the stallion didn’t like, he’d have his kneecaps pawed straight off.

Ragnar said, “Well. I stand corrected.” His grin was shit-eating, but he stepped back, head dropping a fraction in deference as Leif drew up alongside him.

Leif moved to elbow him, but Ragnar didn’t need to be told; he stepped neatly around so he walked on Leif’s other side, leaving the space at Amelia’s knee open for Leif to slot into.

“Prince Leif,” Amelia greeted, a bit stiffly.

“Lady Amelia.”

Ragnar gave a low hiss of amusement through his teeth, and Leif did elbow him, that time.

It was awkward. It was unbelievably awkward. All his mother’s careful court training gone to waste.

Up close, he could smell sweaty horse and sweaty girl. Oiled leather, sand-cleaned mail. And he could smell that she was…not aroused, not really, but interested. She smelled of interest, and curiosity, and the faint spice of possibility.

Enticing as it was intimidating. He was reminded, momentarily and unwelcomely, of Estrid’s aggressive advances, the expectation in her gaze when she presented herself before him with a nod as if to say, Here I am, what shall you do about it? He’d done nothing, just as he’d done when Náli swung a leg over his thighs and wobbled drunkenly in his lap, begging Leif for a distraction from his thought-unrequited love with his lead Dead Guard.

But this wasn’t that.

For starters, rather than polite distaste, he felt the hectic flutters of butterflies in his stomach, unwanted, but unavoidable, apparently.

He searched for something to say…and searched…and searched…

The horse snorted, loudly, and Leif distanced himself from the beast a fraction on his next step, which caused Amelia to snort as well, as his arm bumped Ragnar’s.

Ragnar turned his laugh into a cough. He said, “Amelia was asking about Erik’s Great Northern Phalanx, but I admitted I knew little of its inner workings, being naught but a traitor, spy, and clansman besides.” The last was said pointedly, and Leif sent him a pointed look in return.

Undeterred, Ragnar tipped his head a subtle fraction Amelia’s direction. “I told her you were the one to ask instead, seeing as how you’ll inherit some day.”

Leif stared at him a moment, as they walked, until Ragnar’s brows jumped. Go on, his face said, and he realized Ragnar was offering him a conversational opening. That he was helping him.

“You do remember your uncle’s army, yes?” Ragnar prodded. “You’ve not gone totally wolf-brained yet?”

No thanks to you, Leif thought, sparing him a dark glance, before he wiped his face smooth and turned to Amelia.

“Right. Yes. Well.” He linked his hands behind his back – mostly to keep them to himself, because his wolf was wagging its tail eagerly and he didn’t trust it not to make a grab for the trouser-clad leg at his shoulder – and fell back on palace training. “It travels in two columns on the march, with Erik in the very lead. We don’t have bannermen,” he said, and belatedly realized his tone had gone insulting.

Amelia laughed, though. “I told Reggie not to bring his bloody flag-bearers with him on a reconnaissance mission, but he never listens. He’ll die properly clutching a teacup, his pinky out.”

When Leif glanced up, her smile was as bright as the sun overhead, and he felt his own smile threaten.

He cleared his throat and faced forward. “Northmen die with swords in their hands. Or old and gray in their beds. Nothing in between,” he said, and heard his voice mimic Erik’s tone, as he repeated words said to him since he was a boy. “The Phalanx, though,” he continued, “might march in twos, but it’s named for its fighting formation, when battle is underway…”

It was easy, then, talking of first the army, and then Aeres, and then of his family. Of Erik’s stern façade, but the gentle way he’d lifted them back to their feet as boys, when he’d knocked them down while training. Of the way Mother could outride, and outmaneuver half the men in the palace, when she felt like it.

Before he knew it, the words were flowing easily, and his tone had gone light and conversational; he could feel no tension in his brow, or his jaw; no strapped-down impulses, or barely-suppressed urges. The scenery around them had changed: the road had widened, and veered farther from the trees; small crofts and homesteads had cropped up, fearful, curious faces peering through windows in need of cleaning.

“And Mother is…” Leif trailed off when he smelled the acrid stink of wood burned some time ago, and swung his head around to search for the source.

His wolves had joined them, in human form, now, walking not on the road, but a distance from it, a loose clump of large men with wild hair, laughing and talking with one another, conversation dying away as they caught the scent, too, and lifted their heads, noses testing the air.

Ragnar gave a low growl, and Leif fought not to echo it.

Several hundred yards ahead, incongruous against the pale green of spring grass, hunched the blackened, burned-out wreckage of what had once been a small cottage, and a large barn. Nothing but husks, now, all human and animal scents buried beneath the reek of char.

“Ah,” Amelia said, and must have followed the direction of his gaze. “There’s many like it. Connor’s brother was acting duke at the time of the Selesee occupation in Inglewood. They hanged him, killed his wife, and then went to terrorize the countryside. Most families have fled to the manor to join our camp. A few stayed…many didn’t survive.”

He heard the sharp edge of anger in her voice, and when he glanced up, saw the flex of her jaw, as a muscle tightened there.

“That’s the way of war,” he said, and she whipped her head around to face him, fast enough she didn’t have time to disguise the helplessness she felt on behalf of a people who weren’t her responsibility, but whom she’d taken on all the same. “The terror and suffering are a part of it,” he said, with regret. “Most wars are not won by soldiers fighting soldiers. Eventually, one side wants the suffering to stop more.”

Her lips compressed, but she nodded.

Then her eyes flew wide, and she twisted in the saddle with a gasp, so she faced the burned-out farm.

Farther down the road, Connor and Reginald and their retinues pulled up, dust puffing, then settling, streaming back on the breeze toward them, carrying the strong smell of charcoal…and something else. Something Leif hadn’t detected before, thanks to the stink of ruin, but which he breathed in deeply, now, and growled in response.

The scent of humans. Several. And something else, something almost like magic, but different, undercut with lavender; a scent that set all his nerves crackling, and his nails morphing to dark claws.

Ragnar growled, too, sinking down low in his knees, a half-crouch, ready for a shift he couldn’t manage with his torq.

Something stirred in the long grass, and Leif strode forward and around the horse, putting himself between Amelia and whatever moved there, on the side of the road. He let his wolf press up close to his skin, skin which rippled with goosebumps, his shift a mere thought away. He let his growl build, louder, deeper, rolling off his tongue like thunder.

“Leif,” Amelia said behind him, more command than caution, but he kept moving.

The grass rustled, swayed, and parted. A little girl with white-blonde hair stepped out of the verge, and into the road, between Leif and the two lords ahead.

Leif choked back his growl.

Lord Connor reined his horse around, confusion clear on his face even from a distance.

Reginald swung out of the saddle and approached the girl; pulled a glove off his right hand and offered it forward as he walked. “Hello, there,” he said, soft voice, soft smile.

She was a tiny slip of a thing, in a ragged, dirty dress that ended in tatters at her knees, legs, and ankles, and dirty bare feet visible, the soles caked in old, dried mud. Her hair was tangled, and her nose was running, and despite the heat of the sun, the breeze had raised goosebumps on her bare arms.

Leif had goosebumps, too, but not from the cold. His wolf was spinning in internal circles, teeth bared, bristling with alarm. Something was wrong. Something was–

Overhead, Alpha shrieked.

Amelia shouted, “Reggie, no! Get back, get back!”

Reginald pulled up, hand still outstretched, brows snapping together. “It’s only a child!” he shouted back.

The drake’s shadow fell over them.

And the girl exploded.

~*~

Alpha was confused, and the images he pushed through their bond into Amelia’s mind were a jumble of color, and sound, and threat, threat, threat, bad, danger, fight! A bombardment of aggression and fear and instinct so powerful she had to grip Shadow’s mane to keep from bending beneath the weight of it. She closed her eyes a moment, and tried to concentrate of what Alpha was trying to communicate, even as he shrieked overhead. Leif and Ragnar were growling in their wolf voices, and men behind them were shouting inquiries about why they had stopped. Too much noise, too much distraction.

Amelia took a deep breath, and opened her mind fully to Alpha; let him come flooding through every barrier, until her mind was his, and his surge of adrenaline and anger and fear boiled to life inside her, quickening her pulse, stuttering her breath.

She saw a field from above, hazy at the edges, tinted and gapped and full of holes. A memory, corroded by time. A field of fire. Drakes wheeling and diving, and breathing red-gold flames. Other drakes, too, of gleaming amethyst, and deep purple, great gouts of liquid, green heat pouring from their mouths, spilling down onto soldiers in soiled plate and mail. Men screamed, men died. Huge, lumbering gray beasts charged across the burned grass, some of them bearing siege towers and palanquins that smoked from stray dragon fire. Elephants. They screamed and trumpeted, and the drakes screamed, as purple clashed with black.

The scene tilted, wind rushed against her face, and she, too, realized she was mounted. That she was perched astride a drake. She shifted her gaze, and saw his sleek black neck, its spines, his pointed head, and sharp horns. He cocked his head, and she glimpsed a familiar red-gold eye, framed by the leatherwork of his bridle.

Alpha. It was Alpha.

She glanced down at herself, and saw silver armor, thick gauntlets with spiked backs, the edge of a green surcoat: the original Drake coat of arms. She pressed a hand to her chest – her flat chest – and marveled.

Alpha had had a rider before. Long, long ago. A man. Her ancestor.

Alpha tucked his head, and dove. Down, down, down, the wind rushing in her ears, the battle rushing up to meet them. Their target was a lone man, dressed in purple robes, rather than armor, a hood shielding his head and face. A shaman. All alone, and unarmed, his bare hands held aloft.

Amelia leaned low over Alpha’s neck, and a voice that wasn’t hers, but her ancestor’s, said, “Go! Go! Kill him!” She drew the sword strapped to her back, and gathered herself, ready to leap to the ground and make short work of the shaman with her sword should Alpha’s fire assault fail.

Even as he dove, Alpha’s ribs expanded: the great breath needed to propel his fire down in a killing jet.

Closer, closer, closer…

And the shaman blew apart.

A deafening crack, like a clap of close thunder, echoed all around them, and the shaman burst into thousands of tiny pieces. Skin, and blood, and meat, and purple robe. The cracking sound splintered, and echoed, and continued, somehow, a cascade of fractures in the air, and where the shaman had been, the air boiled, and swelled, and a light flared, blindingly bright.

She shielded her eyes, and tugged on the reins, and Alpha executed a perfect barrel roll in midair. He righted himself, and beat furiously with his wings to gain height again, panic jittering through the bond, infecting her, so her hands shook on the reins, as the world stopped spinning and she got her bearings back.

The sword was gone, dropped in the roll. She braced a hand on the pommel and twisted around to look back.

There was a hole in the air. That was the only way to explain it. Flickering at its edges with purple light, its center black, and yawning, and endless. And there were things pouring out of it. Winged, and twisted, sinuous, serpentine creatures with white fangs flashing, and bat wings flapping. Drakes of a sort…with riders.

Reinforcements, Amelia realized with a cold, sinking dread in her belly. The Sels were sending in reinforcements through some sort of portal – and they kept pouring through, beast after beast, even men in foot, bearing spears, and swords, and bows.

She turned around, and tightened her reins, preparing for a retreat.

Pain ignited in her chest. A sudden, hot, terrible flare of it.

She looked down, and saw the head of a thrown spear protruding from her breastplate. Its tip was purple, glistening with her blood.

“Damn,” she murmured, and everything went black.

Amelia sucked in a deep breath and opened her eyes. Her vision was spotty, and swimming, worsened by the hectic racing of her pulse, but she knew the threat now. Knew it was far, far worse than she’d first thought.

Above her, Alpha wheeled, and screamed, and dove.

“Everyone get back!” she shouted.

At her knee, Leif said, “What–”

Just as the shaman had in Alpha’s memory, the girl flew apart. A crack that kept cracking, ripples of sharp, shattering thunder. And a wet showering of red droplets. Something hot and wet struck Amelia’s cheek; she smelled copper, and swiped it away with her glove; watched with mounting horror as the hideous, impossible spectacle of Selesee magic unfolded before her.

Reggie had been blown back as if thrown, and lay sprawled on his back in the road, arms flailing. His horse bolted. Connor’s shied hard, and he barely managed to keep it in check. His Strangers fanned around them, arrows nocked, aimed at the rapidly-expanding black hole that hovered now just above the road, where the girl had been.

“Leif!” Amelia shouted, but it was too late. With a flash, he transformed, shifted into his wolf shape, and went charging toward the growing portal.

“Fuck,” Ragnar said. “Fucking hell, what is that?”

Amelia didn’t get a chance to answer, before the first horror slithered out of it.

It was some sort of drake: long jaw full of sharp teeth, gleam of scales – amethyst, like in Alpha’s vision – but its shape longer, thinner, its legs stubby by comparison. Another’s head thrust through when it was halfway through, and then a gold-armored Sel soldier dropped to the road, and leveled his spear on Leif, who was galloping straight for him.

“Scatter!” Amelia shouted, and heard the men take up the call as well.

“Scatter!”

“Defensive positions!”

“Find cover!”

“To arms!”

A din of  overlapping voices that didn’t manage to drown out the high-pitched screams of the purple drakes coming through the portal.

The wolves – in their wolf skins, now – converged on the hole from all sides, teeth bared, snarling, snapping. Leif leaped right at the soldier’s chest–

As two more crowded through the landed with a clank of armor.

Alpha came to a halt in the air above the hole, wings kicking up a windstorm as he snatched the first purple drake by the throat and shook it back and forth like a rat. Amelia heard the snap of its spine breaking, and the sound launched her into action.

She hauled Shadow’s head around and heeled him into a canter. He was snorting, blowing, neck bowed and legs lifting high on each stride; he wanted to fight, a warhorse through and through.

She turned to search out an archer, and instead found Ragnar, easily keeping pace on foot beside her.

“What are you doing?” she shouted. “Take cover! You’re unarmed and you can’t turn into a wolf!”

He shot her a tight grin, though fear flashed in his gaze. “Take cover and leave a lady to fight my battles? Not a chance.”

He was mad – but there was nothing to do about that. She doubted he’d seek shelter while his whole pack – alpha especially – were currently trying to fight armed men. The snarling was terrible, as was the squealing of the small, purple drakes as Alpha tore into them.

Amelia sent out a fruitless plea to her females: Come! Alpha needs you! They were only ten or so miles from the manor. In the air, they could reach them quickly…if it wasn’t too late.

“Archers! I need archers!” she called, cantering back down the line, Ragnar at her side. “Don’t shoot the wolves or my dragon, but I want the enemy bristling with arrows!”

The moment the words left her lips, an arrow thunked to the ground just beside Shadow’s front right hoof. She’d felt the whistle of its passing, and glanced down to see dyed-purple fletching.

“Now!” she bellowed, and turned Shadow sharply left, spurring him across to the far side of the road and swinging around to get a fresh look at the action.

Still beside her, Ragnar shouted, “They need shields! Where are the shields?”

“I don’t…I don’t know!”

It was all happening so fast – and so horribly. She’d tested her mettle against encamped men, against a tower, Alpha’s fire singing the timbers of its roof. But this was the stuff of nightmares – and it was still happening, more soldiers, more drakes arriving through the portal by the second. They’d never prepared for anything like this – had traveled lightly, without full armor, expecting a simple reconnaissance mission, and not a magicked gateway to another place, bursting with monsters.

The wolves were darting, and ducking, and snapping; she recognized Leif, his size, the thick gray-gold ruff and blue eyes. He darted in, clamped down on an armored calf, and the flailing of the man attached said his fangs had found the gaps in the plates of the greaves.

Alpha was hovering overhead, buffeting the entire scene with powerful flaps of his wings, savaging the small drakes with his teeth – though there were so many, now, that some had flitted around behind him, biting at his haunches and his tail. He ripped one in half and swung his head around with a roar to jet fire at the others. Dragon scales, though, no matter the color, appeared impervious, and they shot green flames at him in return that made him roar louder.

Reggie’s men, their too-heavy armor no longer a laughing matter, were encircling the scene.

From off to her left, Stranger bowmen began firing. An arrow sprouted through the slit in a gold visor, and a Sel toppled. A small drake was caught in the eye, and plummeted to the ground.

Another Selesee arrow whizzed past her head, and Ragnar cursed.

“We have to close that portal,” she said. “So long as it’s open, they’ll keep coming.”

“How do you propose to do that?” he asked, voice flirting with panicky. One of the wolves was knocked aside with the butt of a spear, and went rolling across the ground; Ragnar cursed.

Amelia took a deep breath…and knew what she needed to do.

She dismounted.

“What are you doing?” Ragnar demanded.

She thrust Shadow’s reins into his hands, and met his wide, frightened gaze. “Hold him. I’ll only be gone a moment.”

“Gone? Gone where?!”

“To fetch an expert opinion.”

19

It smelled of the black liquid in the bowl, the air pouring out of that void that hovered above the road. It smelled of conjured imagery, and a Selesee general’s tent; of powerful herbs and something darker, and more sinister. A kind of magic both immensely powerful…and too slippery to grasp. Viscous and corrosive and wrong.

Leif tore a glove from a man’s hand, danced, darted, and then took off two of his fingers with a neat snap of his teeth. The blood that filled his mouth didn’t taste of animal: not the pure, hot, copper of any living thing he’d ever known. There was something musty and old in it, and he shook his head and snorted each time it touched his tongue.

A windstorm swirled around them from the beating of Alpha’s wings, and though the kicked-up dust burned his eyes, he was glad for the distraction, for the way it muddled the Sel soldiers that he attacked, again and again, darting light, hamstringing them, finding the joins in their armor so he could sink his teeth into vulnerable flesh.

He heard a man’s voice, somewhere behind him: “There, and there! Fill in the gaps! I don’t want any of those things getting away!”

He heard the hiss of arrows. Saw a Sel with a bow, and leaped at him next; put his massive forepaws on his chest and sent him stumbling backward; lunged at his belly, at the gap in his armor above his belt, and tore him open to the sound of screaming.

Amelia…where was Amelia? He hoped Ragnar had dragged her away. That they weren’t a part of the fight.

The air crackled and shifted like sea froth around jagged rocks, the magic a hum he felt in his bones. Sels kept coming, soldiers and drakes both, and each time Alpha tore one to shreds, two more emerged to harry him further.

A wolf hamstrung a soldier, and Leif tore out his throat when he hit his knees.

They had to close that portal. Nothing could end until they did so.

But Leif hadn’t the faintest idea how.

~*~

Magic was more about feeling than thinking, Amelia had learned. She was not a patient person, not one prone to meditation and letting feelings flow through her. She didn’t call on Alpha’s mind for help, either, not wanting to distract him, and so when she closed her eyes, and sought that other plane, the Between, she feared she wouldn’t be able to reach it, much less reach anyone else there.

But desperation, the sheer force of her need, must have propelled her, and, as Tessa had instructed her, she dropped down, and then up, found the light, and hurtled toward it, dizzy and sick when she landed in a heap on the crushed, dead grass of her desired location.

A moment later, Tessa popped into being across from her, looking around in bewilderment.

“Tessa,” Amelia said, breathless, from the ground, and heaved herself to her feet, shaking like a new, wet foal.

Tessa gasped. “Lia! Are you all right? I was riding, I’m still in the air, and–”

“I don’t have time,” Amelia gasped. Her heart was racing, panic blurring her vision at the edges. “Get Náli.”

~*~

Reggie had been plagued by nightmares of his captivity for nearly a year. They woke him almost every night – though Connor’s affections had dulled them as of late – and haunted him at spontaneous waking moments as well: a scent, a snatch of a cruel laugh, a too-tight collar that reminded him of the noose.

This was worse. And it wasn’t even a nightmare at all, but current events that he couldn’t wrap his mind around.

In his brief stint as the Selesee army’s pass-around whore, he’d never seen anything like the slender winged beasts that poured out of the crack in the world.

For a moment, when he’d been knocked back by the force of the rending of the air, he’d lain there, dazed and stupid, as he watched men and monsters emerge from what looked like nothing more than a bottomless black well hanging suspended above the road. He was a lord and heir who’d been trained as a knight; he’d won countless tourneys on horseback, his lance shattering against his opponent’s shield. He’d never been meant for this. For grappling with horrors beyond his wildest imaginings.

Then Connor appeared above him, held out a hand, and said, “You all right?”

Reggie clasped his hand and let himself be hauled to his feet. “Yeah.” He was breathless, and his heart was lodged in his throat, but there was nothing for it. “We’ve got to contain them.” He nodded toward the void, toward the Sels engaged by snarling wolves, and the reinforcements that leaped down, more and more, bright gold against the dusty backdrop of the road. “If any of them get loose in the countryside…”

“Yeah,” Connor said, grimly, though his gaze glittered with readiness. He drew his sword. “You take the left, I’ll take the right.”

Reggie drew his own blade, took a deep breath, and nodded.

“With me!” he called to his men, and lead the charge, a wide arc out to the side of the road. Across it, he saw Connor doing the same, drawing a circle around the enemies pouring forth.

A volley of arrows entered the fray, finding gaps in armor, the narrow slits of visors: Connor’s best Stranger archers, hitting neat targets. Men fell, and were replaced. The Sel numbers were such, now, that the wolves couldn’t keep them at bay. Three broke off to the left, and charged straight for Reggie’s position.

“Hold!” he called to his men. “Hold them here, now!”

He knew a pang of want for his helm, and his shield, fixed uselessly on his saddle, but then the first of the soldiers was upon him, and there was no more time for thought.

He brought up his sword, and steel chimed against steel, like the clanging of bells.

~*~

Wars amongst the clans of the Waste were nothing like the wars in which Erik’s grandfather and father had fought; wars like Erik himself had waged, as revenge for his father’s death. No soaring campaign tents, and tables spread with maps; advisors, and cups of wine and Serious Discussions about formations, and routes, and whether the summer bogs were sturdy enough underfoot to support the weight of loaded wagons and armored men on heavy horses.

No, the wars of Ragnar’s youth had been opportunistic murders in the dark of night; creeping outside sleeping tents with knives in hand; cudgeling one another with blunted clubs while the rest of both clans stood in a circle, screaming and egging them on. It was duels, and horse races, and stabbings. Cheating – so much cheating. Because there was no such thing as honor in the Wastes, only survival, and Ragnar had survived most. He was cleverer than his father had been, and more ruthless. It was something Erik and his little princelings could never hope to understand: honor and ceremony and honesty didn’t mean shit if you were lying dead in your bedroll, an enemy’s knife stuck in your chest. Power was all that mattered. Fear. And the man with the most teeth around his neck was the most powerful, and the most feared.

In that way, Ragnar was honest. More honest than any of them.

For instance, he was honest enough to admit that he was not a good person. He’d never claimed to be.

But he couldn’t claim power now, either. Not with Leif’s authority wrapped round his neck, tighter than any torq could hope to be. Not when a single growl made his spine want to bow, and his head to dip. Not when the urge to please his alpha was so intense he felt sick with it, at times, and delighted by it at others.

He wasn’t a good man…but he was an owned man.

And contrary to what Erik thought, he wasn’t a heartless one. His heart was as pulpy and tender and easy-to-hurt as anyone’s, but he’d learned to hide that. To ignore all its bruises and pangs. Heart didn’t keep you alive in the Wastes. It didn’t keep you whole when the Sels had you by the shorthairs, promising a life of which you’d never dreamed in exchange for your cousin’s head on a platter.

It got him into trouble sometimes, though, that heart, despite his best efforts.

Turning someone hadn’t been part of the plan. His magic was what gave him a leg-up in life, a new advantage over the mere men who looked down on him, and called him traitor.

But Leif had been irresistible that night. Bathed in dancing firelight, breath steaming, young, and golden, and magnificent under the moon, sword brandished against the whole pack of wolves that had closed in on him. On four legs, firmly in his wolf mindset, blood on his tongue and lust for more in his veins, Ragnar had indulged. The chance to sink his teeth into the perfect prince, to take something that Erik loved and corrupt it, make it his own, had proved too great.

The irony of the way it had all worked out felt like an appropriate payment for his actions.

He was a bad man, but one who wore another man’s collar. A thrall to a prince who’d proved to be so much more than Ragnar had expected, and one who would have slowly suffocated beneath Erik’s iron fist. Ragnar was a man with a heart…standing beside a seemingly unconscious woman on a battlefield, while chaos reigned, and men shouted, and died, and arrows zipped overhead.

He couldn’t very well stand there and do nothing.

The stallion snorted and rolled his eyes, pawed at the ground so that Ragnar was forced to take a step back. “You want at them, don’t you, boy? I do, too.” He risked stroking the beast’s neck, and earned another snort, but not a strike. That was something.

He patted it on the shoulder, and felt the heat and steam of sweat. He was foaming at the mouth, tugging on the reins as his ears swiveled between his mistress – standing statue still, hands folded, eyes closed, lips moving soundlessly – and the action.

Ragnar wanted to shift – skin prickling with urge, fangs long in his mouth, nails dark and claw-like. But the torq choked him each time he tried to, sent unpleasant shocks throughout his body. He could have pushed through the pain…but the torq’s magic did more than shock him. Save a few skin-deep changes, his body refused to shift. When he threw himself at the change, he rebounded, as though off a stone wall, and nothing happened.

He gritted his teeth and tried with all his might – but no. Nothing but a flare of pain, and a momentary, blinding headache that disappeared the moment he stopped attempting to shift.

“Fine,” he muttered. “I won’t. I’ll…”

What, he didn’t know. He’d not been entrusted with so much as a knife since his collaring.

He glanced at Amelia again, frozen, murmuring to herself, hands folded like an etching of a goddess.

“Bloody snap out of it,” he growled, but she didn’t.

He turned back toward the melee – just in time to see a massive, gilded warhammer slam into Leif’s ribs and send him flying.

It was a blow sympathetically echoed in Ragnar’s chest, a rough shock of startlement chased by fury that pushed all the air from his lungs, and left him snarling nastily.

That was his alpha, batted aside like a weak kitten, and the man who’d done the battering wasn’t going to live to see him get back up again. And Leif would get up. He had to. Even if Ragnar had to carry him across his shoulders for the rest of the journey.

A tug on the reins in his hand drew his attention, and he turned to find the stallion trying to back away from him, eyes rolling, nervous, suddenly. Ragnar stepped in close and laid a hand in the center of his forehead. “Shh, shh. Easy now. You listen to me, yeah? I’m not scared of you, horse, even if you’re damn near as big as that dragon. We’ve got a common goal, you and me, and you’re going to cooperate. Understand?”

The stallion eyed him a long moment, then exhaled noisily and leaned into the hand on his face. Let Ragnar scratch, briefly, behind his ears.

“There’s a good lad.” He turned to Amelia, and drew the sword off her hip. “Thank you, darling, I’ll try to return it in good nick.” Then he stuck his left foot in the stirrup, and swung aboard.

~*~

Lord Náli proved to be finer-featured and prettier than Amelia had expected, despite Oliver’s written description of him as “foppish as a Southern lordling.” Still distinctly Northern in dress, but his hair was a gleaming sheet of platinum done up in front in intricate, beaded braids, and he wore a massive diamond around his throat; it winked where it rested on the breast of his gray tunic.

He also wasn’t nearly urgent enough, given her current predicament.

“Yes, yes, lovely to meet you, too,” she said, and earned pale brows lifted in disapproval. “I don’t have time for that. I need to know how to close the portal.”

He frowned. “What portal?”

“I dunno. A big black hole in the middle of the air. There’s soldiers and purple drakes coming out of it, and–”

His brows lifted higher and he said, “Purple drakes?”

“Urgh, that’s not important! I have to close the bloody thing! Can you help me or not?”

“Well,” he drawled, glancing at Tessa, then back. “If I knew what sort of portal it was, that would be a nice start.”

She growled through her teeth, and took two charging steps across the grass toward him, but he stayed her with a lifted hand.

His face grew serious, but thankfully less formal. “All right, all right. I don’t know for certain, mind you, but generally speaking, magic requires an offering of sorts from a magic user. When I practice necromancy, for instance, it drains me of my energy and leaves me swooning like a novel heroine. You said a girl exploded?”

“Into bits, yes.”

He nodded. “It was blood, then, that opened this one. All right.” He stroked at his chin, withdrawing into his own thoughts. “Okay, you’ll need blood to close it.”

“Blood? How much?”

“There’s no way to be sure, but it will need to be the blood of a magic user.” His gaze lifted and pinned to her, expectant.

“Mine?”

“Do you have any other magic users in your company?”

Tessa gasped, and both of them turned to her. “The wolves,” she explained. “You have them.”

Náli’s gaze returned, sharper, calculating. “The wolves reached you?” To Tessa: “You haven’t said.”

Tessa bit her lip. “I didn’t know how to broach the subject in a way that would get Erik riled up.”

Náli snorted. “All of them? Leif and his whole pack?”

“As far as I know. Will their blood work? And mine, as well. If we could collect samples from everyone–”

He swiped at the air with his hand. “No, just. Do whatever’s fastest. Get some sort of magicked blood into the opening. If possible” – flicker of a grin – “shove Ragnar’s traitorous hide through and kill two birds with one stone.”

Tessa swatted his arm.

Amelia said, “Leif will never allow that.”

Náli made a face. “Damn the man. I think he could seduce a felled tree if given half the chance.”

Amelia filed seduce away neatly somewhere in the back of her mind, and pressed on. “Fine. I’ll get some blood into it. Got it. Anything else?”

“Don’t let any of those drakes escape,” he said. “Gods. What if they reproduced? They have to be stopped there.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” she snapped, closed her eyes, and went hurtling back toward her body.

The sound struck her first. An overlapping cacophony of shrieks, screams, shouts, and snarls. A host of ugly smells. She opened her eyes, and she stood to the side of the road, as she had before. Only seconds had passed, on this plane, but seconds were all that it took to shift the tide of combat dramatically.

With a hollow, sinking feeling in her belly, she realized that there was nearly an entire company of Sels soldiers on the road, and a glimmer of more gold beyond the purple edges of the portal. They had magic, and advanced weaponry, a ruthless, disciplined style of fighting, yes, but it was the Sels’ sheer numbers that had made conquerors of them. She saw now how they’d been able to invade so easily; they didn’t even need the ships, but used the towering cogs anyway, to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies.

Unnecessary, because that damn rip in time and space was doing a fair job of turning her knees to jelly.

As was the sight of Ragnar astride Shadow, the big stallion spinning and kicking and biting as if she herself were riding him, Ragnar hacking away at spear points and gilded helmets with a sword.

Her sword. A grab at her belt proved it was gone.

Then she saw the thing that had inspired him to steal her sword and climb aboard her horse and go charging into the fray. Leif lay, human again, crumpled on the shoulder of the road, his hair a spill of spun gold across the grass, his arms splayed lifeless before him. Even without seeing his face, she could tell he was unconscious. Whether or not he was breathing was another matter.

She set off at a run before she was conscious of moving. Ducked low as Strangers fired off arrows overhead. A skinny purple drake bleated in pain and crashed to the ground to her right, skidding on its face and sending up a choking cloud of dust. She ducked left and kept going, coughing and blinking her way through the grit in the air.

“Leif!” she shouted, as she reached him, and went down on her knees beside him. Touched his shoulder and tried to roll him toward her – but he was heavy. She settled for shaking him instead. “Leif?” She scanned his body, and saw that his clothes were ripped, lacerations winking blood through the tears in the leather, but nothing that looked too nasty. There was no puddle of blood beneath him, no obvious mortal damage. “Leif, can you hear me?”

He coughed, and groaned, and rolled toward her on his own power, finally, cracked his eyes open and reached to shade them with a hand. “Lady Amelia?”

“Thank the gods.” She didn’t know how she would have explained the Aeretolleans arriving and getting killed all within twelve hours. “Are you hurt? Can you stand? It’s not safe here.” A wet splat to the side signaled a chunk of meat from one of the drakes Alpha was currently fighting, and she fought not to grimace.

In answer, Leif sat up, rubbing briefly at the back of his head as though it pained him. Then he shook his head, waved off her attempt to help him, and got to his feet. He surveyed the scene while Amelia stood as well.

“Did I hit my head harder than I thought, or is Ragnar riding your horse?”

“And wielding my sword. I take it he didn’t appreciate you getting thrown across the road and knocked unconscious.”

Leif massaged at his ribs with a wince, and his sigh sounded both frustrated…and fond. “Idiot,” he muttered. Then: “That’s some sort of gateway, and we need to close it.”

“My thoughts exactly. I’ve just been to the Between and talked with Náli.”

He glanced toward her, brows lifting in surprise.

“He says blood opened it – the girl – and that it’ll take blood to close it. The blood of a magic user. He didn’t specify how much.”

Leif considered a moment, glancing toward Ragnar, who thrust his sword through a soldier’s visor with a shout of triumphant laughter.

Connor and Reggie, she saw, were fighting back-to-back, an efficient unit that did more repelling of attacks than advancing, but on their feet, alive, Reggie’s busted lip the only sign of injury.

“I’ll do it.”

She blinked, and returned her attention to Leif, whose expression had gone grim with resolve. He’d stood up straighter, too, and pushed his shoulders back, thrust his chest out. Like a painting of a hero from a fable.

“And what will you do? Dive through the hole?” she asked.

“If I have to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll do it. Alpha can fly me in close–”

“Alpha” – his lip curled on the name – “is tied up at the moment.”

And he was: all but covered by the amethyst drakes. They appeared more of a nuisance than a real threat to him, but he couldn’t take them on all at once. He roared angrily, and she felt his impatience and frustration through their bond as he flung one, and then craned his head the opposite direction to snap at another.

But not all the drakes were intent on battling their larger, stronger, more capable counterpart. A few had broken off, their flight like the twining of ribbons, as they harried her men, dodging the jabs of spear and sword, swooping in to snap at faces. One sank its fangs into a man’s shoulder, and the man screamed, and tried unsuccessfully to twist away, the knife-like teeth holding fast, blood spilling down his arm.

She made a grab for her sword, and too late remembered that Ragnar had it. “Damn it.”

Two dead Sels lay close by. Leif bent, picked up their swords and offered one to her. “We’ll go together,” he said. “Whoever gets there first can bleed into the fucking thing.”

She nodded, and wrapped her hand around the gilded sword grip.

~*~

“Oh, you’re a beauty,” Ragnar praised the stallion. “Where have you been all my life?” The fucker could fight. Amelia wore wicked-looking spurs, and he could only assume the spiked rowels on the backs were used to cue him. Ragnar had only his wolf-hide-wrapped boots, but he knew how to use his heels, and he leaned hard on their (loose) bond as animals. The horse turned at the slightest shift of his weight, struck out with his forelegs when Ragnar so much as thought it: he stoved in a breastplate that way, and potentially gelded a solider with a solid strike between his legs that crushed the armored skirt there, and left him screaming high-pitched like a girl. A little experimenting had proven that a backward press of the reins coupled with a tap from both heels well behind the girl resulted in a double kick behind. Armor crunched, men grunted, and screamed, and dropped boneless to the dirt.

“You didn’t bring any horses through your fancy black hole, did you, stupid fuck?” Ragnar asked the last man he’d felled. His words were threaded with laughter – he was laughing, a constant stream of chuckles, chest bright with bloodlust and delight. He wanted to be on four legs, tearing open throats and bellies, but this was the next best thing, this concentrated destruction with the help of a powerful animal.

He chopped a man in the neck, and arterial spray striped across his face. He licked the salty blood off his lips and whirled the stallion around to deliver a kick – not because he needed to, but because he wanted to.

He paused, though, before he could deliver the cue. The stallion pawed impatiently beneath him, and he laid his free hand on its neck, shushed him absentmindedly.

Leif was on his feet again. Thankfully. Blessedly. He looked whole, but Ragnar could read the way he was favoring his ribs, and the way his eyes were squinted in pain. He wielded a gilt-handled Sel sword as though it was a warhammer, slashing and battering the soldiers that surged toward him in a tide.

Amelia was just behind him, struggling with her own overlong, two-handed blade of a fallen Sel. She was doing more dancing and sidestepping than engaging, and he didn’t blame her. She wasn’t built to fight grown men in plate armor; there wasn’t enough training in the world to make her capable of that.

He clenched his hand on his pilfered sword – her sword, light, perfectly balanced, the proper choice for a strong and slender woman – and felt a moment’s guilt for taking it from her. He hadn’t thought she’d do this, though; that she’d try to go toe-to-toe with these gold-and-purple bastards.

He saw himself, then, a vision of heroism. Charging forward, mowing down Sels with the stallion’s massive, iron-shod hooves. Angling himself between the threat and the lady. Offering her a hand, pulling her up behind him. Gods, it was downright sickening how fairytale-like the fantasy was. Ragnar the Brave. The Defender of Fine Ladies. Ragnar the Hero.

It had a nice ring to it.

“Go–”

Pain ignited all down his right side, and the world somersaulted crazily.

He was falling. Feet out of the stirrups, saddle sliding out from under his bum. Shit, he was falling. Something had crashed into his side – was still against him: head ringing from the impact, shoulder smarting from the blow, and arm pricked with darts of fire where something had hold of him.

Hot, fetid breath washed across his face, and an ear-piercing shriek blasted him at a deafening volume. A swooping sensation in his belly, and he was no longer falling – was lifting, instead.

One of those slithery little purple bastards had hold of him. Was flying off with him!

Ragnar blinked his vision clear, and tried to gather his wits.

The beast’s face was in front of his in profile; he had a view of its open jaws, and bloodied, spearpoint teeth. It carried Ragnar by the arm with its forelegs, skinny, but strong, apparently, its claws sunk deep into his flesh. Ragnar craned his neck, and could see the ground growing farther away down the bannerlike length of the drake’s body. The end of its tail whipped back and forth, flocked with long hair, like a donkey or a cow.

He'd never liked heights. Nor broken bones. But he liked this helbeast even less.

“Fuck off,” he muttered, kicked his legs, twisted his upper body, and punched the thing square in the snout as hard as he could.

The drake bleated a distressed sound, and dropped him.

Ragnar had time to glance down, as his hair streamed upward, and the wind stung his face, and said, “Oh, bollocks,” before he hit the ground.

~*~

After the siege at Aeres, many had been quick to praise Tessa’s valiant actions. The way she’d taken up a sword, and gone charging into the fray in the lower hall, battling the Sels who’d come up through the tunnels just like the Northern women. Leif had been shocked on hearing the news, and impressed. But later, in one of the rare moments he’d found himself alone with his mother after his turning, when they’d found they couldn’t talk of anything too personal without him withdrawing, and Revna growing tearful, Revna had admitted her misgivings about Tessa’s participation.

“She’s a brave girl, no doubt. And a good one. With enough work, she might even make a competent one in a fight. But she’s so young, and so green…” She’d shaken her head. “It was luck and the will of the gods that kept her alive that day.”

Now, Leif was keenly aware of Tessa’s sister at his back.

A tough woman, no doubt. And given her skill in the saddle – horse and drake alike – he felt sure that she’d been practicing her sword work in a yard somewhere, learning from the seasoned soldiers and lords around her.

But these were Sels. Big, heavily-armored, efficient, and a challenge for the likes of any warrior – much less a woman who’d been reared to become a lady, rather than a fighter.

Two soldiers came at him, and he twisted his body so he could meet the fall of one’s sword, and kick the feet from beneath the other at the same time. The second one stumbled, went down on one knee, and in his periphery, Leif saw the flash of steel as Amelia rammed her blade through the narrow slit in the Sel’s visor, aiming for the stripe of purple face paint across his eyes. He heard the wet squelch of success, and thought, Good girl. Whatever she lacked in strength and experience would have to be made up for in ruthlessness.

The first Sel was still on his feet, and hacked at Leif again. Leif threw up a block, and then another one, steel chiming, and then screeching as the Sel tried to push his blade down the length of Leif’s in an effort to disarm him.

But strong though the Sel might have been, he wasn’t a wolf, and Leif was stronger. He braced his feet, and pushed back – pushed the man back; hooked the long crossbar at the hilt of his stolen sword against the edge of the other’s blade and used it to bear him backward, until he was forced to retreat a few steps, or risk the weight of his armor dragging him over onto his back. He took the steps, and in that moment of slight distraction, Leif kicked him hard in the knee. Bent, mid-motion, the joint gave, and the soldier collapsed to his other knee with a surprised grunt. Leif whipped his sword free – it was never going to stop being a marvel, how strong he was now, the way a sword this large and heavy felt like a child’s wooden practice sword, whistling through the air as he brought it around in a smooth, fast arc and buried it in the gap under the man’s helm, right in the soft meat of his neck. Soft, wet thunk, and an all-over twitch as the blade cut through flesh, and vein, and bit into spine. Leif put a boot on his chest, and pulled the sword free amidst a pulsing fountain of arterial blood spray. He turned the motion into a spin, and met the next enemy, and then the next.

As he parried blows, he searched first for Amelia – teeth gritted, falling to her knees beneath the pressing weight of a Sel’s sword against her own – and Ragnar – nowhere to be seen.

“Fuck,” he cursed. He ducked the next swipe of a sword, spun, and charged up behind Amelia’s opponent to clang the flat of his sword against the side of the man’s helm. The soldier staggered sideways, sword dropping from lax fingers, bell thoroughly rung.

Leif shifted his sword to one hand and offered the other to Amelia. “Come on. You need to get off the road.” This is no place for you, my lady, he thought. Get well away. Get on your drake before you’re killed.

Her face was white and clammy from fear, save the two hectic spots of color high on her cheeks. A cut at her hairline had trickled blood down her temple, cheek, and jaw. She swiped at it with the back of her glove and tried to shoot him a mutinous look. She put her hand in his, however, and through it, he could feel the frantic, hummingbird beat of her pulse, and the tremor of exertion. She was strong and fit, no soft Southern flower to be sure, but she couldn’t keep at this. Her look said she knew it, and hated the fact, and felt as guilty as she did fearful.

He hauled her up, and leaned in close to speak over the din of battle. “Call your dragon.” An order, and not a suggestion.

Her eyes widened at his tone, and then shifted over his shoulder to a point in the sky. “But he’s–”

Leif leaned even closer, so he could smell her sweat, her fear, over all the competing scents around them. “You need him more. Call him. He can’t use his fire with all these bloody men on the road. Get on his back, and we’ll retreat so you can roast these fuckers.”

Her gaze snapped back to him. “The portal, though.”

“Carve me a path with fire, and I’ll get to it.”

She breathed a moment, open-mouthed, gaze tracking back and forth over his face as though she was trying to understand him. Then she jerked a nod, stepped back, and whistled.

Pain bloomed hot and fierce on the back of Leif’s leg, and he stumbled, and turned, bringing his sword up to find a wounded Sel stretched out across the dirt behind him. He’d left a smear of blood on the road as he crawled toward them, unheeded, and the end of his wicked, curved belt knife was wet with blood – Leif’s blood. The bastard had crawled up and stabbed him in the leg.

The knife was wicked, and the puncture was deep. It came with pain that was first bright, and then excoriating; Leif could feel the tear of muscle, and fat, and the snapping of severed tendon. The moment he’d registered the severity of the injury was the moment his body started working its wolf magic, reknitting itself. It turned out quick healing was every bit as painful as injury.

Leif shifted his weight to his good leg, and knocked the knife from the man’s hand with his sword. Then he brought the blade down hard and took his hand off for good measure.

While the soldier screamed, Leif reached down, unbuckled his helm, and drew it off. Beneath, he was pale and purple-painted like all the rest. Clean-shaven, and with his white hair braided into a tight cap. His face, though, when he tipped it back to peer up at his would-be killer, proved young. Very young. He was only a teenager, really, baby fat padding out the sharp edges of jaw and chin. His eyes, that pale, nearly colorless blue, were wet with tears, brimming with terror.

Leif slit his throat with one quick motion, and felt no satisfaction in it.

A loud, trumpeting cry from Alpha drew his attention next, and he lifted his head to see the drake fling a crumpled purple beast to the ground and rear upright in the air, wings starting up a furious, maelstrom rhythm that blew down men and stirred up a great cloud of dust. The small drakes pestering him were blown back. Alpha rose into the air, dispelling the dust with each powerful thrust of his wings – and that was when Leif saw Ragnar.

He saw the horse, first, riderless, galloping through the tangle of bodies with reins flapping, and stirrups swinging empty. Above, Leif saw a familiar tumble of dark-gold hair, bare arms glistening with sweat, gold bands winking. One of the small drakes had him, and Ragnar was thrashing and kicking, and trying to get free.

Time stopped.

He was dimly aware of Alpha flying overhead, the stir of air from his wings as he went to his mistress. Men were still shouting, and falling, and clashing, the collision of steel ringing out across the road like the chiming of hectic death bells.

But those were all human concerns, and when he caught sight of Ragnar, every human part of him receded; his sight sharpened, and his lungs filled with too many scents, and his heart throbbed, as the alpha wolf caught sight of his beta being carried away in the jaws of an unnatural beast.

Leif growled. And kept growling, as he took off at a lurching run, half-dragging his wounded leg, the pain sharp – but the pain nothing in the face of the theft of his packmate.

Pack. Mine. Mate. Mine, mine, mine, kill you, I’ll kill you…

Ragnar threw a hard punch, and the drake’s jaws opened, and Ragnar fell.

No, no, no! Mine. Mine. MINE. Mate.

He heard the snap of bone breaking when Ragnar hit the ground, and his heart leaped, and his growl tapered off with a high, panicked whine. He pushed onward, one clumsy stride after the next, forcing his ruined-but-healing leg to keep going, though he could feel the pain of it all the way up in his teeth.

Ragnar was moving, pushing himself up on his hands, his arm bleeding, his teeth bared in a grimace. He levered up so he was leaning on his hip, and he glanced around at his own legs; his trousers were torn on the right, blood and bone visible.

Leif needed to touch him. Needed skin-to-skin contact; needed to sniff and lick at the wounds. Base, purely animal urges he was helpless to suppress. Every part of him needed to get to his packmate’s side as quickly as possible. He lurched on, and on, drawing closer, pushing his bad leg until he felt something else snap inside of it, a fresh burst of fire deep within the muscle.

Ragnar’s head came back around, and his gaze lifted, and met Leif’s. Only a few meters separated them now. Close enough for Leif to see the pain etched in each fine line of his face. Close enough to watch his eyes go wide, and his mouth open. Close enough to read the clear warning in his gaze, in the way his lips formed the word alpha.

But not close enough to reach him before something crashed into him, bowled him over, and his world exploded in pain.

~*~

Amelia had never been so glad to see Alpha. He landed with a sudden drop, crushing two Sel soldiers underfoot in the process, and immediately lowered his head and thrust it into her chest, sniffing her all over and making low, worried crooning sounds.

“I’m all right, I’m all right,” she said, and could have fainted with relief. He was here, and big, and warm, and a wall between her and everything else. She already felt her shakes receding, and her strength returning, his worry a welcome balm through their bond. She stroked his face, noting the fine-line scratches there from the other drakes’ claws. “What about you? You okay?”

He snorted, and sent a drake sense of never better through the bond.

She scratched him behind the horns. “Right, then. Let’s get up in the air.”

When she hurried to his side, and put her foot in the fixed stirrup on his girth, he swung his head around to give her an extra boost up with his nose. Amelia found that she could smile, briefly, when her bum hit the saddle. She clipped on the harness straps that fixed her in place, took up the reins, and he was leaping aloft before she could touch him with her heels.

~*~

Reggie took a step back, tripped on the corpse of a fallen Sel, and would have fallen himself if not for Connor’s tight grip on the back of his tunic. Connor hauled him upright and slapped him between the shoulder blades, a grounding thump that seemed to say, You’re all right.

And he was, essentially. He straightened, swiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his glove, licked blood from his still-weeping split lip, and surveyed their immediate surroundings. He saw a crumpled bit of blue surcoat that marked one of his men felled: dead or unconscious. A few dead Strangers as well, taken out in the first, hectic moments of the gateway opening, before any of them had known what was going on.

For the moment, Sels and drakes appeared to have stopped coming through the swirling, purple-edged black hole that hung suspended over the road. A small mercy, given their current numbers, and the threat still posed.

But this battle – it was a skirmish, by the numbers, only the enemy much, much more difficult to fight than standard highway brigands – was no different than any other Reggie had participated in: there were gaps. Furious clashes, where blood spilled and sprayed, and men screamed, and fought, sweating and bleeding and swearing and dying by degrees. And then there were pockets, like the one in which he and Connor had found themselves, in which nothing was happening at all. Dead and dying Sels lay sprawled around them. One Stranger was bandaging the arm of another. But no enemies bore down on them, and Reggie let out a huge breath, and rested the point of his sword on the ground a moment, letting it take his weight as he fought to get more air into his lungs.

He also took a moment to marvel: he was alive. He had survived – thus far. As had Connor, who wiped his face on his sleeve, raked his hair back with an impatient gesture, and said, “Dear gods, look at that.”

Reggie looked, and saw what he at first thought was a tangle of purple drakes feuding with one another, rolling and snapping and hissing along the ground in a ball of scales and wings.

Then he realized that they were instead coiled around something else – a man. A man they were savaging with fangs and claws, shredding and snapping and biting, a trail of blood in their wake as they rolled along the road.

Then he saw a flash of golden hair, and one shredded, bare arm, and realized it was the Aeretollean prince they were killing. The heir to the throne at Aeres, Prince Leif.

“Shit,” Reggie hissed.

The cousin, Ragnar, was struggling to get to his feet a few yards away. One of his legs was badly broken, the shin humped and tilted. Reggie glimpsed a flash of white bone and his stomach rolled. He was trying to get to his leader – to his alpha – but he didn’t have a prayer’s chance of reaching him in time, not with that leg.

And not with a Sel striding toward the tangle of man and dragon, bright spearpoint winking in the sunlight.

“They’re going to kill him,” Connor said, flatly. Matter of fact.

Reggie was still struggling to get his breath back. “What will we do with all those wolves, then?”

When he glanced over, Conner returned his gaze, brows lifted. “Shoot them?”

“A waste of arrows.”

Reggie faced forward again. Too much blood on the ground, too much pain and anguish on Ragnar’s face, as he hauled himself up to stand on his good leg with aid of a broken spear shaft.

Reggie sighed, picked up his sword, and charged forward.

Connor cursed before following him.

~*~

Each time Leif attempted to shift, fangs pieced his flesh; claws raked across his belly, slicing leather, slicing skin. The pain was sharp, and poisonous, and he couldn’t follow through on the transition, beaten back into his human body each time. He tried grasping at rocks, and bits of weed growing up through the dry, cracked dirt of the road, tried scrabbling with his toes to gain some sort of purchase; flexed his spine, and twisted, and tried to bat the creatures away so that he could get his bearings.

But there were too many. And even if they were only a fraction of Alpha’s size, they were gods bedamned strong, and vicious, their sharp points sharper than any spear or sword. He couldn’t tell which way was up; his stomach rolled, and his head swam, and he would have been sick if he’d had the energy for it. He was so awfully tired, now. Could barely fight the weight of his own eyelids, much less that of the drakes.

He landed hard on his back, and claws pierced his chest. Eight brilliant points of heat. Something between his ribs gave, and went liquid soft. He choked. He floated.

He was dying, wasn’t he? After the disastrous festival trip, after surviving Ragnar’s machinations, and the imprisonment of the Fangs; after battling alongside an army of skeletons, and seeing a drake in the flesh for the first time; the march home, the attack at nightfall. After Ragnar’s bite, and the turning, the becoming; after the siege of Aeres that had nearly destroyed the only home he’d ever known. After all of that…and he was going to die beneath the claws of a half-dozen pint-sized Selesee drakes in the middle of a road, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by strangers who distrusted him.

An ignoble end for a Northern prince – he wasn’t even on home soil – but an end he could see rushing toward him, now, clear and beckoning. He would die here, and his ashes would never be spread across the fields of winter snow alongside those of his father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather before him.

With a little more time and practice, Rune would make a good heir. He’d all but left him the role already. This would seal his brother’s fate.

Leif stopped fighting the drag of his eyelids, as the drake’s weight crushed him from above; ribs cracked, and claws tore at him, pain upon pain. It would be over soon. Hot, rancid breath fanned his face, as the creature screeched at him. He’d make an ugly corpse, if the thing bit off his nose…

“Cessō.” A single word spoken above him, in the tone of a command. A foreign word.

The weight left him, claws withdrawing as painfully as they’d pierced him. He felt heat and light on his face. The drakes were going.

He cracked his eyes open, just as a tall silhouette blotted out the sun. A massive figure, limned in gold. Faceless. Helmeted.

Leif saw the spear lift, and he tried to rally. Tried to force his body to move – but it was growing cold, and limp, and heavy.

He closed his eyes again, and waited.

Somewhere close by, a familiar voice screamed his name.

~*~

“Leif! LEIF!”

The pain in Ragnar’s leg was nothing – nothing compared to the vice grip of panic, choking him more thoroughly than any torq ever could.

He wasn’t fast enough. He couldn’t make it.

The drakes slithered back, undulating over the ground like serpents, red in tooth and claw. The Sel had brushed them back with a single command, and now lifted his spear aloft, over Leif’s broken, bloodied form. The flicker of his lashes as his eyes closed was the only sign of life.

“Leif!” Ragnar hobbled forward, panting, eyes stinging. He wobbled, nearly fell, and hurled his spear-turned-crutch at the back of the Sel’s head.

It fell wide, landing with a harmless clatter on the ground.

“Leif! Get up, you bastard!”

The raised spear reached its zenith. Began its fall.

“NO!”

The spear fell – but it did not punch through Leif’s heart, as intended. It strayed left instead, and its puncture was shallow. It sounded wrong, skidded off his breastbone and lodged beneath the thick muscle of his chest.

Because someone had tackled the Sel at the last minute. Someone in dusty silver armor, with a headful of bright gold hair, and a face fair as a maiden’s.

Lord Reginald L’Espoir, of Hopewell.

They landed on the ground with a sound of expelled breath and clattering armor plates, Reginald on top, a knife rather than a sword in his hand. He got the Sel on his back, surprise working to his advantage, and straddled his chest. Stabbed down toward the man’s helmet visor.

The brunette who wanted to play at woodsman, Lord Connor, joined him, grabbing the Sel’s wrist when he tried to block Reginald’s blow, giving the other an opening in which to slam the knife through the visor slit and into the Sel’s eye.

Ragnar left them to it, and collapsed at Leif’s side. He was aware of the drakes circling, hissing and chittering, fussing at him. They would pounce on him, next, and then he’d be laid out beside Leif, no better off.

He didn’t care about that, now. Inside, his wolf was howling.

Outside, he laid his hand on the bloody wreck of Leif’s chest and whined. There was so much blood. So many wounds. He leaned over Leif’s face, so his hair fell around them both, a curtain sealing them in together, and whispered his name. “Leif. Leif. Alpha.” He whined again, and stroked a bloodied cheek.

Leif’s eyelids twitched, but his eyes didn’t open.

“Alpha, please.”

Clear droplets splattered down onto Leif’s cheeks, carving clean rivulets in the blood there, and when Ragnar wiped at his own face, he was shocked to find that it wasn’t rain falling on his alpha, but his tears.

~*~

The portal was finally empty. Nothing else came out of it.

From a distance, it looked harmless, like a shiny puddle of black oil, hanging vertically, impossibly a foot off the road. But as Alpha flew closer to it, Amelia felt its crackle of magic. It’s pull – it was pulling her. A low pressure just behind her navel, very nearly arousal, tugging her, towing her toward it. She heard a whisper in the back of her mind. Words in a foreign tongue she couldn’t comprehend, but whose meanings were clear: come. Join us. Come home to where you belong.

An image filled her mind of a city, a great city, one with countless towers, and turrets, and gleaming crystal domes. A city of tree-lined streets six carts wide, and iron railings, and trailing flowers on stone balustrades. The sky was awash with a faint purple tinge, and there were drakes of all shapes and sizes flying overhead. A river gleamed, teeming with ships. And in the highest tower of all, on an open stone terrace, stood a man with a banner of white hair, and a flapping coat of deepest indigo velvet lined with white fur.

She glimpsed his eyes, the pale lilac of them, the burning intensity in them–

And then Alpha bleated a warning and rolled in the air.

“Ah!” Amelia clutched at the saddle, but would have spilled to the ground if not for the straps and clips that fastened her on. Alpha righted; she tightened the reins, and searched for a threat – but there was none. Not immediately. The remaining small drakes were engaged on the ground, assisting in skirmishes. She and Alpha flew alone, straight toward the portal, and the warning had been a means to snap her out of whatever vision into which the gateway had pulled her.

Cold fear gripped her tight, and she shook her head to clear it. Swallowed hard and tried to force down the pulling in her gut, the siren’s song of some other place, and some other people; a man with lilac eyes wanting to lay claim to her.

She stroked Alpha’s neck. “Sorry,” she murmured. “Go on, then. Get me close.” She leaned low over his neck, and Alpha made an approving sound, wings propelling them forward.

They were three lengths from the portal when its flawless black surface rippled.

She thought it was a trick of the light, at first, an illusion. But then it rippled again, like a pond with a stone thrown into it, and this time a pulse shuddered out through the air toward them. It struck her like a physical force, and Alpha cried out shrilly.

The portal rippled again, and something emerged from it. Something small, and purple, and pointed. Something that kept emerging. Coming and coming, growing larger.

It was a snout. A drake’s snout – the snout of a massive drake, far, far larger than Alpha.

All of Amelia’s insides went ice-cold and liquid. “Gods. Oh gods, oh gods – Alpha, no!”

Alpha threw back his head and angled their flight path upward.

Amelia leaned out of the saddle to look down, and watched the head of an impossibly massive, dark purple drake thrust through the rippling black puddle of the gateway.

Its jaws parted, as it kept emerging, revealing rows of knife-sharp teeth, emitting a low, thrumming croon. Its head was crowned with red-purple horns, and a frill much wider and pricklier than Alpha’s. Its eyes were edged were small spikes like rose thorns, giving it a stupid, heavy-browed look. Stupid or not, it could have killed Alpha with a single chomp.

The head came through, and its neck began to follow, sinuous and serpentine, peaked with more spikes.

If it kept coming – and the portal even now was widening to accommodate it; gods only knew if it bore a rider, but they were soon to find out for themselves – then nothing they’d seen so far today would look anything like carnage by comparison. It would slaughter them all, roast their flesh, and lick their bones.

Amelia was gripped with a kind of fear she’d never known, so powerful she felt faint from it.

But the portal needed blood to close. A magic user’s blood.

She pulled hard on the reins, and swung Alpha around so that he hovered in midair, directly above the portal. The purple drake’s neck slithered out another foot, and another.

Amelia dropped her reins, tugged off a glove with her teeth, and pulled the knife off her belt. She scored her palm, and she was so frightened she couldn’t feel the pain of it, but the blood poured freely.

She mopped at it with the glove, until its leather palm was stained crimson, then she took up her reins again. “Okay, let’s go,” she told Alpha. “You have to get me in close – close enough to throw it.”

He made a distressed sound, and pushed worry through the bond, but he started moving again, flying out, and around, coming back toward the portal in a slow arc.

The purple drake was out nearly to his shoulders now, and he saw them coming. Darted up with his head, jaws open, roaring. Amelia felt the heat and wind of his breath. Glimpsed a flicker of green flames between his teeth.

She gritted her own, leaned low over Alpha’s neck and threw.

The glove wheeled through the air, painfully slow. It caught the drake’s attention.

“No!”

He snapped at it – but missed, and it slipped neatly through the black surface of the portal, disappearing within.

Time stopped.

And then there was a terrible crack like thunder, and a blinding light. Wind roared – a sucking wind, one that Alpha screamed against and struggled to escape, wings beating furiously. A moment of tumult and anguish, her mind screaming, too – or maybe that was her mouth, who knew.

And then stillness.

Utter stillness. Alpha fumbled midair, and then righted himself, flapping strong, climbing up into the air once more.

Amelia twisted around in her saddle to look.

The portal was gone.

On the ground beneath where it had been lay the severed head of the purple drake, its red tongue lolling on the dirt, black blood leaking out across the road from the stump of its neck.

20

“You look tired,” Oliver observed, when he materialized in the Immortal Emperor Unchallenged ’s solarium. It wasn’t truly the emperor’s. It had looked familiar upon his first visit, and in the intervening visits since, Oliver had finally placed why: he’d seen it in a book before. An illuminated compendium on the architecture of the Crownlands. The emperor was in the palace at Aquitainia. In the king’s solarium, no doubt drinking his wine as well, a glass of which he held now, delicately, between the fingertips of both hands where he sat by the fire, head bowed, hair mussed along the crown of his head as though he’d been raking his hands through it.

He lifted his head as Oliver approached, and his fatigue became even more apparent. He was already so pale that he couldn’t get sallow, but his eyes were pouchy, and his face drawn, the lines around his mouth deeper than normal; his expression stormy and troubled and withdrawn.

Oliver poured himself a glass of wine from the usual, small round table and took the chair opposite. He crossed his legs, and leaned an elbow on the arm of the chair, and put on an expectant, though carefully concerned expression.

When Romanus spoke, his voice was raw-sounding, scraped and scratchy as though he’d been shouting. “I am tired.” He eased back in his chair with the faintest wince, and took a long sip of wine, voice clearer afterward. “But it’s no matter.”

“It matters to me,” Oliver said, and cocked his head just so. “Why are you tired? Are you having trouble sleeping?”

Romanus sent him a narrow look: he wasn’t fooled. “Don’t play ignorant. It’s unbecoming on you.”

Oliver smiled, subtly on the outside, but hugely on the inside, because his efforts – employing Romanus’s teachings – were paying off. He was shielding his thoughts, and Romanus could have been lying, but he – like Erik, actually – tended not to lie, blunt, and forceful, and rude, and too forward, but not slithery and dishonest. At least not in Oliver’s brief experience with him. And the sourness of his expression, as his gaze traveled all the way down to Oliver’s boots and back up again, said he was prying at his mind, but unable to penetrate.

It was dangerous, being here like this. Speaking with him. Learning from him. Oliver hadn’t told anyone: not Tessa, not Náli, and especially not Erik. Náli and Tessa would have lifted their brows and cautioned him. He didn’t want to think of Erik’s reaction. He said that he was practicing shifting between planes…and he was…but that wasn’t all he practiced when he came here.

That first surreal visit, with his heart in his throat and his palms clammy on the pommel of the sword he’d clutched like a lifeline, Romanus had looked on him with mocking amusement. “If I wanted to kill you,” he’d said, the lilting accent making the words somehow more threatening, “I would have done so already.”

Stiffly, Oliver had said, “I think my caution is understandable, given the circumstances.”

“Circumstances?” Romanus had spread his hands to indicate the room around them. “I have brought you here to my most private space.”

“Yes. And we both known nothing ever happens in an emperor’s most private spaces.”

A head shake, a dismissive snort. “I’m not going to ravish you, little whore.”

Oliver had gritted his teeth, and tried not to think of anything that might stir his imagination in that direction.

Romanus had taken a last sip of wine and set his glass aside; laced his fingers and flexed his hands, so his knuckles cracked loudly. “Your mind is as open as an unrolled parchment. Come. You must learn.”

The lessons had proved both easier, but far more complex than his sword training. He didn’t have to cross blades with anyone, side-stepping, and blocking, and parrying, lungs burning from the cold air as he fought to keep from tripping over his own feet. But the mind was a much more delicate instrument than the body, and he couldn’t simply hack at his problem, here.

“Everything you require is already inside you,” Romanus had said. “You must learn to tease out the threads and use them separately at will – and then use them together.”

“Juggling while riding a horse, essentially.”

Romanus’s brows had quirked, the faintest hint of a smile touching his lips, but he’d tipped his head in concession. “Essentially.”

Between the second and third visit, Oliver had stopped bringing a sword along.

This particular trip, his body was currently atop Percy, flying above the Phalanx as it marched south, Tessa and Náli flying alongside him. Tessa had swooped in close on Alfie minutes ago, face flushed, eyes brimming with worry as she explained that Amelia had called her and Náli from the Between, wanting advice: Leif and the wolves had joined them last night, and today, on the road, they’d been attacked. Some sort of rift in the air that expelled Sel enemies.

Oliver had sought Romanus, and found him like this: head dragging on his neck, hands lax, eyes bleary.

Oliver sipped his wine, and tested the strength of his own shield. Drawing it up had become nearly comfortable, now. The first few times, he’d erected it stone by stone, the strain of setting it in place leaving him drained and breathless. Now he could throw it up all as a piece: not a stone wall, but a shield, hammered steel, with a hand at the back, so it could be wielded quickly and efficiently, as a soldier would in the field. He knew that Romanus could have pierced it, if he’d battered at it hard enough. But there was no pressure against it today, not even when he entertained the thought of taking advantage of the emperor’s weakness. He imagined surging to his feet, bridging the gap between them, and sticking a knife in the man’s white throat.

Romanus didn’t react.

Oliver said, “You did it yourself, then. The gateway. That’s why you’re so knackered.”

Romanus had his head cocked toward the fire, but his eyes slid over, and touched him briefly, the sort of penetrating look that left Oliver suppressing a shiver. It was the sort of look that he could have compared to one of Erik’s – and there were similarities – but that would have been a mistake. This man’s thoughts did not begin to run along the same track as Erik’s. The moment he allowed himself to think that would be the moment he blundered his way into a trap.

Isn’t this already a trap? a voice of reason asked in the back of his mind. Quickly shoved aside.

“The Sels are famed for their shamans,” Oliver said. “I’ve seen the sketches in books. My nephew’s a bloody wolf thanks to their handiwork. Why do such a thing yourself?”

Romanus’s gaze slid back to the fire. A log popped, and shifted, showering sparks, and Oliver thought he didn’t mean to answer. Finally, however, he said, “You do not understand magic. Not truly.”

Oliver shifted forward in his chair. “Well, I still have a lot to learn, but I’m getting a late start on it, after all.”

Romanus shook his head, white hair rustling over his shoulders. He looked grim – looked disappointed.

Oliver sighed, frustrated. “You failed,” he said, with relish. “For all your understanding of magic, you didn’t manage to kill Amelia.”

Romanus turned toward him fully, then, though he was forced to prop his temple against a raised fist. His face was even slacker and more drawn than it had been minutes before, when Oliver first appeared; he wondered if the man would be unconscious by the time he left. But his gaze still glittered, hard and serious. “Kill her? Why should I kill her?”

“To–” Oliver faltered. He’d not expected that response. What else could his goal be? “You said so yourself, when you encountered Náli: our magic is stolen. Is your goal not to – to kill us? And reclaim our magic for your own?”

Amusement tweaked the emperor’s face again, that subtle glimmer of something nearly human behind the mask of a tired conqueror. “It’s been more than two hundred years since a Drake sat a dragon in battle. The magic – the Selesee magic in your veins – survived two hundred years of uncareful breeding, and persists still to this day. I don’t reclaim that by killing – but by breeding.”

“You–” The implication hit, and then hit again, knocking the breath from him. He swallowed with difficulty. “Oh.”

“I have two sons,” Romanus continued, as though Oliver wasn’t quietly having a crisis in the chair opposite. “Just as you have two lady cousins. And your necromancer’s power can be passed back and forth.” His head lifted, as some rallying burst of energy coursed through him, brightening his eyes. “I shall conquer Aquitainia with the sword. And I shall breed your pilfered magic back into my bloodline.”

This was…oh, this was bad. This was even worse than he’d thought.

Death was a horrid end to all their stories.

But capture and rape – breeding – was unthinkable. He refused to allow himself to consider it, to imagine Lia and Tess and Náli–

No.

He took a too-large swallow of wine to bide time, while Romanus looked on him with a challenge in his gaze, awaiting his answer to the declaration.

Oliver took one more bracing sip of wine, and felt its effects begin to cloud his mind. His shield wasn’t holding steady any longer, and his caution had been tempered. He said, “But Sels interbreed. That’s what you do.”

It looked as though Romanus nearly smirked at him. “Since the birth of the twins Lilac and Lucia, the worthy of Seles have bred cousin to cousin, and brother to sister. In this way we have kept the bloodline pure, and kept the magic strong.

“But now I see that ours is not the only strong magic. It is time, I think, to combine forces.”

Lovely way of going about it. Oliver set his wine aside, and took a few deep breaths that didn’t do much to clear his head. “Right. Well. Then.”

The smirk deepened, and he scowled. Hitched up straighter in his chair.

“You’ve got two sons, presumably for Amelia and Tessa. And clearly you plan to fuck the magic out of Náli” – he took petty satisfaction in using a vulgar term, but Romanus seemed unaffected by it – “Where does that leave me, Oh Powerful One? Who’s going to breed my magic? I must warn you: I don’t have a taste for girls.”

Romanus studied him a moment, gaze glittering – then he slumped back and massaged at his temple, eyes half-closing. “You’ll find out soon enough.” He flapped a hand, dismissive. “Go away, Oliver Drake. I’m too tired for your lesson today.”

Oliver started to protest–

And promptly opened his eyes to the sting of the wind, and the shredding of clouds all around him, Percy’s wings working beneath him.

He sighed to himself. “Bastard.”

Percy sent an inquiry through their bond, and Oliver stroked his neck. “It’s all right.”

Except that it very much wasn’t.

21

Leif floated somewhere warm, and soft, but musty-smelling. Like old dust and the aftereffects of humans long gone.

Voices drifted over him, familiar, low and soothing, though his mind was too sluggish to parse the words. He heard a woman say something in an inquiring tone, and a man respond with an optimistic one. He knew those voices, felt pleasant tingles all the way down to his toes at the sound of them, but then the pain closed over him like a veil, and he sought unconsciousness once more.

He dreamed of a tumble of purple scales and sharp, bright claws. Of a winking spear, and the whistle of it plunging through the air toward him. Dreamed of Ragnar hovering over him, whining and whimpering; the warm touch of his hand, and the warmer splash of his tears landing on his cheeks. Please, Ragnar begged in the dream. Alpha, please.

A startlingly vivid dream, that one, but impossible. As was the dream of Amelia Drake appearing over Ragnar’s trembling shoulder, her face a vision of worry, her hand gentle when it settled on Ragnar’s back. A supportive touch, as though Ragnar needed comforting. He’s still breathing, she said. We’ll get him back to the manor and patch him up. He’ll be all right, you’ll see.

He dreamed of pain…and then woke, finally, to find that that at least was real enough.

It came on slowly, after he’d fully grasped that he was alive, and that he was no longer dreaming, but waking from a drug-like, healing slumber. The first sensation was of the warmth of sunlight on his face. He heard the twittering of birds, and some other sound, regular and slow. Like a growl, but not. Snoring, he realized after a time. He wasn’t alone, and whoever was with him had fallen asleep, and was snoring.

He cracked his eyes open, and the sunlight stabbed them – and then kept stabbing. His headache burst to life like lightning streaking across the sky, branching through every part of his skull until the whole thing was throbbing and swollen-feeling. He winced, and that hurt, sucked in a breath, and that hurt terribly. For a moment, the pain turned his vision white, and his whole torso thrummed with so much ugly hurt that he became convinced an invisible demon was perched on his chest, clawing him open just as the drake had done.

He sipped shallow breaths through his mouth, and held very still, and slowly, it receded to a dull roar. His vision cleared, and when he blinked it clearer, he made several discoveries.

He was indoors: not merely in a campaign tent or pavilion, but truly inside. He saw smooth, if dusty plaster walls, and a high ceiling set with plaster curls and ornaments; a cobwebbed chandelier of heavy brass, its candle stumps freshly-melted. Someone had lit it, then, along with the myriad candles set in sticks, and dishes, and candelabrum spread across the bedside table, and the low wardrobe against the wall. Someone had needed light to bandage him – and bandage him they had. When he touched his chest – slowly, carefully, his arm dragging with terrible fatigue and soreness – he found that someone had stripped him, and cleaned him, and wound him with linen strips. The wounds beneath were fiercely tender, but he knew his wolf was tending to them, knitting flesh and healing bone even as he lay here.

That was another thing: he was lying here unguarded and unconscious, vulnerable to any sort of threat. Alarm quickened in his breast – but he could do nothing for it, too exhausted, too battered.

The regular snoring was interrupted by a snort, and a rustle, and Leif felt movement down at his left hip.

He rolled his head the other way, and saw a tangle of dusty gold hair on the edge of the mattress. Heavy, folded arms over the white linens, gold bands gleaming in the sunlight from the window, and a hand fisted in the covers over his thigh.

As quickly as it had flared, his alarm died. He took a deep breath, careful not to overexpand his ribcage this time, and breathed in the smell of his packmate. Dust, and musk, and dried sweat, and the now-familiar notes that were just him: his skin, his hair, the wolf pheromones that clung to his nape.

Fondness welled up in Leif’s punctured chest, too strong to fight in his current state. The only thing to do was indulge it. He was alive, and glad of it, and his beta had fallen asleep at his bedside in a show of devotion so touching it left his eyes stinging, too dry to form tears, thankfully.

He shifted his hand from his own chest and dropped it into that mane of rich gold, bone-braided hair. When he opened his mouth, he found it so dry that he had to peel his tongue from the roof of it with more than a little effort. “Ragnar,” he croaked, and his cousin came awake with a start.

His head jerked up, sending Leif’s hand falling to his arm instead, and swiveled side to side, nostrils flaring on a deep breath as he sought a threat, eyes wild and glittering as they darted around the room.

“Ragnar,” Leif repeated, and his blue gaze snapped to Leif’s face.

Eye contact was like a collision. It struck Leif like a physical blow, and he flinched back into the bedclothes away from it, which sent pain arcing through him in fresh, fiery bursts. But he didn’t look away – couldn’t have, had a real fire broken out in the center of the room.

In that first instant, before he guarded himself, Ragnar’s face was open, and uncharacteristically honest. Luminous with relief, and awe, and a gladness bordering on joy. An expression that left Leif reeling; it cramped his stomach, and tightened his fingers on Ragnar’s arm.

Then Ragnar looked away, and visibly dimmed his smile to something small and wry, and didn’t brush his hair back when it swung forward to hide his face. He reached with the hand not pinned down by Leif’s grip to scratch at his short beard.

“Finally awake, are you? I thought you meant so laze about for weeks and leave the war for the rest of us to fight.”

“Hm. No. Too stubborn for that.” Talking was an effort – breathing was an effort. But he said, “Where are we?”

Ragnar lifted his head, and his gaze moved around the room, eyes wide with undisguised admiration tinged with contempt. Aeres was the finest place he’d ever been inside; he’d never seen anything like these plaster walls and dainty furnishings. Leif hadn’t in person, but had had the advantage of a thorough education growing up, and had toured the South through books and lectures from Olaf; stories from Erik and Birger. Any admiration Ragnar felt would be tainted by a clansman’s resistance to finery.

“We’re in Inglewood – in the manor house. Apparently the forest and the duchy have the same name. Big surprise the lazy Southerners couldn’t come up with different names for different things.”

Leif snorted – and then winced when that simple motion sent bright bursts of pain through his sinuses. Ragnar’s attention returned to him immediately, brows drawing together as he frowned. His fingers twitched, and Leif had the sense he’d wanted to touch him in some other way, and had held back. The torq bobbed on his throat as he swallowed.

“How long have I been out?”

Another swallow. The faintest tremor along Ragnar’s lower lip. “Three days.”

A long time for a wolf.

Had he been only human, he wouldn’t have survived.

He tried and failed to work a little moisture into his mouth. He wondered if there was an ewer of water and cup to hand. His stomach rumbled and he wanted a whole ham to himself, but would settle for some broth instead. He wanted to know how many Southerners had been lost in the attack, and how they’d managed to get here, to the manor house. Was Amelia alive? Unharmed? What of her generals and their troops?

All of that could wait. For now, he was caught fast in Ragnar’s melancholy gaze, marveling at the way he seemed to be physically choking on emotion: the leap of his torq, and the flicker of his lashes, and the flex of muscle in his jaw. The room was silent save the twitter of birds beyond the window, and the rasp of Leif’s breathing within.

“I heard you,” Leif said, and watched Ragnar’s eyes widen. “I heard you shouting my name. You were trying to get to me.”

“Well. I…” Ragnar’s jaw worked some more, and Leif saw the moment he gave up on human pride, and allowed all his inner turmoil, colored now with painful-looking relief, to bleed through to the surface.

He turned his face away, blinking fast, and drew in a shuddery breath. “They were killing you,” he whispered. His hands knotted in the sheets over Leif’s thigh, twisting until a thread snapped. “They were killing you, and I couldn’t – I was trying – but it was too far – and my leg–” He whimpered, and bent forward to press his forehead to Leif’s leg, whining quietly, shoulders heaving as his breaths hitched and shuddered.

Leif dredged a low, soothing rumble from his chest, though it hurt to do so, and stroked his head, petted his hair. Ragnar shifted into the touch, seeking more, and everything from his posture to his scent was subservient.

“Alpha.”

Leif parted his hair and found his scruff; curved his hand over the warm skin at the back of his neck, and scratched at the hair on his nape. “It’s all right. I’m here. I’m okay.”

He was, but nearly dying had revealed a truth important to both of them, one Ragnar doubtless would have wanted to keep secret…and one which Leif wanted to scoop up and cradle in careful hands. It was irrevocable, that truth, and not the sort of thing he took lightly: Ragnar cared. Ragnar needed him.

And as Leif massaged the back of his neck, he could acknowledge that, at this point, the need was mutual.

~*~

A frightened-faced lad of about fourteen brought them a tray bearing food, wine, and water, and scurried away when Ragnar winked at him.

“Don’t antagonize children,” Leif scolded.

“Give me five minutes with the lad and I’d have him melting like warm wax in my hands.” He made an obscene gesture, and Leif growled without any feeling behind it, earning a grin.

“Help me sit up.”

“Yes, alpha.”

It took an embarrassingly long time, even with Ragnar doing most of the lifting and wedging pillows behind his shoulders so that he didn’t have to tense his core and hold his own weight propped against the headboard. The pain was electric, and Leif gritted his teeth and growled his way through it. He had to rest, afterward, catching his breath, dizzy from this new angle. Sitting up, he could see that the bandages went all the way down to his hips, and felt more on his legs as he shifted them beneath the linens.

Ragnar fetched the tray – it had little feet so that it could perch on the mattress, on either side of his legs – and set it across his lap. Poured water for him, and lifted the wine jug straight to his own lips. When Leif scowled at him, Ragnar lifted his brows and said, “You need the water.” Another slug. “And I need the stress relief.”

Leif snorted, and lifted his cup – and wound up greedily sucking it all down in a few swallows, his throat parched. Ragnar was ready to pour more the moment the cup touched down on the tray.

There was hard bread, and cured sausage, and a little pot of olives, of all things, and it looked like a feast in his current state of hunger. He tore the bread in half and asked, “What happened after I passed out?”

Ragnar stole an olive and settled back in his chair to tell the tale.

“Your lady–”

“She isn’t my anything.”

“Your lady,” Ragnar insisted, glimmer of mischief coming into his gaze. It was a welcome return to his usual bratty ways. “Got on that beast of hers and threw a bloodied glove into the hole. It closed like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Cut off that other drake’s head when it did.” He drew a line across his throat with a finger in demonstration.

“What other drake?”

By the time Ragnar had walked him through all that he’d missed, his forehead was starting to throb because he’d pushed his brows higher and higher in disbelief. “Gods,” he murmured, rubbing the wrinkles out with his fingertips, food momentarily forgotten. “If the head and neck are that large…”

“Aye. It could have killed us all in a matter of minutes. It could have swallowed men whole.” He shuddered, and took another swallow of wine. Leif didn’t know what it said about him that he found the way Ragnar wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, afterward, endearing.

Erik would have been appalled.

But Erik wasn’t here, and didn’t bear thinking of at the moment.

“Do we know anything about the girl? The one who…” He opened his hand to mime the way she’d burst to bits.

Ragnar shook his head. “Scouts were sent back down the road to talk to the farmers and their families. No one is missing a child, nor knows of anyone who is.”

Leif frowned. “But the Sels weren’t here. They came through that hole, and somehow, her death was what opened it. She was a sacrifice – but where did she come from? And how did they enchant her?”

Ragnar shrugged. “Who’s to say? Amelia’s been to that other plane to visit with Náli, and seek his wisdom.” He rolled his eyes. “The ice fairy hasn’t a clue what happened, but he’s going to, quote, ‘look into it.’”

“That’s an awfully mocking tone from a man who just threatened to defile a kitchen boy.”

“Heh.”

Leif mopped up the last of the olive brine with a bit of bread and popped it into his mouth, less ravenously hungry, but wishing there was more. He brushed crumbs from his fingers and said, “What now, then?”

Another shrug. Ragnar said, “Now you rest, and get well.”

“Giving orders?”

“Suggestions, alpha. After…” His expression soured. “That will be your decision. Amelia keeps coming by to see if you’re awake. I think she fears we’ll march back home, after what happened.”

“March home and do what? Hunt deer in the forest and chase our tails until the Sels eventually raze the entire continent?”

He’d meant it as a rhetorical question, but Ragnar pitched forward in his chair, face lighting up with eagerness. In a quiet, earnest voice, he said, “We could.”

Leif sent him a flat look, and Ragnar scooted forward to the edge of his chair, hands lifting to toy with the bedclothes.

“No, listen. Leif. We could. You’ve seen, now, what horrors await. The closer we get to the capital, the worse it will get. Why should we bleed and die for someone else’s country? Why shouldn’t we go and live as the wild things we are? Have a little life, before the end times?”

Leif frowned. Ragnar was hedonistic and pleasure-seeking, at his core. What honor he possessed was…limited. He might die trying to protect his alpha, but politics at large, it seemed, still held little appeal.

He wasn’t sure why he’d expected a change of heart.

And a part of him wondered why he himself hadn’t changed more; wondered why duty still dragged at him, when frolicking and fucking and living out his days as a wolf slipping through tree trunk shadows sounded so appealing.

He could get lost, he realized, in those sorts of daydreams. Staying and fighting was hard, retreating, giving in to baser urges so much easier.

Leif sighed. “No, Ragnar,” he said, firmly. “I’m staying. You may go if you like.”

Ragnar frowned. “That’s cruel.”

A wolf couldn’t stray from his alpha – just as a thrall couldn’t stray from the master who’d collared him. Ragnar had even fewer choices than most.

“Sorry,” Leif said, and watched surprise smooth the other man’s features. “But hiding and waiting until the war comes to us isn’t an option. It already came to us, at Aeres. They’d not yet finished repairs before we departed.”

Ragnar sighed, but nodded.

“How’s your leg?” He’d not known about it, but Ragnar had let it slip, earlier. A voice heavy with regret, with remembered desperation: my leg…

“It’s fine,” he said, dismissively, shifting his weight in his chair.

Leif levered alpha authority into his voice; ordered rather than asked. “Let me see.”

Ragnar’s darted, mutinous glance said he didn’t appreciate such an abuse of leadership, but pushed back his chair, tugged off his boot, and rolled up the leg of his trousers – new trousers. Secondhand, obviously, from their faded black fabric and tattered hem, but not the sand-brown pair he’d wore previously. He hiked them up over his knee, and Leif bit back a curse when he saw the hard, pink lump midway down his shin.

It had been stitched, the marks still visible as a zig-sag pair of dots across the bone, where the skin was thinnest, and where a hump of scar tissue had turned the flesh hard and shiny. The stitches would have needed to be pulled, before the rapidly-healing skin closed over them and made it impossible.

Anger flared hot in Leif’s gut – anger at the beast that had done this to his beta. Anger at himself, for not having been there to prevent it. That was an alpha’s job: to throw himself at threats, to protect his pack. He’d failed Ragnar, and that hurt as badly as the wounds pulling at his chest and stomach.

“The bone came through, didn’t it? When you fell?”

He sought Ragnar’s expression, but couldn’t meet it; Ragnar studied his own scarred leg, tracing the knot of badly-healed flesh with his thumb. “Yeah.”

“Who stitched you? A drunkard?”

Ragnar smoothed his trouser leg back down, and Leif saw the flicker of a wry smile touch his mouth. “A woman, actually – the physician was killed in the action.” He settled in the chair, and tossed his hair back with a flick of his head, gaze going low-lidded and lascivious – and teasing. Not all of his teasing was the result of machinations, or dastardly plans, Leif had learned. He liked needling at people; Erik had always thought it hid some plot, but Leif had learned he was just like that. “So the lovely Lady Leda tended to me in my hour of need.”

Leif put up a single brow. “The lovely Lady Leda?”

“Aye.” He grinned lazily, and hooked an elbow over the chair back, so he was sprawled in his seat, the sort of pose that would have drawn the gazes of women and men alike in a crowded taproom. “She’s got this boy – was hovering the whole time, giving me the dagger gaze, very protective – but he’s a whey-faced, plodding sort. We” – he gestured between them – “could convince her to turn her gaze elsewhere, I’ve no doubt.” His grin was the sort that pulled you in to his scheming: come with me, let’s have fun.

Leif barely managed to resist returning it – because he was alive, and Ragnar was alive, and they were sitting here together, on the other side of an ordeal, and Ragnar had cried over him, and the warmth of affection was strong in his breast – and sighed instead. “No.”

“Ugh. I know you’re better because you’re being dull.”

“Do you think of anything besides sex?”

That earned another grin, this one toothier, but more innocent. “Food, sometimes.”

“Hm.”

Outside, the birds fell silent after a sudden burst of fluttering wings, and Leif heard the crack and rustle of drake wings, instead. Two drakes calling back and forth to one another, grumbling cries that were conversation, rather than warning.

Ragnar’s gaze lifted to the window, expression going serious. He stood, and walked around the end of the bed. He hid it well, but Leif didn’t miss his limp; it was of the sort that would plague him permanently, Leif thought; a stiffness that would haunt him after a long day, the kind best treated with a warm bath and a stack of pillows, afterward, a good rubbing-in of liniment. Leif pictured himself rubbing it in, working it deep into the bend at the back, and down his calf, over his shin; could imagine the low grunt as the cool tingling took hold, and the tension slowly eased.

Ragnar unlatched the window and pushed its halves open; leaned on the sill and gazed out at whatever lay beyond. “She’s got five total,” he said, and Leif blinked away the haze of imagination to realize he spoke of Amelia’s drakes. “The big one – Alpha” – he snorted – “and then his four girls.” He shook his head, marveling. “They showed up when the dust was settling. We didn’t have any carts, so one of them picked you up in her claws and carried you here to the manor.”

“Likely,” Leif said, and Ragnar shot him a look. “Seriously?”

“Aye. You were dead to the world.” He held his gaze a moment longer, driving home his worry. Then turned back. “She’s been out scouting again. No one will tell me – I’m only the man wearing the collar, after all – but I get the impression they’re wanting to get on the road again, and we’re causing a delay.”

“I am, you mean.”

“If there’s no you, there’s no pack,” Ragnar said, firmly. “They can leave if they want, but I’m not letting you out of bed while you can’t even sit up on your own power.”

“Yes, Mother.”

The corner of Ragnar’s mouth twitched up, but his gaze remained trained out the window. Leif wanted to get up and join him, but knew that was beyond his abilities, at the moment.

Ragnar lifted a two-fingered wave, and then turned back into the room. “She’s coming up here, I expect.”

“You sound eager about that.”

Ragnar shot him a smirk. “And you smell it.”

~*~

Amelia glanced up at the façade of the manor as she mounted the side terrace steps, and saw a pushed-open window on the second floor, long hair lifting in the breeze. Ragnar offered a two-fingered wave: Leif was awake.

She gave a salute of acknowledgement and jogged up the last two steps and through the open terrace doors into the ballroom…which had been transformed into a surgery in the past few days.

It had been a battered, sorry rendezvous party that had trooped back into camp three days before. Amelia had flown on ahead, and sent back wagons for the wounded unable to walk…and for the dead. She’d cursed and fumed over the lives loss, but it was the mental picture of Leif stretched out on the road, unconscious and shredded, that haunted her nightmares. She’d looked at his torso, and then had to look away, retching before she could steel herself. The problem, Ragnar had said, was that a man who was only a man would have bled to death long before, and so the drakes would have given up the effort far sooner. A cleaner corpse would have lay where Leif’s devastated, but somehow still-breathing form had.

But even with his supernatural healing abilities, he’d been in far worse shape than any of the other wounded. And so she’d instructed Valencia to take him carefully into her claws and carry him back to the manor, so he could be seen to faster. Amelia had landed, slid down off Alpha’s back, checked to see that Leif was still breathing – impossibly, he had been – and gone pelting up to the doors, shouting for aid.

It had been Colum and Leda, surprisingly, who’d stepped up as physicians. Bookish Colum who’d studied anatomy and medicine, and who had a strong stomach, and steady hands. And Leda, whose needlework was unrivaled in the Valley, and who could stitch skin as well as fabric. The two of them had seen to Leif, while Amelia flitted about, fetching warm water, and clean bandages.

By the time they were ready to move him upstairs – men were already setting up cots and laying down old rugs and drapes to serve as drop cloths in the ballroom – a cloud of dust had heralded Shadow’s sliding stop in the yard, and it was Ragnar who’d climbed out of the saddle – and promptly collapsed when he tried to put weight on his bad leg. A nasty compound fracture he tried to ignore as he crawled up the stairs, wild-eyed and as lathered as Shadow, sweating and shaking and in dire need of reunion with his alpha.

The other wolves had followed him, on four legs, and milled about the yard, shooting nervous and worried glances toward the house. But none were in such a state as Ragnar. Amelia had stood behind him herself, holding him down by the shoulders while his leg was reset, cleaned, and stitched. Save one whimper when Colum put the fractured bone back in place, he made no noise while they’d worked, and after, when Amelia suggested food, or a bath, he’d wanted nothing but to be shown to Leif’s side.

As the day wore on, the others had finally arrived, sweaty, and exhausted, and banged-up. The wounded were helped into the surgery and seen to. The well went off to bathe, and sleep, and confer with one another. Amelia called a meeting that night, and together, she, and Reggie, and Connor had relayed the whole story to Edward, Leda, and Colum.

Leda had pressed a hand to her lips, eyes wide with shock.

Edward had shaken his head, braids rustling against his back, and murmured, “Gods. What next?”

“We catch our breath,” she’d said, on a deep exhale, and gladly accepted the cup of wine Colum set down before her.

Three days had passed, since. The men had rested, had healed up. Amelia had gone scouting in every direction, spending long hours on Alpha’s back, scanning the ground for anything unusual. She’d spoken with the farmers herself, asking about the girl who’d blown up, but no one knew her or was missing her. It was a mystery, still.

They’d buried the dead, and tended to the injured, and talked, tentatively of their next steps. And all the time, a pall had lain over the house, while the Crown Prince of Aeretoll lay unresponsive in his bed. No one asked the obvious, most pressing question: what if he didn’t wake? What if the heir of Aeres died? Or remained vegetative?

Amelia didn’t want to consider having to tell the king in person.

And her heart ached every time she poked her head into the sickroom and saw Ragnar seated beside the bed, head down on the edge of the mattress, the curve of his shoulders eloquent of grief. He wasn’t worried about the war, or political alliances; he wanted his alpha, and time and time again, Amelia found she hadn’t the faintest clue how to say anything that might be of comfort to him.

Now, finally, Leif was awake.

And the surgery, when she entered it, had been transformed into a necropsy theater.

The wounded had either been given private rooms upstairs, or returned to camp to drink away their pains and be comforted by comrades and camp followers. In the center of the room, several inlay tables had been pushed together to form a wide work service, and draped with old, peachy silk curtains. Atop it lay the severed head and neck of the purple drake that had tried to come last through the portal, and Colum, sleeves rolled up and hands encased in thick, leather blacksmith gloves, was methodically taking the whole thing apart, bit by bit, while Leda walked behind him with a board and scroll and quill, cataloguing his findings.

Halfway across the vast room, Amelia ran into a wall of decomposition stink; she pulled up short and clapped a hand over her nose and mouth.

Leda glanced over, the lower half of her face swathed with a white linen kerchief for the same reason. “Lovely, isn’t it?” she asked wryly, voice muffled by the makeshift mask.

Amelia drew up the collar of her tunic to serve the same purpose, and held it in place with her hand. “Found anything interesting?” she asked, as she closed the gap to join them at the side of the table.

Colum turned sideways, and dumped a double handful of sopping meat into a metal pail. It landed with a sick squelch that left Amelia’s stomach rolling. When he turned back to the table, she saw that his gloves were smeared with black. He nodded to the far end of the table, where an assortment of fine, Dale wedding china had been laid out in a row. “To begin, I compared samples from this drake with the samples you took for me from Alpha.” He moved down the table, and Amelia followed.

Alpha hadn’t appeared to be seriously wounded, but a few of the gouges from the small drakes had bent back scales and drawn blood. Amelia had carefully gathered a bit at Colum’s request. A sample that was dry, now, in a crusted black puddle in the center of one of the plates. Beside it, an identical sample.

Colum pointed to the one on the right. “This is Alpha. And this is the big one.”

“They look the same.”

“Yes. I’d imagine they’re of the same genus, if not species. Perhaps only differing breeds, like with dogs or horses.”

“Hm.”

He picked up a small stub of candle, burning low, and tilted it over the plate until the barest edge of the flame touched the dried blood.

Smoke boiled up immediately, thick, dark curls of it, along with the stink of singed hair.

“Whoa.”

Colum waved the smoke away, and coughed into his shoulder. “Quite. I’d need a larger sample size for further testing – to be sure, you understand – but from what I can tell, Alpha’s blood is flammable.”

Amelia’s brows were still up, surprise sparking in her fingertips, where she felt the phantom heat of Alpha’s smooth, too-warm neck beneath her hands each time she stroked him. “It makes sense, I suppose. They run so hot. I wonder if their stomach acid is as well, or some sort of fluid in their lungs, given they breathe fire.”

Colum nodded. “I would hypothesize as much. But, here, watch this.” He tilted the candle over the purple drake’s sample, next. “You might want to step back.”

“Oh?” she asked, and then saw why.

At first, the sample reacted as Alpha’s had: the dark curls of smoke, the smell of burned hair. But then there was a crackle, and a spark, and Colum stepped clear just before a thin jet of green flame shot upward from the plate.

“Gods,” Amelia swore, skipping back herself, hand coming up to shield her gaze from the terrible brightness of the fire. The phosphorescent green jet hissed, and shot off sparks, and the puddle of dried blood was eaten away to nothing but a lone half-curl of ash before the fire subsided. It left behind a cloud of noxious smoke, and a singed plate.

Amelia fanned the air before her face, trying to wave away the smell, which was burning her sinuses and making her eyes water. Leda joined her.

“Horrible, isn’t it? He dropped the whole candle in the first sample, and I thought the entire ballroom was going to go up.”

“So that was that smell I caught yesterday,” Amelia said, grimacing. “Gods, you could have cooked us all.” If she was a little accusatory, she blamed it on surprise.

In a dry voice, Colum said, “Clearly, this other drake’s blood is a bit more flammable.”

“Why is the fire green?” Amelia asked.

“The most reasonable answer is that it contains traces of some metal or mineral – most likely copper or some compound of it, given the color. Much more than you would find in a human or animal,” he clarified. “This level of concentration suggests poisoning.”

“Or genetic tampering. The Sels have bred them for a purpose.”

He tipped his head in concession.

Amelia took a deep breath, and refocused. Of course they’d been bred for war, for conquering other nations, and of course that had entailed some sinister and unnatural biology. “Right, then. Flammable blood. Anything else of note?”

He shook his head. “The blood is black, as you know, and bone much denser and harder than that of any animal I’ve encountered before. I’ve found something in the back of the mouth, though, right at the top of the tongue.” He walked round to show her, and revealed a rough patch of skin, far sharper and rougher than a cat’s tongue, its texture akin to stone, he told her – she declined to reach in with her bare hand and feel for herself – and the animal’s uvula above long, thin, and rough-edged as well. “When he flexes this muscle here, uvula strikes throat, and ignites a spark. That’s the secret to the fire-breathing, I believe: they expel a flammable liquid of some sort – stomach acid, as you said, most likely – and flex the back of the throat to ignite it on its way out.”

“Incredible,” she said, and it was…but not overly helpful. Her own drakes breathed fire. She didn’t need to know how they did it, only if the Sel drakes did it differently, and if this piece of one might help them learn how to fight them.

She stepped back from the table, keen to be away from it, and its host of grisly smells. “Let me know if you discover anything else.” She nodded to them both, saw Leda’s silent, amused glance – she knew right where Amelia was off to – ignored it, and headed into the main part of the house.

Her pulse quickened as she mounted the stairs, and though she tried to slow her steps, and keep her expression smooth and businesslike, relief hastened her on her way, until she was nearly jogging by the time she reached the upper hall. She paused a moment, on the landing, took a deep breath, smoothed her tunic – rumpled and dusty from flying – and approached the bedchamber with head held high, shoulders back, expression (hopefully) composed.

It was a south-facing room, warm and sunny most of the day, and at this hour of the afternoon, the sun fell in warm panels through the window, puddles of gold on the floorboards and across the foot of the bed; molten in the unwashed waves of Leif’s hair, loose and unbraided over his shoulders and chest. Even swathed up to his armpits in bandages, bruises and cuts still healing on his face, thin and raggedy in the beard thanks to three days in bed, he was a striking vision. He sat propped against the headboard on a stack of pillows, and no amount of infirmity could make him look small or weak, it turned out. In the spill of sunlight, his eyes glowed vibrant, as though backlit, like blue stained glass.

She froze in the doorway, staring, all her carefully-planned greetings flown right out of her head.

“Have a nice ride, m’lady?” Ragnar asked, and snatched her focus.

He was sprawled back insouciantly in the chair by the bed, but she saw the restless tapping of his fingers on the arm of the chair, and noted the way he’d positioned himself between the door and Leif. His expression was easy, his gaze slumbrous and appreciative as it traveled down to her boots and leisurely back up again, lingering on her chest – but she had no doubt he would move lightning-quick the moment he sensed a threat to his alpha. His easiness was a ruse, and a convincing one, but Ragnar was poised on a knife edge. Amelia thanked her life of working with animals for the acuity to read him in that way.

“I did, yes, though it was more practical than relaxing.” She turned her gaze back to Leif, and allowed a small smile. “It’s good to see you awake, your grace.”

He made a face that fell short of his stern scowl on the road, before the ambush. It looked more pouty and petulant, in his current state, and Amelia wanted to laugh. “There’s no need for titles.”

“He’s bashful about being a prince, you see,” Ragnar chimed in. In a stage whisper behind his hand: “Doesn’t want the lads to know he’s required by law to wear silken underthings.”

Leif sighed.

“Powder blue.”

Amelia bit her lip.

Leif said, “Titles are for strangers. First meetings and enemy negotiations. We don’t stand on ceremony among friends in the North.”

She lifted her brows, hopeful. “Are we friends, then?”

Ragnar said, “We could be more than–”

Leif cut him off with a sharp growl, and Ragnar subsided peaceably. Examined his nails.

“Friends, yes,” Leif continued, his expression serious – but not angrily so. Earnest, she thought, and more open than she’d seen it before he’d been injured. “I fear we got off to a rocky start, my people and yours. But after your…” His gaze took a turn around the room, resting briefly on the lumps of his feet beneath the covers. “Hospitality, I find that I’m ashamed of my earlier conduct. I was ungenerous, and unreceptive, and I hope you’ll accept my apologies on behalf of my entire pack, and convey them also to your generals and their men.” Formal words, and words that had taken no small amount of effort and humility to offer.

Amelia didn’t take them lightly. She nodded. “I will do so. Thank you.”

His shoulders dropped a fraction on his next exhale. Relief. His tone grew warmer, and more familiar, then. “We are family, after all, in a way. Your sister and my brother. We shall be aunt and uncle to their children.”

“Hopefully not soon,” Amelia said. “They’re very young.”

“Very.” The corners of his mouth twitched up in a faint smile, and it deepened premature lines around his eyes. Lots of being outdoors, and squinting into the brightness of sunlight on snow. They were nice lines; a nice smile. There was something hopelessly charming about very fearsome and masculine men smiling awkward, but friendly little smiles. In her estimation, anyway.

Ragnar executed a dramatic, spine-cracking stretch, complete with arms raised overhead and overly loud yawn. Leif’s gaze snapped to him, his cheeks subtly pink, and Amelia felt her own heat as she glanced toward Ragnar…who wasn’t exactly a safer object of study, with his tunic gaping down the front, revealing a toned, defined stomach, and a trail of dark hair leading down into the waistband of his trousers. His grin, when he lowered his arms – muscles jumping and leaping invitingly inside his gold armbands – said he knew she liked what she saw, and her face heated another fraction.

“Well, then,” he said. “We’re all friends and family. How cozy.”

Leif sent him a warning look that went ignored, and returned his attention to Amelia. “Ragnar says you’ve plans to march.”

“Ragnar said you were to stay right there in that bed until you could walk under your own power,” Ragnar said, wagging a finger.

“Yes, Mum.” Leif rolled his eyes. To Amelia: “Are you? Marching soon, I mean.”

Amelia folded her arms and propped her shoulder in the doorframe. “Just before we went to find you, we received an influx of refugees from a small town called Merryweather, near the seat of the duchy of Kenmark, which borders the Bridelands.”

Ragnar’s brows bent at quizzical angles, but Leif nodded.

“I’ve studied the maps. The Bridelands are up in the mountains, yes? And the Bride Pass leads down into the Crownlands?”

“Yes. There’s a chateau in Merryweather, currently occupied by a Sel noble and general, same as the manor in Kenmark. We plan to move under cover of night, a small strike force, and take Merryweather without a lot of fuss. From there, through deception, we can draw out the general in Kenmark, and take that house as well. We want to build a chain of defenses in case we should need to execute a strategic retreat. The ultimate goal, however, is to pierce the Crownlands, establish a camp, and prepare for a siege.”

He nodded, but lifted a single brow. “A fine strategy…if you had the numbers for it.”

She sighed. “I know. We’d hoped your uncle might be close behind you, to beef up our ranks.”

A shadow passed behind his eyes at mention of King Erik; a flicker of lashes, a sour twist of his mouth. “He might be. How long can you wait?”

It was her turn to frown sourly. “Originally, we’d planned to march yesterday – but then – well, then I knew you were nearly here, and we rode out to meet you.” She shook her hand. “That portal…that changes things. Our enemy could attack us anywhere. I still don’t understand how they were right there, that they knew our whereabouts on the road.”

“The dream,” Ragnar said, drawing both their attentions again. “That was how you found us, isn’t it? In the dream world.” When she stared at him, startled – none of them had mentioned the visions yet – he grinned and said, “Did you think it was just a dream? That we didn’t have it as well?”

She remembered falling onto her backside in the grass, Leif standing over her, two-legged, finally, extending his hand to her. Not a dream, no. She’d known that, but having Ragnar wink at her left her face heating all over again.

She said, “It wasn’t a dream. It’s the Between.”

“Where you go to speak with your sister and the others?” Leif asked.

“Yes. According to Náli, it’s a place that lies between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead.”

Leif’s brows went up. “There’s only one Corpse Lord among us.”

“My concern exactly. It’s a plane Náli’s been visiting since he was a child, and he was able to show the three of us how to access it as well. From what I can tell, we can enter it purposefully, but we also enter it in our sleep, while dreaming. It’s…” She gestured beside her head, practical side fighting to wrap itself around the idea of all this bloody magic. “Quite a lot to comprehend. But, essentially? Yes, that’s how I knew you were coming. That’s why I took a party north along the road to meet you.” Her gaze shifted unbidden to the thick linen wrappings that encased his chest and stomach. “Though now I wish we’d waited here, and let you arrive at your own pace.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Leif said. “None of us could have.”

“Wait,” Ragnar said, voice too-loud in the quiet that fell after Leif’s consoling words. Too-loud on purpose, she thought, when she glanced over and saw the uneven cock of his brows, and the faint, though visible traces of affrontery in his gaze. He wasn’t shy about flirting, but there was a streak of jealousy in him, she thought. He’d shifted forward in his chair so his elbows rested on the edge of the mattress: staking a claim on the man laid out in it. “So you’re saying one of those gold bastards was lying in the long grass? Spying on us?”

“Someone was, I think,” she said. “How else could they have known where and when to strike?”

“And you’ve been scouting for weeks,” Leif added. “They waited until you were on horseback, rather than on the drake. And once we’d rendezvoused, so they might take us both out at once and save a second trip.”

Amelia nodded. “I think we must assume that they’ll try something like it again.”

“Or something worse,” Ragnar put in.

“We need more scouts,” Leif said. “Two waves of them, staggered, the first at least a mile ahead.”

“Connor’s woodsmen are good for that: they’re much savvier about climbing, and tracking, and spotting things that are out of place.”

“The wolves can help as well. We were far too bunched up, and the smell of the burned-out burn covered up the smell of the girl until it was too late.”

His use of we was terribly encouraging. She’d been feeling for weeks as though she held this campaign together by the skin of her teeth – as though she was an imposter, playacting while the adults watched her with a combination of pity and fascination. She knew that wasn’t true, that it was only her insecurity and imagination, but having the prince of Aeretoll, powerful in his own right even without considering his skinwalker status, throw his support behind her made the upcoming march seem a more manageable task.

She nodded. “The help would be appreciated. I’m going to call a formal meeting in three day’s time. Will that give you enough recovery time? Will you be able to attend?”

His frown was born of determination, she thought. “More than enough.”

Ragnar patted his knee where it lay humped beneath the covers and said, “I’ll be the judge of that.” He turned a sunny smile on Amelia, his gaze full of dismissal. “I think this one needs a nap for now, my lady. He gets grumpy if he doesn’t get enough sleep.”

Leif protested, but Amelia met Ragnar’s gaze and nodded. “Rest well, then.”

She felt their eyes on her back as she departed, burning like hot irons.

22

They had discovered, in the past few days, that it was possible to call to one another, and request a meeting in the Between. Amelia had begun it, in a panic the day her party was attacked on the road, the process fueled by terror and desperation. But they’d experimented since, and found that it was possible for one of them to cross over, and then send out a mental call to whichever person they wanted to speak with. It came through the other side as a sort of tickle at the back of the mind, and a sudden blooming of thoughts of the caller.

Shortly after Oliver was booted from his audience with the emperor, Amelia filled his mind, and he crossed over to see that she had called Tessa as well – but not Náli. This was blood family only. Their meeting had been serious, and necessary, and ultimately one of good news: Leif was awake, and speaking coherently, and on the mend; he’d also pledged his formal allyship with Amelia’s cause, and declared them “friends.” The look of tired bewilderment on her face had reminded him of those early days at Aeres, when he and Tessa had struggled to come to terms with the notion that this was their life now, and the royal family their people.

By the time their conference was ended, and he returned to his physical form, the sun was sinking toward the horizon, and Percy was circling, rather than flying straight. He’d let out an unhappy grumble that Oliver had been absent for so much of the day’s flight, and Oliver had stroked his neck, promised him an extra liver at dinner, and guided them down to prepare for the night’s camp.

They had reached the river, and the land bridge crossing, and Erik had decided to stay on the Aeretollean side for the night, and start across into Aquitainia with the morning’s first light. There was a town there, and an inn. Some of the men had doubtless slunk off to the taproom and brothel right away. The inn’s proprietor had spotted the royal banners, and sent a boy to invite His Majesty to stay beneath his roof. It looked as though rain was coming on, and the proprietor would be delighted to host the king of his country.

Oliver knew that Erik would have preferred his tent, and his brazier, and his bedroll, close to his men and ready for action. But having a king stay was an honor for a small-town inn owner, and one not likely to occur again anytime soon. “My man of the people,” Oliver teased, and Erik sent him a sharp, unamused look.

And so they had a proper roof over their heads for the night, and a real bed with feather-tick mattress all to themselves. The rain did come, a heavy, early spring drumming on the roof that sluiced down past the window to turn the alley below to mud. A cold rain, the chill lifting off of it giving Oliver goosebumps where he stood at the open window, watching the silver flash of its falling, seeking out the lights of camp beyond the town’s borders.

Some of those goosebumps might have been dread, though. He needed to speak with Erik about Leif. He’d start with the good news, that he was healing…and then follow-up with the bad news that he’d been injured in the first place. And that their enemy was even more powerful than they’d known.

Lanterns glowed as soft, buttery smudges behind tent canvases, and pitch torches burned despite the rain along the pathways of the camp, stuttering and flickering. Oliver listened to Erik move about the room behind him, pouring water from the ewer, washing his face, and hoped that Percy and Alfie had been fairly fed. When he’d left, Percy had been staring down into the river with a head cocked to better see the darting silver fish below the surface.

The floorboards creaked beneath Erik’s weight, and Oliver felt the heat of his body a moment before strong arms slipped around his waist, and a solid chest pressed up against his back. Erik hooked his chin on his shoulder, and nuzzled into the side of his head with a low, appreciative murmur that left Oliver gripping at his forearms and shivering pleasantly.

“Your hair’s getting long.”

“Is it? That’s good, because there’s this very large man who keeps braiding it.”

Erik huffed a quiet laugh, and pushed said lengthening hair aside with his nose to get to skin, lips warm and soft along Oliver’s pulse point. He smoothed his broad palms over Oliver’s stomach and chest, the thin material of his shirt doing little to disguise the warmth and texture and intent of them. “The bed’s going to make a good bit of noise, but it’s comfortable enough.”

Oliver shivered again, and pressed back against him; let his fingertips wander over the strong backs of his hands, and run up the bones there to trace the intricate shapes of his rings. It was tempting to tip his head to the side, and let Erik kiss his neck more thoroughly. Then, when his knees had gone to jelly, he could turn in his arms, slide his own around Erik’s neck, and let his mouth be kissed, too, until it was slick and bruised. A bed for the night, and not likely to see another one for a while. Why waste that? Erik’s mood had lifted once they were indoors, alone together, with a door between them and the war. Why ruin that? Why not give them both a night of respite?

But guilt was niggling at the back of his mind, and so Oliver pressed his hands flat to the backs of Erik’s and straightened his spine.

Erik felt the shift in him right away. He stilled. Lifted his head, taking away the welcome warmth of his breath and leaving the damp skin there cold without him. “What is it?” Erik leaned further over his shoulder, one hand breaking loose so he could rest it on the window ledge. A gust of wind brought cold, stinging drops inside, prickling across Oliver’s face and throat. “Did you see something?”

“No. Percy will alert me if anything happens at camp.” Oliver hesitated, and Erik shifted somehow closer, so he could peer down at the side of Oliver’s face, his gaze boring into him and ratcheting up the tension. “I need to tell you something.”

“That sounds…ominous.”

Oliver did turn, then, and Erik let him, before his grip tightened on Oliver’s hip once they were face-to-face. Oliver rested his hands on his broad chest, delightfully half-exposed by his unlaced shirt, and forced his head up, so their gazes could meet and he wouldn’t get distracted by temptation.

Erik lifted his other hand and braced it on the window frame above his head, so that Oliver felt hemmed-in, rather than sheltered. “What?”

“It’s not ominous,” Oliver said. “In fact, it’s good news.” He winced. “Technically. Try not to interject until I’ve told you the whole thing.”

He didn’t interject – but he did press his lips together until they were bloodless, and worked his way though a series of facial expressions that would have left Oliver snorting under different, less serious circumstances.

“…but he’s awake, now, and speaking coherently. The dressings were changed, and apparently his wounds are healing impossibly fast. He will bear scars, the physician thinks, but should regain full mobility with enough rest and good food,” Oliver finished, a little breathless by the end because Erik’s gaze had gone hard and flat the way it did when he squared off from an enemy.

“Is that it?” he asked, and his voice had gone low and gravel-rough.

Oliver said, “Yes. That’s it. Feel free to interject now.”

Erik nodded slowly, gaze trained on the rain showering off the roof beyond the window. Then he withdrew, stepped back, and began pacing.

Oliver had expected as much, but it still broke his heart a little to see the worry and anguish take physical hold of Erik like this; a furious anxiety over his nephew he was unable to choke down and keep hidden.

He folded his hands behind his back and, though clad in only a shirt, trousers, and stockings, walked in a way that conjured an imaginary fur cape and crown, kingly even at his most casual. His tone was casual as well – deceptively so. “The attack took place three days ago, you said?”

Oliver winced internally, because he knew exactly where this was headed. “Yes.”

“Hm. Three days.” Erik hit the wall, spun, and paced back the other way. The floor creaked in time with his quick strides, and Oliver thought – with an absurd, inappropriate urge to laugh that he swallowed – whoever was staying downstairs would think the rhythmic crack and groan of wood was the result of them rolling around in the bed together. “You learned three days ago that my nephew had been terribly wounded in a roadside ambush by mystical Sel forces.” He paused, and turned to face Oliver, his head angled down, and brows angled up, blue gaze sinister in the candlelight – which was shielded from Oliver by Erik’s broad shoulders, so it seemed as though the sun were hiding behind him. “And you didn’t think to tell me until now?”

Oliver took a careful breath, and knew he needed to tread carefully as well. He wasn’t afraid of Erik, no, never. But he didn’t relish spending the next few months with a glowering, tense silence building between them. Though he’d never been on the receiving end of such a thing, he knew Erik was the sort who could carry a grudge to his grave.

He said, “I wanted to wait until I knew for certain what would happen. I wanted to be able to tell you that he was on the mend, and would be fine.”

His brows climbed a fraction higher. “And if he’d died instead?”

“Then I would have told you that he had.”

Erik looked at him a long, unblinking moment, then nodded, and resumed pacing, fingertips tapping restlessly together. “Right. Gently, I’d imagine. After you’d sat me down and poured me a cup of wine. Perhaps while wearing something–”

“Erik.” He hadn’t meant to speak so sharply, was in fact tossing all of his precautions – perhaps needlessly, even stupidly – out the window into the rain, but it turned out he wasn’t capable of standing still and receiving insult, not even from his lover. “I wasn’t hiding anything from you. I nearly told you the moment I learned of it–”

“Then why didn’t you?” Erik ground out through a clenched jaw.

“Because you’re managing this great bloody war march!” He flung an arm to the window. “You’ve men and beasts to worry about; when you aren’t in the saddle, you’re sitting up all night in your tent writing missives by lantern light until your eyes won’t focus. And, let’s face it, darling, your worry about Leif borders on obsession.”

Erik scowled.

“It does. Is there even a moment you aren’t fretting over him? Wondering where he is? If he’s safe? If Ragnar has clouded his judgement? I didn’t want to drop terrible news in your lap and watch it fester in your mind until I knew the ultimate outcome, one way or another. Better to tell you he’s recovering, or tell you he’s dead, than tell you he’d been savaged.” In a softer tone: “Knowing wouldn’t have changed anything. You couldn’t have done anything for him. None of us could have.”

Erik’s jaw worked a moment, as though chewing over the words. Then he cursed and turned away. Massaged at the back of his neck.

Oliver wanted to rub out the tension there himself, but didn’t think now was the moment to approach, not while Erik’s back was still up.

“Amelia says he’s doing remarkably well. Sitting up in bed, and eating. Erik, being a wolf is what saved him. A normal man would have been killed for sure.”

Erik took a deep breath that jacked his shoulders up, and heaved it back out, gaze fixed on a spot on the wall where the rough plaster was flaking away, revealing the straw insulation beneath. “But if he wasn’t a wolf, he would have been with us, marching in our Phalanx. Your cousin would not have ridden to meet him, and the attack would never have happened.”

Oliver bit back his own sigh, and didn’t state what seemed, at least to him, to be obvious: if someone beyond the veil was watching them, as Amelia had suggested, spying on them so they knew the exact moment to strike, the portal could have just as easily opened right here tonight, in the middle of their camp. Or on the same stretch of road, when the Aeretolleans approached Inglewood Manor.

Erik’s head turned, hair sliding over his shoulder so that it framed an expression gone drawn and heavy with sadness. “You were protecting me.” He sounded devastated by the knowledge.

“I was refraining from adding to your burdens,” Oliver countered. “But…would it be so bad if I did?” He took a step forward. “If I protected you? Is that not what lovers do?”

A muscle in Erik’s cheek leaped, and he turned his head away again.

Oliver went to him, then. Closed the gap between them in a few quick strides and slipped his arms around his waist without hesitation. Rested his chin on his chest and peered up at him in time to see the bob of his throat as he swallowed, and kept his gaze fixed elsewhere.

Oliver sighed, but fondly, and let his smile bleed through into his voice. “Oh dear. It’s always going to be this way, isn’t it? Things will rub along nicely, and then I’ll do something as bold as make a decision, or try to take care of you in the same way you take care of me, and you’ll go broody and stubborn on me, won’t you?”

“Hmph.” Erik’s gaze finally flicked to him, unamused.

“We’ll keep having the same conversation, won’t we? You wanting to control everything – fix everything – and me trying to keep you from needing to.” He pushed his smile wider, and Erik’s mouth twitched sideways – not in a smile, but in a sort of concession.

His arm stole around Oliver, though, hand sure and strong at the small of his back. “You see now why I was so disagreeable to you when we met.”

Oliver coughed out a startled laugh. “Warning me off for my own protection?”

The daintiest shade of pink suffused Erik’s sharp, masculine cheeks. “Aye.”

Oliver laughed. “Lucky for you, I saw straight through your dastardly plan.”

Erik’s grip tightened. “Lucky for me.”

Later, sweaty and spent, after they’d traded the creaking of the floorboards for the creaking of the bedframe, they lay tangled beneath the covers, listening to the susurrus of the rain on the roof thatch. Erik traced aimless patterns down his arm, the regular up-and-down of his chest under Oliver’s cheek lulling him rapidly to sleep.

But then, in a rough, sleepy voice, Erik said, “There’s nothing else, is there? That you haven’t told me?”

All the pleasant, post-coital languor dissipated in a flare of worry. An image of the emperor filled his mind, exhausted and peaked, leaning heavily on his elbow and sipping wine. Dismissing him with a wave, no lessons today.

Oliver took in a slow breath that he hoped sounded and felt as easy as those previous. “No,” he said. “Nothing.”

23

By the time the day of the meeting arrived, Leif was well and truly stir-crazy. The first day, when he’d awakened and been visited by Amelia…and realized the depth of Ragnar’s emotions concerning him…he’d gone along with both their insistence that he stay in bed, eat easily digestible foods, and try to get some more sleep.

But the next morning, he was ready to get up.

The following forty-eight hours had been dominated by either Ragnar or Amelia, or sometimes both of them, standing guard at the door in an attempt to limit him to pacing the length of his room. He could have physically moved her aside, and could have ordered Ragnar to stand down with an alpha command…but he did neither. Fussed, insisted he was fine, ravenously ate every plate of food brought to him…and tried not to show how badly he was hurting as he limped up and back across the floorboards, counting away the time by the progression of sunlight along the dusty rug.

The morning of the third day, his bandages came off, and his wounds were inspected by a pale, dour-faced young man with a bad haircut named Colum, who appeared neither impressed nor intimidated by Leif, nor by Ragnar, who had taken up pacing in his stead, shooting threatening looks Colum’s way and insisting he be careful with the bandages.

An unnecessary insistence, it turned out. The flesh had knitted, all his wounds closed, though pink and puckered scar tissue remained that might or might not smooth and lighten with time. Once he’d flexed all his joints, and proved he could take a deep breath – he tamped down a wince when his ribs protested the movement – he was pronounced “well enough” to leave his room.

The same nervous boy who’d brought the food the first day appeared with a bundle of cloth in his arms. “C-clothes, my lord. My – my prince,” he stammered, and Leif took the garments from the boy before he blushed any harder. When he turned from the door, he found Ragnar lounging across the foot of the bed, his grin sharp.

Leif sighed. “Tell me you haven’t despoiled that boy.”

Ragnar chuckled. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Ordinarily, Leif would have sighed, and rolled his eyes, and gone about his business. But now, after all that had transpired in the past week, he stood firm, and caught his cousin’s gaze, and said, sternly, “Ragnar, he’s just a boy.”

Ragnar’s smile dropped off his face as though wiped away. He rolled his eyes, and pushed up so he was sitting, feet on the floor. “I know. Do you take me for a villain?” When Leif only continued to stare, he amended: “That sort of villain? I like a good match in the sack: give me a good, strong girl, or a fighting man, not a child.” Then he grinned. “What’s the matter? Jealous?”

“No,” Leif said, too firmly, and walked to the far side of the bed to unfold the clothes.

They were…not great.

Someone – probably Amelia – had taken care to at least attempt to mimic his Northern style of dress. There were trousers of dark wool, a white, laced shirt, yellowed from many washings, and a leather, thigh-length tunic to wear over it. The belt was of simple, woven cord, with silver edging at the ends, and nothing like his thick, tooled leather belt set with a wolf buckle.

Ragnar drew up beside him. “Save your boots, all of your things were shredded to bits.”

“Even the belt?”

“Cut clean in two by something. I had the saddler look at it, but he said there was nothing to be done for it.”

“Hm.”

“Not very princely, is it?” Ragnar said, with an air of complaint.

“They’ll do. It’s only clothes; it doesn’t matter.”

But what did matter, it turned out, was stripping off his borrowed dressing gown and standing bare in the room’s cool spring sunlight with Ragnar within easy reach beside him.

They’d been naked in front of one another. In the baths at Aeres, and on the road, bathing in frigid creeks. Then, more intimately, in the brothels, flushed, and aroused, sharing a woman together. Ragnar taking his cock into his mouth. All far more scandalous and scintillating than this moment, as he wobbled on his feet and contemplated the lent, Southern clothes that awaited him.

Things were different. He knew it, and of course Ragnar knew it too. As his own pulse quickened, he heard the echo in Ragnar’s breast; heard the way his breath hitched, and smelled the prickling awareness that shivered over both their skins.

There was a different between lust and love, and yet somehow the combination of both had the power to transform a person completely. Leif could admit to the first, done lying to himself about those brothel tumbles, and the way Ragnar’s presence, his goading, his looks, his touch, had been every bit as, if not more rousing than the girls they’d shared. His mind shied from love, though. That was the only word that could apply to waking to find Ragnar draped over his unconscious form; Ragnar’s screams, Ragnar’s tears. But he couldn’t say it. Care felt like a big step.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him, unclothed and covered in gooseflesh and scars, felt like another.

Leif started to look at him – and then held back. He wasn’t sure what might happen if he did, and so he reached for the trousers, and stepped into them.

When he was dressed, the cord belt so stretched it nearly wouldn’t tie, Ragnar let out an ugly snort of laughter.

“Ha! You look like a sausage in a casing!”

Even without a mirror, Leif could tell that. He frowned, and tugged at the laces of the tunic, feeling the sleeves squeeze his biceps in a vice-like grip. “I’m well aware.”

Ragnar reached down to pinch his trousers where they hugged his hip, pinched skin in the process, and Leif batted him away. “Gods. Do they not make men in normal sizes here in the South? Are they all such willowy, underdeveloped creatures?”

Leif turned, finally, and faced the standing mirror in the corner, only to recoil in distaste when he saw the ridiculous way the clothes clung to him, as though all the air had been sucked out of them, and cleaved them to his skin. “Perhaps they’re the normal ones. And we’re overdeveloped.”

That got another burst of loud laughter from Ragnar. It was a happy, glad sound, and Leif found that, too-small clothes aside, he felt buoyant and lighter than he had in weeks, and it was all down to that laugh.

“I’ll trade outfits with you,” he tried. “I think your shoulders are a little smaller.” He held up thumb and forefinger a scant quarter inch apart to demonstrate.

Ragnar shook his head, his grin wide. “No, alpha. I didn’t get my clothes ripped to shreds by little drakes. This is your just punishment.” His smile dimmed, however, once the words had left his lips. The torq jerked on his throat. He was remembering, Leif could tell: recalling the sight of Leif limp and bloody on the road, gouged to bits.

Leif heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes with the intention of distracting him. “Fine, fine. Let us go.”

Ragnar followed at his heels, eager as a puppy as they left the room and descended the staircase, his limp only somewhat noticeable as an uneven thump on the treads.

Halfway down, Leif slowed, and then stopped, when the knowledge that he was inside a Southern nobleman’s house struck home. The room had been fine, though dusty from disuse, all its linens and drapes frayed at the edges. And though he’d noted the dainty, decorative frills of the furniture, and the ways it differed from the sturdy, rough-hewn timbers and rune-carved pieces in Aeres, he hadn’t truly appreciated the starkness of the differences until now, on the staircase.

The steps themselves were of a dark-stained wood, but down their center, their footfalls were muffled by a patterned carpet that, though faded, flaunted a host of differing colors and swirls of flowers and embellishments. The banister, on which his hand rested, was of a smooth-polished, rounded hardwood, unlike the stone balustrades and rope hand-holds of home. The spindles were of wrought iron, hammered at their bases into the fanciful figures of lions and men on horseback, alternating as the staircase descended. The wall to his left was painted with an intricate, colorful mural of what he assumed was the house itself seen from outside, with sprawling lawns and gardens, fields studded with horses, and a little pond with a boat on it, rowed by a man with trimmed whiskers and short hair, a lady seated in the bow holding something that, once he’d thought on it a moment, he was able to correctly label as a parasol.

Opposite, the wall was papered in torn and peeling silk, a deep green flecked with gold flowers. He could see part of the front hall below, its checkered tiles, and a dainty-legged table that had become a repository for gloves and helms.

Then he looked up, and saw that the ceiling was of smooth plaster, rather than the bared timbers of Aeres; cobwebs spanned the corners, but in the center was a wide plaster rose, intricately patterned and detailed.

Ragnar leaned in close behind him, his breath warm on Leif’s ear as he whispered. “It’s not like home, is it?” He sounded both awed and regretful.

It didn’t seem possible that he was missing his small, hide tent, his small, shaggy horse, and his small band of unwashed wolf raiders – but Leif knew he was, just as he himself missed the soaring hearths, and stone walls, and squabbling dogs of his hall back home. Even in disrepair, this place was fine and grand.

But it held no charm for them.

Leif shook his head, resumed his pace, and let Ragnar direct him toward the dining room, which was where the meeting was to take place.

Voices reached them, as they turned down the appropriate hall. Overlapping and masculine, save one low and sultry feminine one that walked pleasant fingers up the back of Leif’s neck. It wasn’t Amelia speaking, though; she stood outside the dining room, leaning against a section of cracked wall paneling, waiting for them, it seemed.

She pushed off the wall as they approached, and inspected him, head to toe, with the frank appraisal of a military commander…and with a laugh lurking in the corners of her mouth, one she suppressed with pressed-together lips.

“It’s nice to see you up and about,” she said. “And that the clothes…um. Fit.”

He ached a single brow. “Do they, though?”

She stopped suppressing her smile, and it was…it was a nice smile. Sharper, more mischievous than her sister’s. An expression all her own, that didn’t remind him of her relatives, thankfully. “I’m afraid they’re the largest we had to hand.”

Leif made a show of sighing. “They’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure I can talk a saddler or a tailor into modifying something better-suited,” she offered, and then gestured to the open door behind her. “Shall we?”

“Yes.”

Strangely, Ragnar had been silent throughout their exchange. He never missed a chance to say something suggestive or teasing, so Leif found that strange, and nearly turned around to inquire about it, until he reached the threshold in Amelia’s wake, and realized why Ragnar had been so quiet.

Nerves gripped him, hard and sudden, and when he paused to take a deep breath, he could smell the sharp tang of Ragnar’s nerves as well.

Ragnar, he felt, as a beta, as a collared thrall, was nervous about his place at this meeting, and his reception by these Southern nobles, far finer and more polished than even Leif had expected. This once-grand house was proof of all the superficial ways they might as well have been from entirely different worlds. To go from the wild life of a clansman, to attending a war council in an Aquitainian mansion was a dramatic shift.

Leif was a little nervous for those same reasons – minus the gleaming torq – but mostly, he harbored significant doubts as to the ways his wartime education would rub up against theirs. Though an unfair assumption, he couldn’t help but think he was about to spend the majority of this meeting arguing, rather than agreeing.

He took a deep breath – gods, his ribs ached, still – pushed his shoulders back, and tried to project his alpha status. For the other meeting goers, yes, but mostly for Ragnar, whose fingers brushed his back in a brief display of comfort-seeking, just before they entered the room.

It wasn’t much larger than the private family dining room at Aeres, but its walls were smooth paneling edged in gilt plaster molds, rather than rough stone, and its ceiling was another masterwork of soaring plaster, though painted, here: a scene of blue sky, and white clouds, and the gods, he realized, though dressed in Southern style, rather than the traditional furs, boiled leathers, and rough-spun, practical wools he knew.

But no, he mustn’t get distracted by trivialities. He focused on the table, long and intricately carved, with seats enough to sit twenty. Only five sat in attendance, though, ranged down the length of the table. Amelia went to the head of the table, and the pushed-out chair there, a delicate, steaming teacup already awaiting her. That was her seat, at the head: the seat of the fearless leader. The two chairs to her right were empty, as were most of them, and Connor and Reginald sat to her left. Halfway down the table, a striking woman in her middle years, with a plunging neckline and exposed decolletage sat beside the dour-faced Colum who’d unwound his bandages a half-hour ago. At the foot sat a dark-skinned man with long, thin black braids, decorated at the ends with smooth, unembellished beads of black-and-white painted wood that clicked softly together when he turned his head to regard them. His expression was impassive, impossible to read, and his scent was smooth, and cool and composed, and betrayed not a trace of aggression, only curiosity.

Leif approved of him immediately, especially when he noted the breadth of his shoulders, and sword calluses on his hands.

All gazes lifted to land on them. On him, specifically; it was a relief to know they were looking at him, rather than at Ragnar. They’d all met him, he realized. Ragnar had been speaking and dealing with all of them, from Lady Leda stitching his leg, to thanking Reggie and Connor for coming to Leif’s defense on the road. Ragnar had tried to portray that story with a casual air – “No need to thank them for saving your life, because I’ve already done so” – but his cheeks had colored, and Leif knew it had taken him no small effort to do so. He was rarely serious, and never thankful.

Through process of elimination, Leif knew that the man at the foot of the table must be Lord Edward. He might not have formally met everyone, but he knew their names, and which territories they were lords over, and his nerves dissipated. He was ready for the arguing, but less jittery about it than he’d been moments before.

“Everyone,” Amelia said, in a voice that managed to be both conversational, and authoritative. “I’d like you all to formally meet the Crown Prince of Aeretoll, Prince Leif Torstansson , Heir to the North, the Palace at Aeres, and the famed Great Northern Phalanx.”

Ragnar leaned into his side and elbowed him – ouch – with a laughing whisper of, “Gods, she’s playing you up, isn’t she? I’d have led with ‘he snores like a dying cow and finds smiling difficult.’”

“Along with his cousin, Ragnar of the Úlfheðnar clan. Leif’s most-trusted and valued second-in-command,” Amelia continued, and Ragnar went statue-still beside him.

Leif elbowed him back in kind.

In a formal tone, Amelia said, “I trust our allies from the North will be quite welcome at our council table, and that they will have unique contributions to make to our war effort.” Then she turned to Leif, and her expression was one of determination: she was going to make this alliance work, by the gods, that expression said. “Leif. Ragnar. Welcome. I’d like you to meet…” And she went around the table reciting full names, and titles, and listing off duchies and accomplishments. It was a lot to remember, and though Leif tried to take careful mental notes, he knew he would forget some tidbit. Hopefully, this bit of ceremony was just that, a bit, and the Southerners didn’t lean on it in ordinary conversation.

He'd been right about Lord Edward, and nodded back in response to the man’s slow, deliberate single nod of acknowledgement. No one bowed, thankfully, though he did receive a few “your grace”s. Amelia motioned to the chairs to her right, indicating that he should sit.

First, though, the princely part of him that he’d shoved down the past few months reared to the forefront of his consciousness. He ought to make some sort of statement. He imagined his mother watching in the wings, brows cocked in stern expectation, and found the words came more easily than he’d hoped.

“I thank you for your hospitality, my lords. My ladies. On behalf of my pack, and myself, I would also like to thank you for tending to our injuries, and offering us food and shelter during our recovery. It was nobly done. I should like very much, going forward, for us all to be allies in this common cause against the Sels.” He offered a fast bow, and Ragnar belatedly did the same at his side. Then he sat in the designated chair. “I hear there’s to be a march west? To the town of Merryweather?”

“I’ve given the prince a brief recounting of our planned mission,” Amelia said, taking her own seat. “His input would be welcome.”

He said, “If it’s secret you’re after, my wolves can pass quieter and quicker than a man on two legs.”

Thus the meeting began, and flowed forward, just as all the many he’d attended in Erik’s study had. Ideas tossed back and forth, maps unrolled, and passed around, and turned upside down for better perspective.

“The moment the strike team secures the chateau  in Merryweather, two messengers must be sent,” Edward said. “One back to our lines to inform us of success, and one forward, dressed as a Sel rider, to deliver the message that will draw the general out of Kenmark. The message must be carefully crafted.” He sent a meaningful look around the table. “He needs to ride forth with enough men that we can don their armor and impersonate them, but no so alarming a message that he rides out with his full force behind him, and a missive sent in advance to the palace to warn of foul dealings in the Bridelands.”

“Agreed,” Amelia said.

Leda said, “I’ve been known to pen a convincing note or two in my time,” and the task was awarded to her.

Leif didn’t particularly like the idea of donning enemy armor to fool the guards, strictly on principle, after having grown up in Erik’s straightforward, boldly aggressive shadow. But after the ambush on the road, his body still aching and getting sorer by the minutes, as he sat upright in this stiff-backed chair, he saw the wisdom in deception. They didn’t have the numbers to face a general and his army. But by slipping in undetected, and securing pivotal gates, with a valuable hostage or two, they could get said army to lay down their arms and come along quietly.

A date was picked, and tasks were divvied out – Leif’s wolves would come in valuable for spying and for sneaking, and for fighting, when it came to that. Everything rubbed along well, and Leif was feeling positive about the path that lay ahead…

But then something he’d feared finally happened. Chairs were beginning to slide back, and there were murmurs of lunch, when Leif glanced up, and caught Edward’s gaze. The man was staring right at him, meaningfully, and Leif released the arms of his chair and stayed rooted, staring back.

The rest of the table quieted, as the others noticed their locked gazes.

Amelia said, “Edward?” A prompt.

He continued to match Leif, stare for stare – but then his gaze cut over, slowly and deliberately, to Ragnar, and back again. “He is a thrall? Your thrall?”

It was one thing to deal with his family’s disapproval over Ragnar – but they were Ragnar’s family, too, and even if they now all thought Leif should have laid his neck on the chopping block weeks ago, they knew well the charm and temptation of him. These people here, though, knew him only as the wild man wearing a collar who’d dared to climb aboard Amelia’s temperamental stallion.

He’d expected a fight, once the truth came out.

He hadn’t expected a Southerner to know the old Northern ways in which Ragnar was bound to him, now.

He said, “You know what a thrall is?” And let his surprise color his voice.

Edward said, “My family is not originally from Aquitainia. I have made it my business to study the ways and customs of this continent, new and old, and those of their neighbors to the north. You have said this man is your cousin and ‘beta.’” Hint of distaste on the word. “But if he is your thrall, then he is your war prize, also.”

There was no sense lying; the torq was damning, irrefutable evidence.

“He is, yes.”

To his right, he heard the rustling of Ragnar’s hair as he shivered. Where their arms bumped together, he felt the goosebumps on Ragnar’s skin, and the tremors moving beneath it. The sharp scent of fear-sweat filled the narrow space between them, and Leif didn’t have to meet his gaze or ask a question to know exactly what it was he feared: a cage. Being thrown in irons and tossed in a wine cellar somewhere. Traveling in a locked trunk cut with ventilation holes, because the Southerners didn’t trust him, and thought him a liability.

New alliances and pretty words be damned: Leif would gather his pack and march straight back home if anyone insisted on separating Ragnar from him, or confining him in any way. Only he could collar him, and anyone else who tried would lose a hand for the effort.

Still, he would try to use diplomacy.

He said, “Northern politics are as intricate and hot-blooded as those in the South, and as difficult for Southerners to grasp as it is for me to comprehend the sheer amount of decorative plaster in this house.”

Someone – he thought it was Connor – snorted across the table, and was shushed.

“Ragnar is my thrall, yes,” Leif continued, and eased his arm over so the whole length of shoulder and biceps were pressed flush to Ragnar in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. “He wears an enchanted torq that cannot be released by him, nor by accident. He owes me a debt, and so he will pay it, as my war prize.” A slight nod to Edward, for knowing the correct terminology. “But his presence here, at my side, as my second in command, is not something I’m willing to negotiate. If you want me as part of your army, you shall have Ragnar as well.”

The last he said with a ring of finality, and a lowering of his brows in challenge. Try and take him from me, he thought. I dare you.

Edward held his gaze a moment longer, and then inclined his head a fraction, gaze dropping in concession.

Leif read a note of respect in his scent as well, and thought he’d been tested, and had passed.

Ragnar let out a slow, deep breath, and leaned into Leif’s side.

It was silent a beat, and then Amelia said, “Well, then. If that’s everything?” The sunlight had gone deep gold and slanted at the windows, the horizon beyond the glass pearly peach with the rushing on of evening. “I suggest we all get as much rest as possible between now and our departure.” She stood, and then the rest of them did as well. “I’ll see you all at supper.”

~*~

Ragnar was shaking so badly that Leif didn’t stay inside the manor. Standing upright and hiding the twinges in his torso as best he could behind a bland, but unapproachable expression, he headed out onto the terrace, and then down its steps, and hung a left on the path, Ragnar tailing behind him. When Ragnar gathered a breath to speak, Leif held up a hand for silence and kept walking. Through a gate, beneath an overgrown rose trellis that was just beginning to leaf out for spring. Past topiaries that had gone back to their natural shapes, and through another gate, into a tunnel of gnarled apple trees, the branches grown together overhead so the sun fell in sparse dapples on the stubby grass below.

Leif put his hand down.

“Gods.” Ragnar charged a few strides ahead of him, and then stopped, one hand propped on his hip, the other holding his hair off his neck. A breeze came funneling down through the alley of trees, cool, but sun-scented, carrying all the smells leftover from the warmest part of the day. Leif could see the gooseflesh on his arms and throat, the part of his chest exposed by his half-laced tunic. “I knew someone would say something. I knew they would.” He smelled stressed, and he was whining – unconsciously, Leif thought – under his breath, a quiet squeaky note like an unoiled hinge closing.

“Ragnar,” Leif said, and then, softer, “Hey, look at me.” He stepped in close, and Ragnar’s gaze was wide with surprise when he turned to him. “I thought someone might ask as well. I was prepared for it, and I handled it.”

Ragnar’s mouth twitched to the side, lips pressed to a fine line. “They know about me, don’t they? What I did to earn this?” He let go of his hair, and gripped his torq instead. It had always been fleeting touches, quick passes of his fingertips – but now he held it firmly, the gap between metal and skin just big enough to get the ends of his fingers through so he could grip it tight. Until his knuckles went white, and flexed with sharp cracks.

Leif said, “They only know what I said in there, and I don’t plan on enlightening them further. Amelia knows a little more, I think. Oliver wrote to her of you.”

Ragnar’s brows went up. His smile was wide, and not at all true, a mocking semblance of happiness that left Leif’s chest aching. “Ah, sweet Oliver. Warning his cousin about the terrible wolf man with the shiny necklace. Be careful: he might lure you up into the mountains next! Ha!”

Leif frowned. They’d not spoken of that – of any of it – in a long time. Not since Ragnar was confined to the dungeon in Aeres. Dredging it up now felt like going backward…especially given how things had progressed since Leif had brought him up into the sunlight, and clicked the torq into place.

“I don’t know how much he told her,” he said. “But I don’t think he was trying to frighten her, or poison her against us.”

“Us? What do you mean us? There’s you, your grace, and then there’s me, the villain of your story.” He shook his head, lip curling off his teeth to reveal his too-long, too-sharp eye teeth. “Your entire family can’t fathom why you didn’t take my head with an axe and save yourself and everyone else the trouble of knowing I still exist. Oliver is no different, and he will have warned his cousin well.”

“Has she treated you poorly?” When a sideways glance slid his direction, Leif said, “Has she behaved as though she thought you were a slave? Leave you tied to a tree like a dog? Or did she have her people tend your wounds, and let you sit at my bedside?”

Another head shake. “It doesn’t matter.” He took a deep breath, and looked exhausted suddenly; older and paler and sicker than he had moments ago.

“You’re feeling sorry for yourself,” Leif accused.

Ragnar turned his head toward him once more, and his face was a mask of defeat. Resignation. “One way or another, I’ll end up in chains again,” he said, quietly devastated.

Leif huffed out a breath through his nose, a growl curling along the edges of his voice – one that left Ragnar’s shoulders flinching downward. “I will never let that happen.”

“Bold words, alpha, but you can’t guarantee that.”

“I can. Watch me.”

Ragnar bowed his head, and shuddered. His breath was an audible rush across his lips. His hair parted at the back of his neck, as it swung forward to hang and shield his face; the dappled shadows kissed his nape, vulnerable, bared to his alpha.

Leif found that glimpse of hairline, the pale skin, untouched by the sun, smooth and without blemish, always covered by his hair, irresistible in that moment – as was the urge to offer much-needed physical comfort to his beta. His packmate. Pack. Mine. Mate. That last was growing more insistent by the day. In the quiet of the alley of trees, alone, without so much as the faintest scent-trace of the rest of the pack, he allowed himself to accept the word, and all its implications. Mate. That was the way his wolf thought of Ragnar.

He closed the distance between them, and laid his hand on Ragnar’s nape, fingers following the curve of his neck, palm pressing warmly, skin to skin.

He felt the touch send a shockwave through Ragnar, from the place where they were connected, down to his toes, and back up. A reverberation of feelings manifested physically.

Leif said, “I promise that–”

Ragnar surged upright, and forward, and slammed their mouths together.

There had been no whiff of threat, no hum of violence, crackle of betrayal in the air to precede the sudden rush of motion, and so Leif had not braced himself, nor thrown up an arm to block the assault. And it very much was an assault. Their teeth clacked, and Leif felt his lips bruise straight away, and he staggered backward against the crash of Ragnar’s strong chest against his own. It was even violent, too, but not in the way it might have been. Ragnar hadn’t set his teeth in his throat. Instead, he angled his head, and huffed a hot breath through his nose, and slanted his mouth against Leif’s, begging in every action for Leif to kiss him back.

In the first dizzy, disorienting moments of it, Leif was stunned to stillness.

On reflection, he should have expected something like this to happen. It was a natural progression. After all, how could one be surprised by a kiss after a man had already had your cock in his mouth? But he was surprised all the same, because in some ways, this was more intimate than anything that had passed between them thus far. Ragnar smirking up at him, gathering his hair out of the way, lips stretching around him as he found a head-bobbing rhythm had been about pleasuring Leif; about turning him to jelly, and unmaking him; had left him shaking, and vulnerable, and at the mercy of Ragnar’s mouth, lips tucked carefully over his fangs. It had been about getting off; it had been, in a way, a show of power on Ragnar’s part.

But a kiss was nothing but affection, and sweetness – though perhaps not the biting way that Ragnar kissed. It was nothing but vulnerability, first on Ragnar’s part, and then on Leif’s, if he gave in to it.

But it was a chance to take back some control, too. Ragnar was asking, and Leif could answer. If he chose. If he wanted this as badly as Ragnar did.

Ragnar whined against his mouth, and pressed in even closer, his heart thudding against Leif’s still-tender chest. It hurt, that touch, pushed at all his sore spots – but it sent a hot coil of desire unraveling through him as well.

Leif still held his nape, and he closed his fingers on a fistful of hair, and yanked his head back. Their lips parted with a wet noise, as of a seal breaking, and Ragnar whined again, his eyes huge, his irises the barest of blue rings around blown pupils. His face was flushed, and his mouth was damp, and he was gone already, given over to base instinct and wild lust. The sight of him like that stoked the heat in Leif’s belly, and he let his wolf loose to revel in it; allowed himself a moment of selfish desire and nothing else. Nothing but his dutiful wolf offering himself, pleading with a gaze, and with claw-tipped fingers gripping Leif’s arms.

“Do you want me?” Leif asked, his voice low and growling.

“Yes,” Ragnar panted, right away, without hesitation.

The word, the way it was said, rippled pleasantly down Leif’s spine, and the heat became a concentrated throb down low in his belly; his cock began to stir.

He held Ragnar fast by the hair with one hand, and with the other, he tore at the half-down laces of Ragnar’s tunic, until the halves of it parted and hung open. He dragged his hand down his front, then, over the swell of his chest, nails scratching through the hair, and down his stomach, which sucked in and leaped beneath his touch. He teased him there, tickling his fingertips just below his navel, where he knew his own skin was hyper-sensitive.

Ragnar’s head tipped back, so he was pressing into Leif’s knuckles at the back of his skull, and his hips kicked forward, little twitches that flexed all the well-defined muscles of his torso. Leif could see his cock fattening, the growing bulge at the front of his trousers.

“Do you want me to touch you?” Leif asked, continuing to do so.

The torq leaped as he swallowed. “Yes, alpha.”

Leif shifted in closer, so his breath fell across Ragnar’s upturned face, and he let his hand glide lower a moment, to stroke and squeeze him through his trousers. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

Ragnar’s eyes closed a moment, glimmer of wetness visible at the corners. Leif felt his cock swell and fill in real time, with startling quickness, as he traced its shape over the fabric. He could hear and feel the quickness of his breath, of his pulse.

Ragnar whined. “Please. Alpha, please.”

Leif used the grip on his hair to angle his head to his liking, tipped his own, and slanted his mouth across Ragnar’s parted lips.

He’d not kissed many people. The whores didn’t allow it, and the time he’d tumbled with a farmer’s daughter, a girl older than him, and already a widow, seeking a little cold comfort in a barn, his attempts had been juvenile, and clumsy, and she’d laughed at him sweetly and wanted to get to the main event besides. The knowledge of his own inexperience slammed into him, nearly as powerful as the blasting heat in his gut, and so he moved his lips tentatively, uncertain what to do with his tongue. They kissed like that a moment, some of the immediate desperation dying back, his head clearing a fraction, so that there was room for unpleasant, wriggling doubt.

He felt Ragnar smile against his mouth, and then their lips parted just far enough for Ragnar to breathe a low, airy laugh, and murmur. “Poor lad. Has no one ever taught you how to do it properly?”

Leif huffed, and raked his nails over Ragnar’s chest punishingly, catching a nipple on purpose.

“Ooh,” Ragnar said, and laughed again. “No. Lucky me, then.” He pressed up, and kissed him again, bolder, pushier than Leif had been, and then whispered, “It’s not hard, alpha. Think of what you want to do to me, and go for it.” Kiss. Nibble of teeth at his bottom lip. “Kiss me ‘til I’m too stupid to make jokes. And fuck my mouth with your tongue.”

Another electric shiver went down Leif’s back.

“Yeah?” Kiss. “Sound good?”

“Stop talking. Fucking brat.” Leif yanked his hair again, adjusting the angle once more, and had a blurry, up-close glimpse of Ragnar’s twinkling eyes, his delighted smile, before he bent to the business of kissing again, determined to get it right this time.

Ragnar settled, and softened right away, going pliant and giving, opening to the first press of Leif’s tongue. Be bold, he encouraged himself, and let the thrill of Ragnar’s words – fuck my mouth with your tongue, gods – spur him on. Dipping in, again and again, stroking the inside of his mouth, mapping its contours…until he realized he was savoring it, urging his lips wider with his own, pressing, and sucking as though he was trying to crawl inside Ragnar’s mouth – and he wanted to. He wanted more. He wanted all of him.

Ragnar hummed an approving noise, and when he shifted forward, Leif eased the grip on his hair and let him come; let him bring their chests together again, so their stiff cocks could brush together, too, the tease of fabric between them as thrilling as it was frustrating.

Think of what you want to do to me. That was…so much. Leif’s want felt boundless, bottomless, unplumbable. He smoothed both hands down Ragnar’s chest, and around his ribs, behind his back and down to his ass, urging him in even tighter as he rutted against him. Oh, that was good. It could be better – could be everything – but the hot slide of their mouths and the friction of their hard cocks was good. Was winding him up tighter and tighter…

Until he flexed his hips the wrong way, and pain sparked bright and sharp along his still-healing ribs, lancing along the closed wounds, tingling in the half-numb scar tissues of his savaged chest.

Leif broke away with a hiss and a curse, body going still, and taut, and no longer flooded with pleasure.

Ragnar whined – and then broke into a low, distressed sound, gaze skipping down Leif’s body, noting the way his spine had curved protectively. “Alpha.”

“It’s fine,” Leif said through his teeth. “Just…give me a moment.”

Ragnar – with the dilated eyes, and the wet mouth, and the heaving chest of someone apprehended in the throes of mounting passion – furrowed his brow, frowned, and said, “You’re hurting. You’ve been hurting.”

“Well, I was eviscerated three days again,” Leif griped. “That tends to hurt.” When Ragnar’s frown deepened, Leif steeled himself, and stood upright, though it was a painful effort that left sweat blooming on his face and down his back. “Here. It’s fine.” He reached for him. “It will pass.”

But Ragnar stepped neatly back out of reach. “No, it won’t.” After a beat, his brow smoothed, and a crooked grin broke across his face. “I have an idea, though.”

~*~

The grass was soft, the moss-covered bit of old stump not the worst pillow he’d ever endured, and it propped his head up at the perfect angle to watch Ragnar overtop of him. With his borrowed, too-small tunic unlaced, and his shirt pushed up to his armpits, Leif looked down the sweat-sheened expanse of his own bare chest, his taut, gently-clenched abdominals, to the spill of loose hair that covered his lap.

Ragnar had dragged him farther down the lane, where the trees were even thicker, and the shadows deeper, well out of sight of the house, and then he’d urged him down, and arranged him just so, and stripped off his own clothes so that he was naked; then he’d unfastened Leif’s clothes and fallen on him, as a wolf fell on a wounded deer, and set about torturing him, from chin to balls, with his mouth, until Leif was hard again, and aching, his pulse thrumming so that its rhythm, and the gentle suckling sound of Ragnar’s mouth on his cock, were all that he could hear. The breeze, the calls of evening birds, the distant clamor of camp – all of it had faded to obscurity. His mind was nothing but pack and sex.

Ragnar pulled off with an obscene, wet slurp, and tossed his hair back as he sat up, hand smoothing saliva up and down the length of Leif’s cock with a squelching sound as he contemplated him through half-lidded eyes. His own cock was standing proud, wet at the tip, ignored for the moment as he worked Leif’s. His other hand went to Leif’s stomach, touch a soothing massage, as though he stroked a spooked animal.

As Leif gazed up at him, Ragnar’s smile took on a teasing glint. “What were you going to promise me?”

It took Leif a moment to gather enough wits for speech. “…What?”

Ragnar chuckled, low and throaty, entirely too pleased with himself as his hand continued to work him up and down with a firm grip. “Before. Just before I kissed you. You said, ‘I promise…’ and then. Well.” As the sun dipped lower, a few last, bold rays found gaps in the branches, and bright globes of light swam over Ragnar’s face, his eyes glowing like gems. “What were you promising me? Fine furs? Jeweled beads for my hair?” He tossed it in demonstration, the bones clacking softly.

He was trying to provoke him, the shit. In his current mood, Leif felt a little like indulging him. He cocked his head. “Would you like fine furs and jeweled beads?”

Ragnar’s hand faltered a beat, just as his smile did, before it resumed its lazy pace.

That bit of reaction, the surprise in it, spurred Leif to say, “We should wash your hair, first. Comb it out flat. I have oil in my things. And perhaps, if I showed him the specifications of my own, I could have the smith here fashion you some beads. Silver, like mine. I could braid you with lover’s beads, and put my cloak around your shoulders.”

Ragnar’s eyes blew wide.

Leif had been teasing, and so the weight of the words struck him too late, after they’d left his lips. The possession of them, their suggestion, had nothing to do with wolves or packs or mates; they were wholly human words, from his human life, from his life as a human prince. Words not for a cousin who’d gone from traitor to thrall, but words for a lover. Declarative words.

He didn’t retract them, though, and his belly didn’t fill with nerves, the way he might have expected. If anything, a sort of calmness settled over him like a veil. His body was thrumming and twitching from Ragnar’s attentions – now paused – and the anxiety the declaration should have stirred never came. He was warm, if not perfectly comfortable, Ragnar’s weight pleasant on top of him, grounding; he was surrounded by his scent, and his eyes drank in the battled-hardened, scar-tapestried sight of him. He placed his hands on his thighs, and smoothed them up his muscled thighs, feeling the fine tremors that vibrated just beneath his skin.

“Ragnar,” he prompted.

Ragnar’s gaze dropped a moment, and he sucked in a quick breath through his mouth. “Right,” he murmured, absently. “Yes. Right.” His heartbeat throbbed, visible in his throat, audible in the dappled air between them. “Whatever my alpha wants.”

Though it cost him – speared him through with pain, was hampered by a weakness so great he thought he might go toppling backward – Leif sat up, hands shifting to Ragnar’s hips for balance, and to hold him in place, so that their faces were closer, Ragnar’s hovering shocked above his, as Leif reached up and caught his chin. He was breathing hard from his efforts, his ribs screaming at him, a muscle in his back cramping, but his voice was low, and authoritative when he tipped Ragnar’s head so their gazes could meet – Ragnar’s was all drowning black pupil, his face gone slack with a craving like nothing Leif had ever seen; so keen, and so desperate that Leif knew a flicker of fear, and wondered if he’d broken something inside him with a handful of boastful, proprietary words – and said, “What do you want?”

It looked as though it took a great deal of effort for Ragnar to swallow, and form words. He panted, “To sit on your cock. Alpha.”

Delicious shiver of tension, a want to acute it left his stomach cramping. “Do it, then.”

Ragnar put a hand in the center of his chest, and shoved him back flat to the grass. Leif landed with a surprised oof, and had a momentary thought of wait, because they didn’t have…supplies…and he didn’t want to hurt Ragnar, not in this way. But Ragnar was driven, and wouldn’t have listened to anything save a firm, alpha order, Leif thought. He leaned down to spit on him, spread the wetness with his hand, then shuffled forward, lifted up on his knees, and angled Leif as he lowered himself, slowly and inexorably.

Heat, and then resistance, a pressure, and Leif thought gods, it won’t work. But then there was a sudden give, and Ragnar let out a deep rush of breath, and he sank down, and down, and down, taking him in.

Leif gripped his thighs, and pressed his head back against the stump, eyes squeezing shut tight. “Shit,” he hissed through his teeth. “Gods…Ragnar…” and then words failed him, because it was so much. It was tight. Too tight, squeezing him like nothing he’d ever felt, all enclosing soft heat that left him panting and clinging to every last shred of self-control. It was all he could do not to come on the spot. His entire world narrowed down to the unforgiving clutch of Ragnar’s body, and he gritted his teeth, and scored Ragnar’s skin with nails that had turned to claws. He vibrated all over with the tension of holding back, heedless of the pain it ignited in every half-healed wound.

Dimly, he was aware of Ragnar settling; of his weight on his hips, and the fact that he was sheathed completely. Ragnar was panting, audible shudders of breath that hitched and shivered. But his hum was pleased, and his touch proprietary and soothing both, as he stroked over Leif’s stomach, his ribs, his chest.

“Be easy, alpha. Shh. I have you.”

And gods, he did, didn’t he? Leif was completely at his mercy…which was the only place he could think of being at the moment.

Ragnar stroked him up and back, slow sweeps of his palms, massaging at tense places and sore spots, the soft sound of skin rasping over skin nearly as loud in this quiet place as their competing, stressed breathing.

Slowly, that initial, panic-stricken need to come faded, and Ragnar’s too-tight grip eased as well, to a pressure that was stirring and pleasurable instead. Ragnar began to rock, slowly, slight back and forth twitches of his hips each time he reached up to stroke across Leif’s chest, and Leif let out a deep breath and tried to lift into the touch, seeking it now, able to enjoy the teasing, and the promise of more.

He allowed himself a moment to wonder at the situation: being inside a man for the first time, being inside Ragnar. He’d never expected such a thing, and even if he had, he’d never have imagined that if he’d gone for a tumble for a man, that man would have been Ragnar. Out of context, it was absurd…but given context, it felt both inevitable, and right, somehow. He waited for regret and panic to slam into him, but neither came. There was only skin, and heat, and breath, and that tight grip on his cock, Ragnar’s hands petting through his chest hair, and his breath warm and quick on his face.

Then Ragnar pinched his nipples. And pinched them again.

Leif squeezed his thighs in warning and cracked his eyes open, finally, to find Ragnar grinning down at him.

“Do you like that, alpha?” Another pinch, and Leif swatted him on the backside, which left Ragnar grunting and clenching, which of course Leif felt.

He cursed. “No.”

But that didn’t stop Ragnar, once he’d recovered, from swooping down to take a nipple into his mouth. The way he shifted tugged at Leif’s cock in a delightful way, and so Leif held still, and accepted the wet heat of Ragnar’s mouth on his chest, the clasp of his lips, and the flicker of his tongue. He’d never thought of his chest as sensitive in that way, but it was as if there was a direct line from his nipple to his cock, and he knew Ragnar felt the stirring inside him when his lips curved upward against the meat of Leif’s pectoral.

“Oh, he likes it.”

“No, I don’t.” Leif smacked him again, and Ragnar grunted, face tensed as he sat up once more. He was a picture: hair streaming wild over his shoulders, cheeks flushed, lower lip wet and shining. His abs were taut, throwing deep shadows where the muscles stood stark like carved marble.

He was beautiful in that moment, as desirable as any bedmate Leif had ever laid eyes on – more so. He shifted beneath him, restless, hungry. His voice was gruff with want. “Get on with it.”

No more teasing, now. “Yes, alpha,” Ragnar murmured, and lifted, and then lowered. Slow, at first. Flex of his thighs as he pushed up on his knees, and then eased back down. Up, and down. Up, and down. Up, and down. He worked himself on Leif’s cock until the way grew easier, quicker, slicker. Leif got to watch Ragnar start to lose himself to it, as he built up a rhythm, growing bolder, and more enthusiastic as he fucked down onto him, again and again. The arch and flex of his body was hypnotizing, from the tensing of his abdominals, to the backward bend of his spine; the flush on his chest, and the hard peaks of his nipples. The shiver and shift of thick muscle under supple, scarred skin, the twitches when pleasure gripped him in unexpected places and left him exhaling in a quivering rush. His body was a work of art, the sort painted on the ceilings of manors like the one they’d walked from, which might as well have been continents away, for all of Leif’s awareness. He had eyes only for Ragnar, and for his face most of all, rapturous and pleasure-twisted. And the clean, bright glimmer of the torq in the last of the fading light, Leif’s mark upon him, unbreakable and shackling.

It was transportive, this coming together, this mating. An unsought revelation from which Leif knew he would never recover.

Ragnar had begun to whine, softly, on every drop. At the base of each, their skin met with a quiet smack of skin on damp skin. Sweat sheened his face, his collared throat, his chest. He braced a hand on Leif’s stomach for leverage, working quicker, more frantically, and reached with his other hand to stroke his own chest, raking across it with his nails and tugging at his own nipples, his whines getting higher, louder. Needy. He needed his alpha; Leif felt the tug of his whines behind his breastbone.

Leif sat up – burst of pain easily ignored, in the moment – and wrapped an arm around Ragnar’s waist. With his other hand, he captured a fistful of hair.

Ragnar’s eyes flew wide, and his mouth fell open on a startled, “Alpha?”

Leif dragged his head down and kissed him.

It was savage. Rough and uncoordinated, sloppy with too much spit. Leif thrust his tongue boldly into his mouth, fucking him the way he wanted to flip him over and fuck him truly. But that was beyond him at the moment, and he knew it even through the haze of lust that surrounded them.

When they broke apart, Leif murmured, “Don’t stop,” and reached down to take Ragnar’s cock in his hand.

Ragnar cried out, a rough bark of a shout, and kicked in Leif’s grip.

Leif stroked him firmly, root to tip, twisting on the head, and murmured, soothingly, “Hush. And don’t stop.”

“Yes, alpha, thank you, alpha – oh, gods.” It was a frenetic, sloppy pace that Ragnar set after that, uncoordinated as he tried to fuck into Leif’s hand at the same time, his claw tips biting into Leif’s shoulders as he held on for dear life and his thighs doubtless began to cramp from the strain.

Leif held him as he could. Held him tight around the waist and boosted him a little on each lift, shifting his own hips upward as well as he was able on each drop. It was a marvel to feel Ragnar winding tighter and tighter above him, then tension streaking through him, choking him, making him clumsy, and desperate, and whiny.

He was whining a constant stream of “alpha.” “Alpha…alpha…alpha…” He tensed, and cried out again, and came. Hot jets striping over both their stomachs, and an expression like he’d been run through.

He had, in a way. He clenched on Leif so tight that Leif saw stars; he took Ragnar by both hips, and, gritted his teeth through the effort and pain, worked him up and down on his cock until he too came – with a growl for his part. It was an orgasm that began, and crested – and then seemed to keep coming. Wave after wave of it, crashing through him, turning his body numb with exquisite pleasure, until his mind was empty save the need to claim. Mine, mine, mine.

His last conscious thought was of warm, familiar skin beneath his mouth, and the taste of salt sweat on his tongue, and then of blood, as he sank his fangs deep.

24

When Leif opened his eyes, it was dark. Very dark; he lay in a dense wedge of shadow, and there was a rustling sound overhead, a cold breeze chasing over his bare arms, and it took him a moment to remember where he was, and what had happened.

When he did – flashes of sunset light on sweat-slicked skin, the hot grip of a welcoming body, the scents of Ragnar thick in his nose, his throat, tug of possession, and lancing bright pain of satisfaction, finally – he braced himself for the sting of regret, expected a cold, hollow pit to open in his stomach. But he felt only lax and sore and sated. Around him, he heard the rustling of the leaves, and the whispering of the grass, and nearby, something soft brushing his arm, the shifting of clothes.

He blinked, and he knew his pupils had shifted to those of a wolf when the air lightened around him, the gradient of shadows and moonlight etching the alley of trees, and Ragnar at his side, seated on the grass, doing up the ties of his tunic. A quick glance down proved that Leif’s own clothes had been righted while he slept, so that had anyone stumbled upon them in the dark, they would have looked like two friends who’d settled down for a nap. Still suspicious, but not as damning as it could have been.

Ragnar tied off the laces, only halfway up, as was his way – and now Leif’s way, thanks to his wolf keeping him overly warm – and spared him a fast, businesslike glance. “Good, you’re awake. Someone’s coming.”

“Shit.” Leif scrambled upright.

He attempted to scramble upright, and all his muscles promptly seized up and knotted together, the pain and stiffness so acute and startling that it robbed him of speech. He had to close his eyes a moment, and breathe through it, and internally cursed his mortal form, and its slow healing…nevermind that it was healing far, far faster than a normal human’s would have.

Ragnar stood, and when Leif opened his eyes again found two hands offered to him. He took them, and let Ragnar haul him up. It was only a little agonizing, but then he was on his feet, and mostly mobile, and he didn’t make the mistake of batting away the supportive arm that Ragnar slipped around his waist. Together, they limped farther down the lane, and behind them, Leif heard the crunch of unstealthy, human footfalls, more than one pair.

“Who is it?” he asked when he could; if he was panting, neither of them made mention of it. “Do you know?”

“It’s two men and a boy – naught but a child.” He held a hand out at waist height to demonstrate. “The men are those jolly generals of Amelia’s: Connor and Reginald.”

The pain was easing as they moved, and Leif took a steadier step forward, sensation returning to the soles of his feet. He snorted. “You don’t like them.”

“Of course I don’t. I don’t like anyone.”

“You like Amelia.”

“Who doesn’t like a sensible woman with a sword and a fine horse? Be reasonable.”

Leif hesitated. “You like me,” he said, finally, and it felt like a daring statement. A risk. His heart leaped.

“Only some of the time,” Ragnar said, lightly, but his hand tightened in the nip of Leif’s waist, and the pheromones that swirled in the air around him sang with deeper feeling. “When you aren’t being a sheep-headed prince.”

Leif growled, without any heat behind it, and Ragnar steered them through a pair of tree trunks and out into an expanse of field, silver in the moonlight, its grasses untrimmed and rippling like waves at high tide.

They paused, and the breeze shifted, and carried toward them the scent of dragons.

Leif’s nape prickled. His wolf eyes spotted the dark humps of the beasts a distance away, bedded down in the grass, steam lifting off their scaled hides as the temperature plunged, the nighttime still full in the grip of winter. A single head lifted on a serpentine neck, and the red-gold eyes burned in the dimness, fixed on their position at the edge of the field.

Since he’d been turned, Leif had feared neither wolf nor bear, confident in his strength and ability to go toe-to-toe with any animal. The night screams of the lions in the Inglewood hadn’t bothered him a bit. But he wanted no quarrel with a drake. That was one fight a wolf couldn’t win.

He didn’t feel any sort of bond with them, the way the blood Drakes did, but he pushed nonaggressive energy toward them, and turned left, back toward the manor; stepped out of Ragnar’s grasp and strode forward on his own, only limping a little.

Ragnar followed a beat later, jogging to catch up. “They still give me the shivers,” he said, and offered an exaggerated one that ended in a lupine chuff. “The drakes, I mean. They look at me like they know every ugly thing I’ve ever done, and are judging me for it, wondering how I’ll taste.”

“I think you’re giving them too much credit,” Leif said, dryly.

“No, they’re not normal. They’re not likes a horse or a cow. They’re magical. They’ve got psychic powers, don’t they? They know.”

“I don’t think they can read your mind – if you have one.”

“Ha! I’ve got a cruel alpha, that’s for sure. And you don’t know whose mind they can read. Perhaps they’re reading yours as we speak, seeing all the nasty, lustful thoughts inside your golden head.” He poked Leif in the temple with a finger, and Leif swatted him away, suppressing a smile.

The breeze shifted again, and carried the scent of humans. It was as Ragnar had said: two men, Connor and Reginald, and an unfamiliar child who smelled of mud, and unwashed, grubby child hands, and of Connor. His son, Leif thought, straight away.

Leif smoothed his face, and a darted glance proved that Ragnar had done the same. They walked close beside one another, but were no longer touching…and so what if they were? A dark, fierce sense of defiance reared up inside of Leif. So what if he and Ragnar were familiar with one another? What if they’d fucked amid the sunset dapples like the wild things they were? That was no one’s business but their own, and damn any human who frowned and fussed over them about it. He would not bow his head in shame, not in front of any man.

Another glance revealed that Ragnar was smirking.

Ahead, the soft glow of a lantern appeared, swinging above the grass.

He sensed Ragnar’s ruff go up, despite the smirk, and pushed a wave of sure, alpha sternness out through his aura. Stiffened his spine, and gritted his teeth against the pain that caused.

They could see the others long before they could be seen. And hear them as well.

They walked forward as three shadows, Connor on the left, Reginald slightly shorter on the right, the boy between them, wading through the tail grass. Both adults wore cloaks against the cold that trailed behind them, snagging on stalks and belling out so they looked like wings. The moon gilded Reginald’s pale hair, and shined in the whites of their eyes.

Reginald turned his head side to side, holding the lantern out away from himself to search. “They must have come to inspect the drakes.” He turned to Connor as they walked. “You don’t think they’ll tamper with them, do you?”

“Tamper?” Connor said. “Who can tamper with a drake? You’re worrying too much. Besides: they’re our allies, aren’t they? Why would they want to harm the dragons?”

“I said tamper, not harm. They might be curious. You can do harm without meaning to, you know.”

“Good gods, man. They have drakes up North. The prince will have been around Oliver’s drakes. Perhaps if you took up knitting, you’d have less time to fret.”

Reginald’s jaw worked, and he opened his mouth, gathering breath for a retort…but then his gaze dropped to the child, walking along pulling last year’s dead seed heads off the grass, blissfully unaware of their arguing.

Connor grinned.

Reginald offered him a rude gesture.

Leif called, “Good evening, my lords.”

The lantern swayed drunkenly as Reginald jerked.

Connor gave no outward flinch, but muttered, “Gods,” low and harsh like a curse.

Ragnar’s chuckle was too quiet for them to hear, but Leif elbowed him anyway – and then regretted the way it pulled at his ribs.

“Serves you right,” Ragnar whispered.

Recovered, Reginald stood tall and held the lantern aloft, its rays falling short of them, still. “Hello,” he called back, in a projected voice of the sort meant to make him sound larger than he was. The next gust of breeze lifted the sharp scent of fear to Leif’s nose, and he found it was an effort not to grin. “Is that a Northern accent I detect from you, your grace?”

“Aye,” Leif said, and strode forward, noting the faint tremor of the lantern, quickly steadied, but there all the same. “We’ve been inspecting the grounds, getting the lay of the land.”

“Northern?” the boy piped up, his tousled mop of hair flipping back as he lifted his head. “Is that the prince? I wanna see him!” He lunged forward – and Connor snatched him by the back of his shirt collar and held him in place.

The boy fought. “But I haven’t seen him yet! Daddy, let go!”

Daddy. Leif had been right about their relationship, then. And his wolf eyes could pick out the lines of strain in Connor’s face, the deep groove of worry pressed between his brows.

“No, Liam. Don’t bother His Grace.”

“He’s no bother,” Leif said, and finally stepped into the puddle of light thrown by the lantern, Ragnar a half-step behind him. Up close, the boy shared Connor’s dark hair and dark eyes, though his were wide with wonder, his face tipped back so he could look up at Leif as though he were a character from one of his favorite fairy stories. It was the sort of look Leif hadn’t been on the receiving end of for some time, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

“Whoa,” the boy said, gaze tracking back and forth across Leif, then darting to Ragnar and somehow getting wider. “Are you really the prince? Is he a prince, too?”

It was Ragnar who answered, while Leif was still trying to remember how to address children. He squatted down, so he and the boy were on eye-level – Connor’s grip tightened on the back of the boy’s collar, sleeve shifting over his arm as it flexed; prepared to whirl him away out of reach – and smiled his most inviting, disarming smile. “Aye, he’s a prince, lad.” He tipped his head Leif’s direction. “But I’m only the prince’s cousin.” He offered his hand. “I’m Ragnar. And you’re Liam, yeah?”

The boy accepted the shake readily, smiling back. “Yeah! I’m Liam, and this is my daddy, and this is Reginald…” His nose wrinkled, small face creasing with thoughtfulness. “He’s always in Daddy’s tent with him, but Daddy says he isn’t going to be my other daddy–”

A hand covered the lad’s mouth – Reginald’s hand. “Children,” he said with a tight, humorless laugh. “You never can be sure of what they’ll say. Always dreaming up stories. Such imaginations.”

Ragnar stood, and the grin he turned on Reginald was wicked; Leif felt a little sorry for the man, truth told. “Right. Imagination.”

Reginald had gone pale, but he held Ragnar’s gaze an admirable moment before turning to Leif. “And was it to your liking?” he asked, stiffly. “The ‘lay of the land’?”

Leif shrugged. “You’ve plenty of open space for the camp here. Room for the drakes. Not bad, for a temporary headquarters. Though it’s sorely lacking in fortifications.”

Both men’s expressions soured. Connor’s voice was resigned, though, when he said, “You’re right. We have scouts posted, and rotating guard shifts, but we’re vastly unprotected here.”

“We don’t feud with our neighbors, and there are no marauding rival clan chiefs in Aquitainia,” Reginald put in, with a pointed look at Ragnar. “We’ve no need of defenses.”

“Not usually,” Leif said, and managed to keep his tone light. “But these aren’t usual times, and the enemy has therefore found a host of manors and chateaux to inhabit, without any resistance. If you cultivate a prosperous land,” he said, Erik’s old words about the South returning to him, a boyhood lesson taught amidst rounds in the training yard, “you should be prepared to defend it, because others will covet it, and come for it, and try to claim it.”

Reginald’s handsome, delicately-featured face twisted, and he didn’t answer.

Connor said, “Obviously.” Older, wiser, less obviously hostile toward them, his tone was mild, though Leif could see his unwillingness to trust in his posture, and in the way he still held his son back. “But, as you yourself heard in the meeting: we won’t have to dig in trenches and defend this place. We’ll be on the march as soon as we’re able.”

As soon as you’re able, he meant. It didn’t feel like an insult, not really, though Ragnar shifted beside him, bristling.

Leif bumped the side of his boot with his own. Don’t. He met the Southern lords’ gazes, each in turn, and said, formally, “I haven’t had the chance yet to thank you both for your aid on the road. It was chaos, and I was fast losing blood, but I remember you distinctly, my lords, rushing to my aid with your swords drawn. Thank you.”

To his surprise, Ragnar said, without a trace of mockery, “Yes, thank you. Again.”

Connor’s brows lifted a fraction.

Reginald’s face smoothed with more obvious surprise.

After a moment, Connor said, “It’s what you do, in that situation. Every man on his feet helps where he can.”

“We couldn’t very well let a prince be killed in action, could we?” Reginald said, but some of the heat had left his voice. His stance eased – which meant his hand fell away from the boy’s mouth, and the lad sucked in a huge, indignant breath, and said, “I wanted to talk to the prince!”

“Liam,” Connor said.

“No, it’s all right. We were headed back for the manor. We can talk on the way.”

They fell into a sort of formation, Leif and Ragnar in the lead, which put Connor and Reginald at their backs. Leif didn’t like having men he didn’t know well behind him, but that was his wolf talking. You already got what you wanted, he told it, firmly, with a flash of heated memory, and so he walked along at a reasonable pace, and ignored the men behind him, and tried to keep up with Liam’s rapid-fire questioning.

“Where’s your crown? I thought princes wore crowns. Did you forget yours at home? And where are your horses? I know all the horses in the stable and on the lines, and there aren’t any new ones. A prince should have a horse, don’t you think? Probably the biggest and the finest, like Shadow. Have you seen Shadow? Everyone told me not to touch him, but I take him apples, and he likes me…”

By the time they reached the outskirts of the formal garden, Leif found that he was smiling.

~*~

“Go to bed, dear.”

Amelia jerked at sound of the words, and found that her eyes had closed, and her head had dipped forward on her neck, and that, for a moment, she’d forgotten where she was, and who she was with, and panic fluttered before she blinked the library, the fireplace, and Leda in the chair opposite back into clarity. She glanced then at her hand, fearful she’d spilled wine when she’d slumped, but found that her cup had been taken from her, and placed on the table beside her chair. Her cheeks heated. She’d had only three sips before she nodded off.

Leda’s smile was warm, and maternal, and Amelia chafed beneath it; she wanted a friend, not a mother. She turned away from it, and rubbed the grit from her eyes, and attempted to rouse herself fully. “Sorry. What were we talking about?” She reached for her wine, though that doubtless wouldn’t help with her falling-asleep-mid-sentence problem.

Leda chuckled, and that felt maternal – and unwelcome – as well. “We were talking about all that moving the entire camp would entail. The procurement of enough wagons, for instance. But I’ve just said you ought to go to bed.”

Amelia shook her head and had another sip of wine. The sugar in it would provide a little energy, if nothing else. Short-term. “I’m fine.” She stifled a yawn and muttered a curse afterward; at least Leda’s resulting laugh sounded less like that of a parent. “I don’t know why I did that. We’ve been sitting on our laurels the last three days.”

“Well, let’s see: you’ve been recovering from a battle.”

“A skirmish,” Amelia corrected.

“A battle. And then you’ve hardly slept worrying over the prince.”

Amelia didn’t like the glint that came into Leda’s eyes when she said the prince. The unsubtle suggestion there, the obvious relish, as though she had a bit of salacious gossip. “Everyone should have been worrying over the prince,” she said. “Can you imagine finally meeting the king of Aeretoll and having to tell him that we got his heir killed in a silly roadway fight?”

Leda sighed, and grew serious. “You can wave it away and call it whatever you like, but what happened on the road that day was bad, Amelia. Men died. Men were seriously wounded.” She swirled the wine in her cup and gave her a level look. “You do a remarkable job of holding yourself with dignity in front of the others – but it’s okay to be rattled, darling.”

Amelia made a face.

“We won’t talk of that now, though.” Leda took a sip, and when she lowered her cup, her wine-red lips curved upward in a devious smile. “We’ll talk of the prince.”

Amelia groaned. “No, stop saying it like that.”

“Like what?”

“The prince. Like I’m…”

“Like you’re what?”

“Like I’m – I don’t know – swooning over him or something!” Amelia threw up her hands – and too late remembered the wine. She watched red liquid flare like rubies in the firelight, and then slop to the floorboards with a splat. “Damn,” she murmured, and went to fetch something with which to mop it. There was a torn tunic on the sideboard, one she’d thought to mend. And a stack of old, mouse-chewed sheet music they’d found in the attic, and which they’d been using to start fires. She threw down a few sheets, trod over them to soak up the spill, and flopped back in her chair.

“That was dramatic.”

Amelia tried to take another sip, found her cup empty, and sent Leda a dark look.

“But are you swooning over him?”

Amelia started to protest – but lacked the energy to be properly indignant. She laughed instead, and sank down deep in her chair, legs stretched out before her, arms folded. It pulled pleasantly at her back, tense from standing bent over maps for most of the day. “You never give up, do you? More dogged than any battlefield general when it comes to so much as a hint of romance.”

Leda let her grin break loose and unrestrained, finally, chuckling under her breath. “Can you blame me? We’re stuck in the middle of his ugly bloody war, I’ve got to find something scintillating to chat about. And it doesn’t get much more scintillating than him. Gods. What a specimen.” She took a long sip, as though thought of Leif made her thirsty.

Truth told, he left Amelia’s throat a little dry as well.

She got up, and refilled her cup. When she returned to her chair, Leda had crossed her legs the other way, expression serious, all her focus bent to the topic at hand. “Honestly, Amelia. I’m not teasing, now. Do you fancy him?”

“He’s been asleep for three of the five days I’ve known him, and we’ve only spoken a handful of times.”

Leda cocked her head, lips pursed. “You go up to his room several times a day.”

“And several isn’t many. I can’t have fallen in love with a man that quickly, I’m not that sort of girl.”

“Did I say ‘fall in love’? No. I said fancy. You can fancy a man after a single glance.” When Amelia made a face, she said, gently, “It’s all right to fancy a man, you know.”

Again and again over the past five days, Amelia’s thoughts had strayed toward Malcolm. Each time she found herself appreciating the straight line of Leif’s nose, or the curve of his biceps, the sheer animal size of him, taller and broader than all the men here, she felt obliged to remember her dead lover, to compare them, to seek shelter from her new, confusing thoughts in the well-loved and familiar. But when she thought of Mal, it didn’t hurt the way it should have; her memories, though beloved, were hazy and dull-edged, and didn’t fill her with the flashfire grief she’d known at first – which was somehow worse. The guilt of having let her ardor fade; the betrayal of softening anguish. And so she shied away from those memories, and shut herself down, and tried to think of troop movements, and wagon procurement, and anything else at all.

Lover of gossip though she was, Leda possessed tact, and she didn’t push further with regard to Mal. Tone lightening once more, she said, “If I were a free woman, I’d be tripping over myself to capture his notice.”

Amelia snorted, and smoothed her ruffled feathers with another swallow of wine. It was warming her, settling her, easing a pit of tension she hadn’t been aware was settled low in her stomach. “He’s very good-looking,” she agreed.

Leda nodded. “That’s an understatement, but I’m glad you can see reason.”

Amelia snorted again.

“I’ve only ever seen a Northman up close once before, and that was years ago. An envoy came to a ball my father was throwing, one of those interminable matchmaking balls when I was still just a girl. There were all these coiffed and oiled little lordlings showing off their best pirouettes and leading steps on the dance floor, and there was this moment – like something out of a novel – when the crowd parted, and I saw an unfamiliar man standing and talking with Father. He wasn’t as big nor as handsome as Prince Leif, mind you, but he looked so different from every other man in the ballroom that I was transfixed. He had dark hair, and he wore all of it in braids that fell down his back, full of beads that chimed together when he walked. His clothes were velvet, but his collar and the tops of his boots were fur. One of those great, wide leather belts, and a sword on his hip.” She sighed dreamily. “I thought he must be the Aeretollean king or something. Later, I found out he was only a glorified messenger, but you could smell the hostility coming off the other men in the room. They sensed a threat.”

Amelia sipped her wine. “Perhaps that’s why we’re losing the war: too many pirouettes and too much coiffed hair, not enough threat.”

Leda laughed, loud and easy, and Amelia found herself smiling.

“Gods, that’s the truth, isn’t it? But now that we’ve some Northmen for our lads to challenge themselves against, maybe the tide will turn.”

They both burst into laughter, then, until they were dabbing at their eyes and gasping for breath.

“We’re all doomed, aren’t we?” Amelia asked, when she could, flicking the last tear from her lashes.

“Most definitely,” Leda said, sobering. She cleared her throat and drained off her cup, totally composed afterward, save the color in her face. “Which is why–”

“Oh no.”

“No, listen. Which is why an opportunity for pleasure should be neither shunned nor squandered. We could all die tomorrow, Amelia. Why not have a good tumble if the opportunity presents itself?”

“Leda.”

“I’m genuinely asking.”

“Because…” Amelia rolled her eyes to the coffered ceiling, its beams glowing faintly with firelight, its depths black-dark, and tried to think of a reasonable protest. Tried rather hard, in fact.

Sensing an opening, Leda pounced on it. “Listen. I know I’ve been teasing you, and having a bit of fun, but I’m being perfectly sincere now. I’m asking: why shouldn’t you have a bit of fun as we march to war? I didn’t ever take you for the type to deny yourself.” When Amelia lifted her head far enough to meet her gaze, she found Leda’s brows lifted, and she frowned.

There was no denying that she didn’t give a damn about propriety, not when she’d been sleeping with her household guardsman for years. But something about allowing herself to have lustful thoughts for Leif felt…indulgent. Too indulgent. Nearly sinful. As though she’d outlived Mal somehow by the gods’ graces, and she shouldn’t squander what time she had left on this earth wasting time on the pleasures of the flesh.

“I dunno,” she murmured. “It just feels wrong.”

Leda’s smile was wry. “Darling, if we avoided everything wrong, we’d do nothing but sit here idly and sip tea.” In a businesslike tone: “I’ve seen him stealing glances at you. It doesn’t have to be a betrothal, or anything nearing love. But if you cocked your hips and invited him into a convenient thicket along the roadside, he’d come. That I can guarantee.”

It was far too easy to imagine that scenario – stomach tightening at the mere suggestion of it – that she carefully didn’t allow it to unfold in her mind. “And what of his cousin?”

“Ragnar?” Amelia didn’t think she imagined the way Leda’s voice lifted, nor the fractional lowering of her eyelids. “Now there’s another fine specimen, if your tastes run his way instead.”

“No. I mean: aren’t Leif and Ragnar…a bit…close?”

Leda grinned. “Remember what I said about the Úlfheðnar’s habits?”

“Do you think that they…?”

Leda shrugged. “They’re very close, obviously. So what if they are?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to get between them.”

“No.” Leda’s smile sharpened. “But perhaps you could come between them.”

“Ha. No.” Amelia stood, attempting to ignore the way all the blood in her body rushed south, and the way that then caused a headrush once she was on her feet. “War is quite enough of an adventure for me, thank you.” She carried her cup to the sideboard and set it down with a decisive thump. “You were right before: I should go to bed.”

Leda’s laughter followed her from the room.

With her face heated, and her pulse throbbing loudly in her ears, Amelia had nearly reached the entrance hall before she registered the echoing of male voices; more than one, overlapping, though thankfully not in alarmed tones. Amelia hung back, a few feet down the hall to the library, and waited, watching shadows and light fall across the dusty tiles of the entryway.

The candle flames bent, and flickered, and the front door shut with a solid thump. Wind – cold, still gripped by winter – funneled around the corner, brushed her hair from her face, and lifted goosebumps along her arms, where she’d pushed up the sleeves of her tunic.

She recognized Connor’s voice: “…welcome to come indoors, if they’d like. Most of the men prefer to stay in the camp.” He chuckled. “Then again, your lads might prefer the camp as well. One or two of the followers aren’t so bad to look at.”

Reggie scoffed. “As if that ever mattered to you.”

“Come now. I have an appreciation for true beauty.”

The beat of silence that followed gave her time to envision the way Reggie would blush, the pretty pink on his pretty cheeks.

Boot soles scraped at the grit that had been tracked into the hallway, and Leif’s voice – lower, rougher, less refined than the others’ – said, “I appreciate the offer, but my wolves will find a spot under the trees and keep to themselves.”

“Not social, then?” Connor asked.

“Not typically, no.”

“More’s the pity for them, but that means more liquor and women for the rest of us.”

Reggie sighed theatrically.

Leif said, “Good night. I look forward to meeting you in the training yard tomorrow.”

Oh, that could go badly. It could go very badly. Men built like Leif didn’t need precision and finesse with a blade: they could hammer their opponents to bits instead.

“Can I come tomorrow?” Liam’s small voice piped up. “Can I? Can I, Daddy, please? Can I, can I, canIcanIcan–”

“Yes, yes, be quiet,” Connor admonished.

“Yay!”

“Goodnight, Lord Liam,” Leif said, tone shifting, becoming almost warm, tinged with amusement.

“Goodnight, Your Majesty!”

“It’s ‘your grace’ for a prince,” Reggie said, fondly.

“And it’s just Leif for this one,” Leif said. “Sleep well.”

More scraping of boots, and then Leif strode into view.

Amelia flinched back before she could think better of it, and then froze, and chastised herself for wanting to hide. Her face was still warm, and Leda’s teasing still fresh in her mind. But Leif never looked her way. He walked, rather stiffly, still sore, doubtless, to the foot of the steps, and started up them, hand reaching for the banister straight off.

She relaxed.

But then, a beat later, Ragnar appeared in his wake, and he was a bit of a mess.

Both of them were, now that she bothered to notice properly. Twigs and grass in their tangled hair, bits of dead vegetation clinging to their clothes, as though they’d gone rolling through a field and not brushed themselves off.

Rolling through a field…

Belatedly, she realized what that might imply. What they might have been doing in said field, and her face flushed hot all over again.

Leif passed farther up the stairs, out of sight – but Ragnar stopped at the foot of them, hand resting on the banister. Then his head turned, sharply, toward her, hair flying around him like a swept cloak, bits of twig clattering to the floor. In the dancing light of the wall sconces, she saw his face half in shadow. The glow of his eyes, the white flash of his sharp teeth, bared in a grin that stripped her to the bone, and revealed he knew the exact bend of her thoughts.

He held her gaze a long, meaningful moment, and then turned, and continued up the stairs after Leif.

After a beat, Amelia realized she hadn’t drawn a breath in some time, and did so now, lungs burning.

“Gods,” she murmured.

Leda could tease all she wanted, but this thing between them, this brewing, unspoken aura of tension, was no laughing matter.

~*~

Connor might have been born to the duchy of Inglewood, the firstborn, the rightful heir, but the reason he’d (barely) escaped his brother the usurper’s assassination attempt, and had found himself a duke once more, was because he knew when retreat was the wiser course of action.

Now, for instance.

He crossed blades with Prince Leif of Aeretoll in a half-dozen heats, then begged off to go sit on the wall in the shade and sip water…and lament his lack of fitness and training, by comparison. He’d been a bit of a spoiled lord, in his time as duke, but the years in the wood, learning from and then leading the Strangers, had hardened him, in mind and body; he was wiry, now, trim and well-muscled for his age; could climb a tree as well as any boy, and run two miles while hardly breaking a sweat.

But there were men, and then there were beasts of men, and Leif Torstansson fell into the latter category. Connor had never thought of himself as a small man, and he wasn’t…but Leif was in a class all his own. Each meeting of the blades had rang out like a warning gong, echoing off the wall, and the blows had radiated up Connor’s arms, biting into his shoulders and his neck, teeth gritted against the weight and strength that bore him, stumbling, backward across the yard.

Now, he perched breathless on the wall, slowly draining a water skin in long draws, fear kindling in his belly as he watched Reggie prepare to take his turn against the Prince of the North.

The day had dawned cold, but in the way of the best springs, the sun had quickly heated the air, and then the soil, so that, by one o’clock, it was downright warm. Connor’s shirt clung to his damp back, and he could see the beginnings of sweat patches under Reggie’s arms as he pulled his tunic off over his head and tossed it to the side. He folded his sleeves back to his elbows, and loosened the laces at his throat for better airflow. Without his tunic, and coat, and their collars, his throat was on full display, the rope scar dark against his pale skin, vivid in the brightness of the afternoon. Connor thought it suited him – and had told him so, by the light of a lone candle, tangled and sweaty in his tent – that it was a badge of honor, a sign of the steel that lay beneath his silken exterior.

He fluffed his hair with one hand, then pushed it back, his sword held in the other, executing a series of wrist rotations as he paced in a tight circle, breathing deeply and working himself up. Silk or steel, rough or refined, men all hyped themselves in some version of the same way: you had to get the blood pumping, and the adrenaline flowing. You had to want the fight, to go reaching for that chime of sword against sword. It was a vicarious experience as well, a thrill that infected the audience as well as the participants. Spectators had gathered for Connor’s match with the prince, and more were arriving now, hoisting themselves up on the wall with waterskins, and wineskins, and ham rolls. They were talking, and taking wagers, and slagging one another. A few hooted bawdy comments at Reggie, whose stride had taken on a distinct swagger; he shot them a rude gesture, and earned guffaws of laughter.

Connor didn’t share their eagerness and high spirits, not after having faced Leif himself. Reggie was quicker than Connor, and his form was better, his posture precise; he’d had better sword masters than Connor had, and hadn’t spent his youth drinking and carousing and horse-racing like Connor. But none of that mattered with an opponent of Leif’s size and ferocity.

A glance proved that Leif had gripped the blade of his sword in one hand, and was working through a series of overhead stretches, raising and lowering the blade, leaning side to side and then twisting his hips. He wasn’t quite able to hide a wince; he wasn’t fully healed, yet, and was still sore. More than once, Connor had seen his torso give way, when his ribs barked too loudly, and he’d been forced to disengage from the spar and try again. Even so, he’d easily bested Connor. Shudder to think what he’d be capable of at full strength.

Connor caught Reggie’s eye on his next pass, and tilted his head to summon him over.

Reggie sighed as he came, rolling his shoulders, working his head side to side to stretch his neck. He looked impatient, and like he was expecting a lecture and already tired of it. He stopped two feet away, and Connor said, “Come here.”

Reggie lifted a brow. He was in a bratty mood, apparently.

Connor pointed to a spot on the ground between his feet. “Here.”

“Gods, you tyrant,” Reggie muttered, rolling his eyes, but stepped in close, and propped his free hand on his hip. “What?”

Connor dropped his voice to a murmur. “You need to be careful.” He lifted a glance over Reggie’s shoulder as Reggie said, “Gods, yes, obviously.” A flicker of movement had drawn his attention: Leif’s head cocking a fraction. He could hear them. Shit.

“Stop,” he whispered, and something in his tone or face finally got through to Reggie. His expression went quizzical. “I know you’re quick on your feet and good with a sword – but you’ve not sparred with anyone like him before. The closest is one of those golden bastards – but he’s stronger.”

Reggie’s brows knitted, and he chewed his lip a moment. Then he nodded, set his jaw, and said, “Right. I’ll manage.”

“Reg–”

Reggie winked, a fast slice of grin lighting up his face the moment before he turned around. “Just because you think I’m pretty as a girl doesn’t mean I fight like one.”

“I’m telling Amelia you said that.”

Reggie laughed, turned, and tossed his head back to march toward the center of the yard, a peacock through and through.

Connor was smiling – couldn’t help but smile in the face of that youthful, cocksure strut – but his stomach was twirling with butterflies. He smelled wine, and glanced down the wall to the man sitting nearest, an unstoppered skin resting on his knee. “Pass that here,” he said, and got a few long swallows of sweet red down his throat while the opponents circled one another and worked in a few final stretches on the move.

Connor sent a quick prayer that the gods might smile down on the blond head that he cared about, and then watched as Reggie lunged forward in the first assault.

He was quick on his feet, light as a striking snake as he rushed forward three strides and sent a thrust straight for Leif’s heart.

Leif was quick, too; startlingly so for a man his size. He batted the strike away with ease, almost lazily – but Reggie appeared to have anticipated, and twirled away, sword lifting so the blades never met. The whistle of steel through midair was met with boos and jeers from the crowd.

Reggie fell neatly into his next stance, and came again, flowing this time into a series of quick strikes, changing direction again and again. Leif met each one. Clang – clang – clang! On the last, he twisted his wrist, and attempted to get his sword round Reggie’s and down to the crossguard to disarm him. Reggie pulled free, though, dancing back, more lithe than any ballroom tumbler. He was grinning, white teeth bared in a face gone grimy from the dust they’d already kicked up. His golden hair was curling, dark at the roots from sweat. He was resplendent, and clearly enjoying himself.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, lad,” Connor murmured. “He’s not that hurt.”

“Oh, he’s hurt worse than he’s letting on,” a Northern-accented voice said just to his left, and Connor applauded himself for not jumping out of his skin.

A glance proved that Ragnar had appeared, as if from thin air, and stood now with his elbows braced back on the edge of the wall, knotted hair gathered in a loose tail at the base of his skull, bare arms gleaming with suntan and sweat. Connor wasn’t used to feeling self-conscious about his looks, and found that it wasn’t a flattering trait, even to himself.

Leif launched the next assault, charging forward with a powerful swing that sent Reggie leaping back, smile freezing, then falling away as he kept retreating, and searched for an opening.

“He looks hale and hearty to me,” Connor said.

“Oh, aye,” Connor said easily. “He’s as stubborn and foolish as his uncle. Cut off both arms, and he’d stagger back up and tell you he only had a flesh wound. But he’s in a fair bit of pain. He’ll power through now, but then won’t be able to walk later.” He snorted with amusement, and lifted a skin of his own to his lips.

“Forgive me if that’s not all that reassuring.”

Reggie had regrouped; he went low, slashing at Leif’s ankles – and then had to throw himself to the ground and roll out of the way as Leif brought his sword straight down, like a club. The prince didn’t overbalance; his sword didn’t land in the dirt, the way it would have with a clumsier opponent. He checked the swing at the last moment, and used his forward momentum to step, turn, and slice a neat triangle out of Reggie’s flapping sleeve.

Connor’s stomach grabbed.

Ragnar chuckled. Bastard. “Yeah, well. We’re built a bit different up North.”

Connor snorted. “I noticed.”

“But you needn’t worry too much. He’ll give your wee princess a scare, all right, but he won’t put him in a sick bed.”

Connor had been taking a swallow of wine, and nearly choked on it. He spat on the ground, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Gods,” he said, breathlessly. “Wee princess. I’ll have to remember that one.”

Ragnar shot him a wide, lazy grin. “I’m right, aren’t you? About you and him?” He lifted his hands, briefly to make a lewd motion with the fingers of both working together.

Connor sent him a quelling look that seemed to have no effect. “You’re awfully bold in your assumptions for a man who’s a ‘war prize,’ wearing another man’s collar.” War prize. The phrase was still a bit radical; he’d turned it over in his mind since Edward first said it yesterday, and found he couldn’t quite understand the urge to turn a man into a plaything and slave. He’d never had the desire to keep an enemy around, live and kicking, not even his own brother – though the Sels had beaten him to that particular execution.

He saw the way the phrase affected Ragnar; the shuttering of his gaze, the brittle turn of his smile. He shrugged, though, and turned to face the action, tone deceptively light. “You have your customs, and we have ours. Still: I know a boy who likes being bent over when I see one.”

“Like recognizes like, I suppose,” Connor shot back.

He saw Ragnar stiffen, and then the man threw his head back and roared with laughter. A bit over the top, Connor thought, but the grin looked true enough, if wry, when it came his way again.

“Fair play to you,” Ragnar said, and faced the action again.

Connor thought it might have been a bit less awkward than it had been.

But then a bright flash from the center of the yard snatched his attention, and he turned his head in time to see Reggie’s sword go sailing toward the far wall. Before it landed with a clatter and a puff of dust, Leif closed the distance between them, and did something tricky with his foot that caught Reggie around the ankle, tripped him, and sent him flailing backward.

Reggie’s back hit the earth with a rush of forcefully expelled breath, and Leif’s sword winked in the cloud of dust that boiled up around them, flying for Reggie’s throat.

Connor surged to his feet before he was aware of thinking to do so. His hand found the hilt of the sword on his hip, and anger flared hot in his belly – the sort of blind, overwhelming anger that was half panic, and that could think not of strategy, or self-preservation, but only of getting to his lover and putting himself between him and the man towering over him. Naked steel glimmered in the vulnerable space that separated a murderous Northerner from the scar that marked Reggie’s life as forever altered, and Connor wanted to throw himself across that bright, killing bar, take its strike for himself, and spare Reggie.

“Wait.” A hand caught his arm and held it fast before he could charge across the yard, and when Connor couldn’t pull free – it was a damned strong hand – he whirled on whichever fool was restraining him, sword singing as he drew it from its scabbard.

Ragnar’s brows lifted in a look of mild reproach. “What do you plan to do with that?” he asked, nodding to the sword. “Look.” His hand squeezed on Connor’s arm. “He’s won the match, but he’s not going to run your man through.” In a lower voice: “You need to get hold of yourself, mate.”

How dare he? Connor was…

He was making a scene, wasn’t he?

Slowly, he turned within Ragnar’s grip to look again at the combatants. The dust was clearing, shredding as a burst of still-cool breeze tumbled over the wall and across the yard. The men were hooting and hollering; coins flashed as bets were collected.

Reggie lay on his back, hands up and empty in a clear pose of yielding. The tip of the sword, Connor saw clearly now, was not at his throat, but resting at the highest point of his chest, not quite touching, and quivering, faintly, as Leif heaved for breath. Reggie’s expression was one of dismay…but he didn’t look stuck in his head, the way he sometimes did. His brow was furrowed, mouth tugged down in a frown, but his eyes didn’t have that glazed, faraway gaze that marked his venture backward into foul memories.

As for Leif, the prince looked…unwell. Face pale and shining with sweat, his lips trembling as he sucked in great draws of breath that lifted his chest, and left his torso twitched, involuntary pulses as though each inhale pained him. He’d pushed himself too far. He’d won…but it had cost him.

“Damn,” Ragnar murmured beside him, and when he let go, Connor stayed rooted to the spot. It was Ragnar, and not him, who crossed the yard, and took a grip on Leif to urge him away.

Leif whipped a glare toward him – but it didn’t hold much heat, and soon enough, he lifted his sword, and let Ragnar heard him over toward the water barrel.

It took an effort, but Connor didn’t go to Reggie; leaned his hip on the wall and let Reggie pick himself up, dust himself off, and waited, waterskin held out in offering when Reggie joined him, batting at the good-natured jeers hurled at him from the spectators.

“Thanks,” Reggie murmured, accepting the skin, and poured half the water over his sweat-flattened head before drinking the rest in a few greedy gulps. When he lowered it, he took a good look at Connor’s face, and then burst into surprised laughter. “You worrier, you.”

“Shut up,” Connor grumbled. “I told you: he’s not like fighting a normal man.”

“No,” Reggie agreed, and looked across the yard to where Leif had rested his hands on the edge of the barrel, hair and face dripping as though he’d plunged his whole head under water. “It’s the wolf thing, I suppose. He anticipated every move before I made it, and there’s no reason a man that big should be able to move that quickly.

“Well.” He turned back to Connor, a grin breaking across his dirt-streaked face. “He’ll give those golden bastards something to think twice about.”

Connor released a deep exhale, and scrounged up a returning smile. “You’ve changed your tune quickly. Only last night you were bristled up at the man like a wet cat.”

Reggie’s grin widened, though Connor noted the twitch of irritation in his eyelid; he would always chafe beneath anything that so much as hinted at criticism. “That was because I hadn’t fought him yet: I can’t properly evaluate a man until we’ve fought.”

“You haven’t fought me.”

“No, but we’ve fucked.” Reggie patted his cheek. “And that’s its own sort of fight.”

~*~

“Are you well-pleased with yourself?” Ragnar asked that evening.

The answer was no, obviously, but Leif didn’t voice it because it seemed too obvious.

After a rejuvenating head-dunk in the water barrel in the training yard, he’d taken on the next three challengers, and then insisted on walking round to inspect his wolves, all of them had bedded down in a shady alcove just past the tree line; all were suspicious, and uncertain, and far from pleased that their alpha and chief beta had gone to stay in the house with the unfamiliar humans. Leif did his best to reassure them, and shared with them the plans for the march soon to be executed, and though he left the meeting with a host of doubts, he hadn’t detected anything like mutiny or anger in their midst.

Ragnar had tailed him, his constant shadow, all the way back to the manor, and up to his borrowed room, and tutted and fussed and assisted, without being asked, when he stripped down, and wiped himself with water from the bowl on the washstand. He lay now in a pair of clean – and thankfully large enough – trousers on top of the bed, arms flopped out to the side, window open to allow in the cooling evening breeze.

Everything hurt. Something along his ribs felt freshly torn, a pulpy, liquid pain igniting with each breath.

“Hm?” Ragnar turned from the basin, wiping his face with Leif’s damp towel. His air was so motherly – no, worse, that of an elderly nursemaid – that the bones in his hair and the teeth hanging on his chest provided hilarious counterpoint. Leif would have laughed, if it wouldn’t have hurt so badly. “Proud of yourself? Your grace?”

“Stop.”

Ragnar balled up the wet towel, and threw it, straight at his face.

Leif lifted a hand automatically to catch it, and couldn’t hold back the hiss of pain as lightning arced around his ribcage.

Ragnar made a disgusted sound as he stalked across the room. “So wise, my alpha. So brave, fighting small men in a training yard; tearing all his muscles to bits to prove he’s a better swordsman than the fancy Southern lordlings.”

“Do you remember,” Leif asked, “when you were the one without a single worry or second thought, and I was the responsible party?”

Ragnar dropped down to sit on the edge of the bed, in the angle between Leif’s arm and side. “A happier time,” he said, sullenly.

Leif did laugh then, a quiet chuckle, quickly tamped down before it could send too many shockwaves through his sore chest.

“It’s not funny,” Ragnar sulked. “You’ve ruined me.”

He settled, and the mattress, which had groaned from his added weight, settled as well; in the silence that followed, filled only by the call of birds and men through the open window, his words had a chance to settle, too. To land between them, heavier than their combined mass on the bed; heavier than anything Leif could recall them having said to one another. Up ‘til now.

Leif took a shallow, careful breath. Ragnar faced the window, holding very still.

There were many things he could have said, all of them rejected because they were too sentimental, too human, and therefore meaningless, despite their forbidden, flowery implications.

He swallowed, with some difficulty, and said, not unkindly, “You ruined yourself.”

“Aye,” Ragnar agreed, and didn’t sound bitter about it, as Leif had expected. Sad, perhaps. His lashes lowered, as his gaze dropped to his lap, and he picked at a callus along the base of his middle finger. “I suppose I did.”

The stairs creaked, and both of them perked up.

Well…Ragnar perked up. Leif attempted to sit up, thought better of it, and listened instead.

In their short time here, he’d come to learn the rhythm of everyone’s stride, the way the floors took their weight, the scents of their sweat and skin. By the time the footfalls had reached the top of the stairs, he knew it was Amelia who approached, and then he steeled himself and pushed upright with a quiet curse.

Ragnar shot him a chastising look, but then Amelia appeared in the open doorway with a quick rap of her knuckles, and a jump of her brows that evidenced surprise. She hadn’t expected him to be upright, he thought, and he nearly hadn’t been.

He pressed what he hoped was a subtle hand to his ribs and said, “My lady,” voice only a little strained.

Amelia sighed at the title, but she’d stopped pointing out the hypocrisy of him wanting to be called by name, while adopting a formal address with her. She folded her arms, and propped a shoulder in the doorjamb. “How long did it take you to sit up just now?”

“Ha!” Ragnar barked.

Leif made a face – only to realize that he’d already been making a face, a rather damning grimace that he failed to wipe away completely. “Perhaps…not as quickly as I would have liked.”

Amelia’s lips twitched, and she bit down on the lower one a moment, managing not to smile, despite Ragnar’s continued laughter. “I’ll have to trust you to know your own limits.” Then, more seriously: “That was an impressive display in the yard earlier. You’ve clearly trained long and hard under expert swordsmen.” Like so many of their conversations, her words were dressed as a formal address, one noble to another, carefully crafted in the way of Statesman Speech.

But the glint of her eyes spoke of sincerity – she did admire his skill, and the knowledge was more flattering than it should have been.

“Thank you,” he said, and meant it. “Bjorn is a ruthless master in the yard.”

“Bjorn,” Ragnar scoffed. “The same man who pined after your mother for two decades without speaking up for himself.”

“Don’t speak of my mother,” Leif said, and sent Ragnar a pointed look that was received with a widening of his eyes, and a ducking of his head. A murmured yes, alpha.

“Your mother,” Amelia said, stepping further into the room, resting a hand along the back of the chair that had become Ragnar’s usual place. “Tessa tells me she’s…” she hesitated a beat “…expecting a new brother or sister for you?”

Ragnar pressed a hand to his mouth, stood, and walked to the window. Leif could see his shoulders shaking, however, with silent laughter. He spared him an unseen sour look, and couldn’t hold back a sigh as he returned his attention to Amelia. “Yes. She’s with child.”

“You don’t sound very happy about that,” she ventured.

He shrugged, which pulled at all his aching muscles. Winced. “I don’t care either way: it’s her life, and her decision.” Truthfully, he didn’t care…or, he hadn’t. But Amelia’s words – the idea that the baby would be his sibling, even if a half-sibling – set his mental wheels to turning. Boy or girl, this sibling would only ever have known him as he was now, as a wolf, a pack alpha; as someone who’d slept with the traitor cousin the rest of the family loathed.

Perhaps that was for the best. He or she would never know the Leif he’d been as a boy, softer, kinder. But, unlike Rune, he or she wouldn’t give him those miserable, longing looks, and wish for a return of a brother who’d been lost somewhere between the full moon and a mouthful of flashing fangs.

“Sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to broach a touchy subject.”

“You didn’t,” he assured. “I still don’t think I’ve quite grasped the idea: Mother having another child. It’s…”

“Strange?” Ragnar asked, turning to lean back against the window embrasure. “Revolting? Unnatural?”

“Birth is natural, you dolt. And what did I say about my mother?”

“I would never sully the name of the vaunted Lady Revna of Aeres,” Ragnar said, faux loftily, nose lifting in the air for good measure.

“You don’t play innocent well,” Leif griped.

“I don’t, do I?”

“Anyway,” Amelia said, drawing both their attentions. “I came to see if you were too sore to move.”

Ragnar darted a glance to Leif, dangerous light flaring in his eyes. “Oh?” he asked, continuing his piss-poor attempt at innocence. “And where would you have him move, Lady Amelia? In what way?”

Amelia sent him a withering look that instantly deepened Leif’s liking for her. Then she said, “Well, it involves quite a few stairs. There’s something in the wine cellar I’ve been waiting to show you. A subject we need to address before we march.”

“Ooh, the wine cellar,” Ragnar said, grin growing dangerous.

Ignoring him, Leif sat up a little straighter. “I can move. What is it?”

“A prisoner.” Her gaze slid to Ragnar. “Perhaps two, depending.”

Ragnar chuckled. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, my lady.”

She turned for the door. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

~*~

The wine cellar was not nearly as deep as the catacombs at Aeres; he’d walked much farther for a bath. But he’d not been healing from mortal wounds, and then spent the day battering opponents in the training ring, then. The first staircase was bad. The second was worse. Walking behind Amelia, with no one to see him struggling with gritted teeth and seized-up body, he accepted Ragnar’s silent support as they reached the final, much simpler staircase that led from the manor’s basement to its cold, damp wine cellar.

He paused halfway down, and his hackles went up the same moment Ragnar released a low growl.

Amelia paused four steps down, haloed by the light of the candle she carried. She turned around at the sound of Ragnar’s growl, and frowned up at them. “What is it?” she asked, quietly. A murmur of voices came from below, and her gaze darted that way and back, eyes wide and uncertain.

“It’s not right,” Ragnar said, and then sneezed and tossed his head as a wolf would.

Amelia looked startled.

Leif took a deep breath, and swallowed his own growl. He could smell Edward, and Reginald, and Connor, and Leda, and her younger lover, Colum of the Dour Face. He smelled two other men as well, guards: they had a scent of leather and mail about them. He smelled candle wax, and human waste. Old, old wine, spilled and then dried, and the casks it had been stored in, dust, and mildew, and mouse leavings.

It was the scent of the prisoner that had roused his wolf, that left Ragnar growling still, quiet but constant.

Amelia was waiting, watching them, alarm showing clearer and clearer on her face; the dance of the candle flame revealed the unsteadiness of her hand.

Leif tried to put it into words. “The Sel. He’s been searched? You took all his weapons?”

Her tension eased a fraction. “Yes. We stripped him bare, and doused him with water, too, to be sure he hadn’t coated himself in anything.” She made a helpless gesture. Who knew what a Sel might have coated himself with, but after the fight on the road, there was no such thing as overly cautious.

Leif nodded, but Ragnar continued to growl, the hairs on his arm bristled up where they brushed Leif’s skin. “He doesn’t smell as if he possesses magic himself, but he’s…touched by it.”

Ragnar snorted. “That’s a lot of words to say there’s something wrong with the bastard.”

Amelia shifted her weight, and her brows drew together; her voice became firmer, sterner, rather than frightened. “If there’s an extra precaution we should take, do you know what it might be?”

Leif shook his head. “Silver, maybe?” He spared a glance for Ragnar’s torq. “But maybe that’s only if it’s been enchanted. I don’t know. But he’s…he’s fine, probably. You have him in irons?”

“Bound hand and foot and chained to the wall,” she confirmed.

“Your men are armed?”

With her free hand, she reached to her belt, and drew the wicked length of hunting knife she kept there. “As am I.”

He nodded. “We’ll go, then. Just…be cautious. I don’t know what’s afoot, but he’s been in the presence of magic. It’s left some sort of impression upon him.”

Amelia nodded, sheathed her knife, and proceeded down the rest of the stairs.

“I don’t like this,” Ragnar muttered.

“You have my express permission to rip his throat out should the need arise.”

“Hm.” He wasn’t mollified, but he stopped growling, at least.

The cellar, when they arrived, proved to be floored with crushed rock, and walled with old stones that gleamed wetly in the wash of candlelight. Lanterns had been set up around the perimeter of the space, and dishes of candles set on top of the casks, which were housed in a rack on their sides, their lids pried off and their insides yawning, empty caverns. An arched doorway gave way to darkness at either end of the space, and a cool draft of water-scented air proved the cellars continued on for some way, and likely led up to the surface.

A space had been cleared in the immediate vicinity, wooden bottle racks dragged to the side in order to access the metal rings set in the stone wall. A man sat like a crumpled pile of linen beneath them, stripped down to his underclothes, which were no longer white, and no longer in good repair. His hair, by contrast, fell in milk-white snarls across both shoulders, and his face, which lifted at the sound of their arrival, was all of cut-glass angles and fine lines beneath a layer of grime and dried sweat. The candlelight turned his nearly-colorless Sel eyes to a twilight shade of lavender, and Leif felt the back of his neck tighten at sight of them.

Someone had decided the best way to restrain the man was to hoist his arms up and out, so they were chained level with his head on either side. A cruel means of restraint, and one for which Leif didn’t feel the slightest sympathy.

The Sel’s gaze was flat, unreadable, though his expression bore the slackness of exhaustion. It sharpened, however, when it landed on the two of them, side-by-side at the bottom of the stairs, Ragnar’s steadying hand at his back. A gaze that fixed on their faces, and then traveled down, taking in details. He’d spotted that they were Northerners, and Leif wondered if he had any idea which Northerners.

The others stood farther back, but Reginald was perched on a low stool in front of the prisoner, a lantern at his feet shuttered on three sides so the light beamed into the Sel’s face, but left Reginald wreathed in shadow. A clever trick…if you were the sort who wasn’t going to use eye contact and explicit threats to pry the answers out of your captive. Leif found himself thinking of Erik, of the way he kept the light equidistant between himself and the man he questioned, his face an unscalable cliff, the barest offering of hope in his words quickly seized by whatever poor soul had landed in his dungeon.

Ragnar started growling again.

“Hush,” Leif told him, and plucked at his tunic, urging him to the place where Amelia motioned for them to stand.

In this underground, enclosed space, the whisper of breeze from deeper tunnels didn’t do much to alleviate the overwhelming crush of smells. The last time Leif had been in a cell, it had been Ragnar’s, and he had smelled of wolf things, and of pack, and of a possession. This, though, the unwashed stink of the enemy, burned his sinuses and left his wolf pacing tight circles in his chest.

When they were settled, Reginald shifted on his stool, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his thighs, and said, “I know you speak Continental, so you might as well stop pretending that you don’t.”

The prisoner’s gaze had followed Amelia, and Leif, and Ragnar’s progress across the room, rested on them where they’d taken up positions in front of a row of stripped-down casks, and it slid back, with obvious reluctance, to Reginald’s shadowed face. It was an intelligent gaze, keen with comprehension, despite the obvious fatigue dragging at him. He spoke their language all right.

Reginald said something in Selesee that caused the man’s white brows to draw together. Then, in Continental: “You bore the marks of a captain on your uniform. Does that mean it was your stupid idea to take a group of scouts hostage? Or was such a decision beneath your notice, and left up to moronic underlings?”

Leif leaned down toward Amelia and whispered, “Hostages?”

Amelia whispered back, “We didn’t take this one from the road ambush – all those men were killed. This one was captured a few days earlier, at a watchtower ten miles from here. It had been long-abandoned, and half-ruined to start. They captured a group of scouts and sent one back to ransom the rest.”

Leif frowned. From Erik’s stories of the last war, and Olaf and Birger’s teaching, from his own experiences with the enemy, he couldn’t recall a story of Selesee hostage-taking. They didn’t want to negotiate, and their numbers so vast, their weapons so exquisite they never had to. Sels conquered, and that was all.

When he glanced at her, she shook her head to indicate that she didn’t understand, either.

From the stool, Reginald said, “I’m not sure you realize how this works, friend. We have you here, at our mercy. When I ask you a question, I expect an answer. If you don’t answer…” He lifted his left arm, and metal winked in the wavering light of the candles and lantern.

It was a knife. A rather nasty one.

But Leif doubted Reginald’s willingness to use it against the man.

As if sharing the sentiment, Edward said, “This is a waste of time.”

“On the contrary,” Reginald said, rising to his feet. “It’s helping me understand how much force I’ll need to exert to get this creature to open his mouth.” He took a step toward the prisoner, knife brandished, and the Sel didn’t look at him; his gaze stayed level, somewhere around Reginald’s waist, and he pressed his head back against the damp stone of the wall, resigned.

But Leif could hear the wild thumping of his heart. He could smell magic, still, but now that he was closer, he could tell what sort of magic it was: it was a binding. He didn’t know the whys, hows, or whos, when it had been applied or what spells or sacrifices or intent had been required by the wielder of the magic, but it smelled similar to the torq Ragnar wore. A magic that had been pressed on the man, and not anything he’d conjured on his own. And beneath that magic, that binding, he smelled acrid fear sweat, and sensed a desperation that was shocking in its intensity.

As if sensing his notice, the prisoner’s gaze flitted, briefly, to meet Leif’s, and then his pale throat jerked as he swallowed; he turned his head, tipped it against the wall. When he did, his hair slid off the side of his neck, and revealed a small, dark mark at his base, where neck met shoulder.

A tattoo.

Ah.

Leif strode forward, ignoring the pain that flared in his ribs, ignoring Ragnar and Amelia’s protests. He snatched the knife from Reginald’s hand – “Hey!” – shouldered past him, and went to the prisoner.

The Sel jerked against his bonds, head pressed back to the wall, neck tilted so he could look, wide-eyed, up at Leif, a plea in his gaze. Not for mercy, no. Leif knew what needed to be done.

“What are you doing?” Reginald demanded behind him. “Shit, don’t–”

“Leif!” Amelia shouted.

“Let him,” Connor said. “We’re not getting anywhere anyway.”

“He’s going to kill him.”

“No,” Edward said, and sounded sure about it. “He’s not.”

Leif gripped a fistful of white hair, cranked the man’s head to the left, and brought the knife flashing down with his other hand.

Reginald let out a wordless shout of protest.

Ragnar said, “And everyone thinks I’m impulsive.”

With a deft flick, Leif used the very tip of the knife to take off the top layer of skin, removing the tattoo with it. A thumbnail-sized wound remained, and it began to bleed immediately, a fat pearl of blood welling and trickling down inside the man’s shirt.

As for the prisoner himself, he sagged forward, all of him caving in save his wrists, still chained to the wall. His head bowed, and his spine curled, and he let out a deep gasp, and then what sounded like a muttered curse in his own language.

Leif still held his hair, and lifted his face; he came easily, and his expression, now, was mobile in a way it hadn’t been before, his relief transforming him into a person, rather than a pale, stinking statue. He panted a moment, and wet his lips, then said, in accented, but perfect Continental, “Thank you.”

He smelled like nothing now except dirty human. The scent and hum of magic was gone.

“The tattoo was enchanted?” Leif asked.

“The ink was,” he panted. He was winded like a man who’d just run a race, or been holding his breath under water too long. “A shaman said a few words over the bowl, before they were put on.”

“You couldn’t remove it yourself.”

He grimaced. “Every time I tried, my hand froze. I couldn’t follow through with it, and then I’d black out, and when I came to, I’d forgotten I’d attempted…until the next time.”

“How do you speak the language so well?”

“I speak dozens. Trained since birth. The emperor wants us to know what the peoples we conquer are saying about us behind our backs.”

“Um,” Reginald said. “Excuse me, but what the fuck are you doing?” He stepped up beside Leif and took his knife back – Leif didn’t try to stop him.

“Interrogating the prisoner.”

“I had the knife,” Reginald said, pointing to the man’s bleeding neck with it. “I could have done that.”

Leif sighed. “He wasn’t resisting you out of obstinance – the tattoo prevented him from spilling secrets.” He frowned, when he recalled the general kneeling at his feet in the great hall at Aeres, his spat insults, his predictions, and the whistle and thunk of Erik’s sword. “Not all of you have one,” he said with a pointed lift of his brows.

The man swallowed with obvious difficulty; his throat was doubtless dry. “Not the generals. The loyal few. Every foot soldier has one. Just in case.”

“In case they turn out like you?” Leif asked.

“Yes.”

Leif turned to Reginald. “Do you have water down here?”

Reginald’s brows were nearly lost to his hairline, the humidity of the cellar flopping his curls over his forehead. “What?”

“Water. Is there any down here?” Leif asked, less than patiently.

“Yes.”

“Get him some.”

“Are you giving me orders?” Reginald asked, affronted.

Leif didn’t respond, though he heard Connor say something; his attention had gone across the room to where Amelia and Ragnar stood, side-by-side, a gap between them just large enough for Leif to slide between. Both wore comically similar expressions of blended curiosity and skepticism.

Leif bent to retrieve the flap of skin he’d cut free, and smoothed it carefully in his palm with a fingertip as he crossed the floor to join them.

Both immediately bent over his hand to peer at it: the ink was shaped in a capital letter R – the Sels shared their alphabet, though not their language – done with flourishes and sharp points.

Ragnar started to reach for it, then drew his hand back. Even cut free of its host, the thing was tingling unpleasantly in Leif’s palm.

“How did you know?” Amelia asked, voice touched with awe. “I saw it when we first brought him down here, but I thought it only a decoration.”

“It’s the wolf,” he explained. “I could feel it – smell it.”

“That was what you both smelled on the stairs?” she asked.

“Yeah. It stinks.” Ragnar turned away, wrinkling his nose. He glanced toward the Sel, who was being helped to a dipper of water by a sour-faced Reginald, as instructed. “Okay, so he was enchanted. That doesn’t mean you can believe anything he says just because you cut that off of him.”

Leif gave him a look. “There are those that would say that about you.”

He made a face. “Oh…that’s different.”

When Leif only stared, he said, “I’m me, for starters. You’ve known me your whole life, and I’m not some foreigner. I’m not the enemy.”

“Erik would debate you on that last point,” Leif said, and sighed. “But I take your meaning.”

“Obviously, we can’t trust him,” Amelia said. “But perhaps we can learn something useful. It’s worth a try at least.” The glance she tipped up to him was a question: Don’t you agree?

He nodded. “Aye. I say get some food in him, and see what he has to say.”

~*~

They allowed him to wash, under the gazes of four guards, in a tub hauled into one of the disused salons; brought him fresh clothes, and granted him the time to comb out his damp, now-clean hair so that it hung in two gleaming, silvery sheets on either side of his starkly pale face.

The sat him down in the library before the fire, a small table pulled in front of Amelia’s usual armchair and laid with a plate of cold mutton and mashed parsnips. He fell on the food with the zeal of a starving dog, and the delicate table manners of a lady of the high court.

Amelia had asked, while he was bathing, to lead the questioning, now that the situation had shifted; no one had argued. She settled now in the chair opposite him, and crossed her legs, watching him as he mopped the last bit of bloody juice from his plate with a heel of bread.

The gleaming, sinister golden armor had a way of making Sels seem larger than they were. Out of it, this one was tall, but not as tall, nor as broad, as Leif and Ragnar. Trim and fit, strong, doubtless, to lug all that armor about in the first place, with a hairless, lovely face and long-fingered, elegant hands. His coloring was jarring, in the way of all Sels, though the candle glow and flicker of firelight warmed it a fraction; painted golden arcs along each cheekbone and on the smooth, razor edge of his jaw.

She’d never stopped to consider the idea that not all Sel soldiers shared their leader’s cause, but now it seemed obvious. No army was unified in its purpose. Discipline and respect kept soldiers in line – fear, too, in healthy measure. But not every pair of boots was filled by a man of fervid loyalty to the cause.

She had to assume, though, that he might be acting.

When he was finished, he wiped his mouth with the scrap of towel they’d offered as a napkin, set his knife and fork neatly aside, and settled back in his chair, holding his cup of water lightly between both hands. He met her gaze, and he seemed eased, now, after eating his fill, and slaking his thirst. He looked tired, also, with deep shadows lurking beneath each eye. But not angry, nor as if he wished to challenge her. His demeanor was placid, if a little resigned.

“You have questions for me.”

“I do,” she agreed. “Do you know who I am?”

“Amelia Drake,” he said, without hesitation. “Eldest remaining child of Duke William Drake, now the Duchess in his stead, despite the rules of Aquitainian inheritance.”

She snorted. “You sound as though you read that on a dossier.”

“I did. I read of Prince Leif Torstansson as well,” he said, gaze flicking toward Leif, where he stood a few paces away, arms folded to show off the thick muscle there. “Though I didn’t expect to meet him here,” he said, gaze returning to Amelia. “Nor to be alive, for that matter.”

She frowned. “What do you mean? Because of the siege at Aeres?”

“No. Chief Ragnar of the Úlfheðnar clan was tasked with killing both Aeretollean heirs. Both live, still, and now Prince Leif is a skinwalker as well.”

Amelia fought not to show her shock at that bit of news, and could only imagine how it must have struck Leif. Ragnar too, for that matter. She didn’t risk darting a look to him in front of their prisoner.

She collected her thoughts. “Tell me about the tattoo.”

He’d received it just before deployment, he said. Born to the soldier class – her brain shouted what?? in response to that – parentless, never knowing who’d birthed or sired him, he’d been raised in one of the bunkers with other boys just like him, eating plain but nutritious meals, training every hour of the day that he wasn’t scrubbing floors or being tutored on the history of the empire and its as-of-yet-unconquered colonies. He’d slept on a cot in a long hall with all his comrades. All of them had known from birth that they would serve the emperor as troops in his expansion efforts.

“I showed a greater aptitude with language and the learning of foreign cultures than my companions,” he said, “and so I was designated a captain when I turned sixteen, and trained not simply to fight, but to lead men as well.” He’d learned everything he was told to learn, pushed himself through every exercise and drill until his form was flawless, and his muscles strong and lightning-quick. And then the call to war had come, and they’d all been sat down in a line, and tattooed, one after the next, to ensure their obedience. He didn’t understand the mechanics of it, nor the magics used, but it had tampered with his free will. Prior to Leif’s “liberation,” as he called it, he’d been unable to resist a direct order from a superior, nor to speak any of the empire’s secrets to an enemy.

“We would not be able to have this conversation had Prince Leif not cut it from me,” he said, and his gaze went to Leif again, clearly grateful.

“You wanted it gone?” she asked. “You wanted to spill empire secrets?”

“I wanted to desert,” he said, bluntly. “But all three times I tried, I came to lying on the ground, unable to so much as twitch forward. I could only move backward, and when my colonel discovered what I’d attempted, he sent me on a useless occupation mission.”

“To the tower.”

“To the tower,” he confirmed. “I was to keep an eye out for your men; report back when your army was on the move.”

Realization struck. “You weren’t supposed to take hostages.”

He shook his head, white hair rippling like sheets of silver silk. “No.”

Amelia set her feet flat on the floor and scooted forward to the edge of her chair. “You were trying to get caught.”

When he blushed, it stood as two hectic spots of color in his cheeks, stark against the paleness of his skin. “Not exactly. I…hoped that a blunder of that magnitude in the field – being forced to retreat in the face of…in my superiors’ words, a ‘backward and paltry force not fit to be called a proper army’ – that I would be called back, and demerited, and perhaps pressed into servitude and sent back to Seles.”

“You wanted to go home,” Amelia said, beginning to understand.

“Wait. Hold on,” Connor interjected. He was perched on the edge of the sideboard, wine cup in one hand, bottle in the other, paused in the act of pouring. “You wanted to go back to Seles – as a slave?”

The prisoner turned to him, expression veering toward offended; a bit of that Selesee superiority coming through. “As a servant. Those are two very different things.”

Connor shook his head, and finished pouring. “You’re scrubbing chamber pots either way, mate.”

The Sel turned back to Amelia. “In Seles, a servant might buy his freedom after ten years of exceptional service.”

“Here, they can always quit.”

His brows lifted a fraction, the lines that formed in his forehead darker than his eyebrows themselves. “And do what? Become a farmhand? Return home to room with his parents? The Aquitainian society is equally stratified,” he said, tone censorious.

“Be that as it may,” she said. “You wanted to go back. To escape the fighting?”

“Haven’t got the stomach for blood?” Ragnar asked with a sharp grin.

The prisoner turned to him, more sharply than he had toward Connor; Amelia saw the way his gaze shifted down, to the torq that rested on Ragnar’s throat, and the way it bobbed in response, as Ragnar’s smile slipped, and he swallowed. “Sel soldiers are blooded at age eight. We hunt boars, individually, on a wooded course. No, I do not quail at the sight of blood.”

He tilted his head, gaze touching meaningfully on the torq again, before he met Ragnar’s stare, and held it. “Sometimes, a man realizes that certain types of captivity are well worth it.”

“Why would you consider it worthwhile?” Amelia asked, recapturing his attention.

He hesitated, fingers drumming on his water cup. Then he said, “There is…a young woman.”

“Oh gods,” Reginald groaned. “Please do not tell me this is a love story.”

The prisoner didn’t respond. To Amelia, he said, “We met when we were ten. She worked for the tailor who made our clothes.” A fleeting smile touched his mouth, and in that blink transformed it; but it was quickly dashed. He said, “We grew quickly, our changing musculature a constant strain on our uniforms. The tailor was there often, and he brought his girl – she was one of his daughters. We became fast friends – my only friend, really. The other boys were competition; we were pitted against one another, punished when we lost a sparring match. But she was–”

“Yes, yes, lovely as a spring morning,” Reginald griped, rolling his eyes. “As gentle as a kitten, with breath like roses and eyes like lambent pools. She was special, yes? And she’s waiting for you at home?”

The prisoner drew himself stiffly upright, and held Amelia’s gaze, though a muscle in his lean cheek flexed. “My reasons are my own, but I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to die here, in this godforsaken wilderness.”

Amelia nodded. But she said, “I find it odd, however, that a boy brought up for a singular purpose, trained from birth to be a soldier in the imperial army, should have such independent ideas.”

It seemed an age before he blinked, and then he titled his head, a slight concession. “And I find it odd that now, of all times, is when the Drakes should remember that they are dragon riders.”

His gaze bored straight through her – not threatening, but knowing. She suppressed a shiver. According to Oliver, the Selesee emperor claimed that the Aquitainian magic, the Aeretollean magic, had been stolen from Seles. A tale of twin sisters, and one who’d fled, and birthed children amongst whom she’d divided her gifts. She, and Tessa, and Oliver, and Náli, no doubt Leif and Ragnar as well, had a wealth of questions. Questions only a Sel could answer. And here, for the first time, sat a Sel who wasn’t trying to kill them, and was answering questions instead.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Cassius, my lady. My name is Cassius.”

~*~

“I don’t care what his bloody name is,” Connor said, once the prisoner – Cassius – was back in the wine cellar, chained once more, though more comfortably. “I say we lop off his head” – he chopped his arm through the air in demonstration – “and have done with it. Perhaps one of our strapping Northern lads would do the honor.” To Leif: “You could probably fell a tree with one swipe, couldn’t you, your grace?”

Leif’s lips compressed, and twitched to the side. He was stroking absently at one of the silver beads at the end of a braid, slouched with his elbows resting on the back of a chair, posture eloquent of fatigue and soreness. “I’ve never heard of a Sel being cooperative like that. The general we captured in Aeres certainly wasn’t.”

Colum, paging through a book at one of the reading tables, said, “It’s true what he said about being raised up a soldier: soldiers do not have families. There is a barracks of women made available several times a year to soldiers for breeding. When the children are born, they’re taken from the mothers and brought up without parents, only a sword master.”

“And they call us barbaric,” Amelia said.

Leda said, “I think we must consider the notion that he could be a planted spy. That he’ll offer us just enough truth to gain our trust, and fill in the gaps with lies that will get us killed.”

“That.” Connor snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Exactly that.” He’d had more than the one cup of wine, at this point.

“No one’s suggesting we trust him,” Leif said, sternly.

“No,” Amelia agreed. “But I’m not willing to execute him just yet. I think there’s more we could learn from him.”

“Agreed.” Leif caught her eye, and his gaze looked relieved, she thought.

“The reassuring news is,” Ragnar said, dryly, dropping into a chair and sprawling across the whole, double-wide seat, affecting boredom, “you two” – finger pointing between Leif and Amelia – “are celebrities. He knew all about you.”

Leif turned to him. “Maybe because you told him all about us.”

Ragnar frowned. “When would I have done that?”

“I don’t know. When you were getting yourself turned into a bloody wolf in exchange for my head?”

Leif’s posture didn’t change, but Ragnar’s did, subtly. His foot – swinging over the arm of the chair – stilled, and his body tensed. His smirk froze, and then slowly crumbled. The torq bobbed on his throat. They held one another’s gazes a too-long moment, and it confirmed Amelia’s suspicion that Leif would be having words with his beta later, when they were alone.

“I think,” Amelia said, “we can assume that the Sels know quite a lot about all of us.”

“They didn’t know about the drakes,” Reginald said, and everyone turned to him. He’d been brooding ever since they sent Cassius back down to the cellar, sipping at wine rather than contributing to the conversation. Amelia didn’t have to ask what he thought should be done with their prisoner: his answer had been plain in his expression from the first. “You heard what he said about you riding them,” he went on. “None of them thought you’d manage that. We have one advantage, at least.”

“May I suggest we keep it,” Leda said, surveying them all. “And that we get some sleep. We depart in two days’ time, after all.”

There were mumblings of assent, and the scrape of chairs shifting as everyone stood.

Amelia was heading for the door, trying to decide if it would be worth taking one last scouting flight northeast tomorrow, to see if Oliver and his king and their Phalanx were within sight, when Leif said, “Amelia.”

She paused, and when she caught his gaze across the room, he tilted his head back toward the fire, silently wanting a word. She nodded.

Leda waggled her brows on the way out – Amelia sent her a quelling look that earned a sly grin in response – and Amelia went to join him at the hearth.

Ragnar lingered a few steps back, still sprawled in his chair, cleaning beneath his nails with a short knife. When the last Southerner was well away, Leif turned to him.

“Leave us.” It had the ring of a command, and the sound of it snatched Ragnar’s head upright, and put a frown on his face. “Go,” Leif urged. “I’ll speak with you after.”

After…what? Amelia wondered, and tried to ignore the pleasant twinge in her belly; tried not to think of Leda’s suggestive eyebrows, nor the encouragement she’d given the night before.

Ragnar gave an unhappy huff, but stood, and walked out. Leif watched him go, until he was out of sight, and though Ragnar didn’t look back, she could see the way he wanted to, the rigid tension in the set of his shoulders.

When he was gone, Leif sighed.

“Did you know?” Amelia asked, quietly, in case Ragnar could still hear them, even as his footfalls went thumping up the stairs. He probably could. “That he’d been tasked with killing you?”

Leif turned back to her slowly, gaze hooded, indrawn. “Not explicitly, no. But he had one of his men try to kill Rune, and then he left Erik and me for the cannibals. I always expected he wasn’t supposed to turn me.” Wry tilt to his mouth, slight shake of his head. “I’m not sure even he knows why he did it.”

Her pulse was thumping a fraction too fast; she thought he could probably hear or sense it, somehow. If he’d known Cassius’s tattoo was enchanted, how could he help but know that something in her quickened when she thought of him, and Ragnar, and whatever it was that lay between them?

“The two of you have a…complicated relationship.”

He snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

“But he cares for you. I can tell – we all could, in the days before you woke. That day, on the side of the road…”

It startled her all over again each time she recalled it, those first minutes after the portal had closed, and the chaos had come to a screeching end…that quickly gave way to the madness of the aftermath.

Men had been moaning on the ground, in two languages. Men had been sobbing, been begging: some for help, some for the release of death. Amelia had landed, once she’d scoured the area and found no more enemy combatants on their feet. She’d seen Connor and Reggie, and she’d slid down off Alpha’s back and run to them, to see what they were bent over.

Leif, it had proved. And above him, clutching at his shredded clothes, hands awash in his blood, had been Ragnar, tears coursing down his face while he murmured, “Alpha, alpha, please, please,” over and over, shaking Leif and telling him to wake up. As she’d neared, Connor had touched Ragnar’s shoulder. “Let us have a look–”

And Ragnar had snarled, and lashed out, and clutched Leif to his chest, teeth bared and growl rumbling from deep in his chest, furious, and wild, and grief-stricken.

Connor and Reggie had stumbled back from him.

It was Amelia who’d finally coaxed him to let go of Leif, and let them bandage him, let them move him. Nothing about his tear-filled eyes had been human in that moment.

Leif’s expression had turned sour with unhappiness, and she didn’t know if it was because he didn’t want to hear her say such a thing, or because he doubted its truth. “I’m not sure,” he said after a moment, “that Ragnar’s mind works the way other men’s do.” He shook his head, and said, “But I didn’t want to talk about him.” His gaze lifted to meet hers once more, and the weight of it was of the sort a person wanted to step back from. She rather wanted to lean in, instead, and see how much of it she could bear. Like her horse, like her drakes, his regard bore the intensity of an animal, rather than the duplicitous charm of a man; she found it hopelessly ensnaring for that reason, against her better judgement.

“All right,” she said, and hoped her voice was steady. “What, then?”

His weight shifted – he shifted in, and Amelia pointedly did not look down at the breadth of his chest. Eyes up, she told herself. Focus. You don’t even want him that way.

The voice that laughed in the back of her mind sounded an awful lot like Leda’s.

“I hesitated to say this earlier, in the training yard,” he said. Speaking quietly like this, his voice had a low, deep vibration not unlike a growl, the timber of it resonating pleasantly in the narrow space between them, echoing inside her chest as if he’d spoken the words directly down her throat. The idea of such a thing shocked her – thrilled her – so much that she struggled to decipher the second half of his statement. “I didn’t want to undermine your authority in front of the men. But I can tell you weren’t born to the sword, and I think it’s important that you begin formally training. In earnest.”

She wanted to do something in earnest all right, flushed right up to the tips of her ears, pulse a steady throb in all the places that craved more of his voice. And she hadn’t even drunk any wine! Ugh.

But then she realized what he’d said, and not merely how he’d said it, and she frowned. “I had a lesson or two – or three – growing up.” Mal passing her his blade in a grass-floored clearing just beyond sight of the house, the summer sun glinting off the clean blade, his arms strong around her as he helped her step through a sequence of sword stances – until they were both laughing, and she was turning in his arms, and the sword lay forgotten on the grass while they pursued other exercises.

Oh, Mal.

She shook her head, and whatever her face did, it left his brows drawing together. “You’re right, though. I need more practice – a lot more. I could barely lift that Sel sword, much less use it.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, and a bright spark of amusement flared to life in his gaze. “Well, I wouldn’t recommend you practice with one of their blades: they’ll always be too heavy for you, no matter how skilled you become.”

She made a face, and he chuckled.

“You’d need a good deal more…mass…to wield one of those, let’s say.”

“Yes, I see. That’s what everyone’s always telling me: ‘My lady, you require more mass.’”

The tug of his mouth became a smile, sharply-spreading, wide and boyish, a wild thing rarely let off its lead and enjoying the freedom. “We should start with the sword you already have – if Ragnar didn’t drop it on the road and leave it there to rust?”

“No, I collected it.” Then she said, “We? Are you proposing to tutor me yourself?” And how would that go?

His chest swelled on his next breath, and the arch of his brow was cocksure when he said, “I suppose you could always take up lessons with one of the men I bested today, if you think them more capable.”

She snorted a laugh in very unladylike fashion, and shoved his chest.

It was something she’d always done. With Oliver and her brother, John, growing up. Smacking their arms or giving them a shove when they said something cheeky or stupid; and then later, with Mal, when he said outrageously inappropriate things on purpose, so she’d laugh, and swat at him. John had always sighed theatrically when she did it, and told her she’d never land herself a valuable husband behaving, in his words, like a swineherd or a drunk soldier, but Oliver and Mal had always given her a grin, and teased her back; a poke in the ribs from Oliver, or a tousling of her hair. A returning shove from Mal – that had turned, when they were older, and had become lovers, to a tickle, or a bold smack to her backside that left her feigning affront and giving chase when he took off running. It was her way of being physically affectionate, the tomboy coming through when she felt she could trust someone, and open up around them; she’d never cared for cheek kisses and walking arm in arm beneath the shade of a parasol. No, give her a good backhanded slap on the arm any day instead.

It was thoughts of Mal that had driven her to it tonight; missing him, missing that connection, wanting that physical closeness and familiarity.

But the moment she made contact with Leif, she realized her mistake, and she froze.

Her hand, damningly, was still on his chest. On his very firm and solid chest, resting there. She could feel the density of hard-earned muscle, and also its give; that pliable thickness of strong pectorals the likes of which she hadn’t felt beneath her hand since Mal was run through with a Selesee spear. She could feel the heat of Leif’s skin bleeding through his shirt and tunic, so much warmer than a normal human; feel the steady, strong drumming of his heart, and the lift of his chest as he took his next breath.

Then came the embarrassment, a great red-faced wave of it, flooding her whole body and making her want to hide. She snatched her hand back. “Sorry, sorry.” She couldn’t look at his face, not after that. “My brother would apologize to you on behalf of my unfeminine behavior…if he weren’t dead. Ha ha.”

His voice had gone somehow lower, gravel-edged; the sort of voice easily imagined in the dark of night, bridging the span between pillows. “I don’t mind. Women don’t behave as…stiffly up North as they do in the South.”

She could hear his smile, and so she braved a glance at his face, though she knew hers must be red. His smile was smaller now, close-lipped, and had softened his bold, masculine features. She noted a faint dusting of pink along his cheekbones; wanted to think of his gaze as fond.

“I’ve always been too forward for my environs down here. Too mannish.”

“Hm. You should meet my mother.”

“I would like to.” Who wouldn’t want to meet the woman who’d birthed and reared him? Who’d shaped his childhood, and raised him to the man he was today. Tessa’s stories painted a vivid picture, but Tessa had a tendency to understate things. She wanted to meet Revna for herself: the sword-wielding woman who’d gone toe-to-toe with armored Sels in defense of her home.

“She would like you,” Leif said, softly, and his gaze shifted; dropped to her mouth.

Amelia was too old and too experienced to mistake that sort of glance for anything besides what it was: interest. Sexual interest.

It was one thing to feel a stirring of want inside herself; another entirely to think it might be returned.

She took a step back.

Leif’s gaze snapped back to her eyes right away, and his expression went chagrined. “I’m sorry about your brother,” he said. “And your father. I don’t suppose I’ve said that, since we met, and I should have right away.”

She offered a thin smile. “Thank you.”

It was awkward, now, and she wished she hadn’t made it so. “Lessons?” she asked, aiming for chipper. “There’s plenty to do before our departure, but I suppose I could squeeze a few in, here and there.” Her smile tugged wider, truer. “If you’re sufficiently recovered from today’s exercise, that is.”

He rolled his eyes with a huff. “I suppose I’ll manage.”

Amelia chuckled, and Leif smiled back, and it was a little less awkward.

It would be so again, though, she feared.

Or maybe she wasn’t fearful at all, and that was the problem.

~*~

Two guards were stationed at the door that led from the main cellar down to the wine cellar, Southern soldiers in lightweight, leather tunics with only hammered steel pauldrons for armor; gloveless, bearing short swords and spears, no helms. Dressed for comfort, rather than practicality, sure that their strip-searched prisoner didn’t pose much of a threat, chained as he was.

Ragnar himself didn’t favor armor, but he thought these two were fools. Most Southerners were, he thought, too used to comfortable living and fine weather. Before the Sels invaded, the worst they dealt with were poachers and pickpockets, the occasional rapist, quickly dispatched by a lord’s justice: a headsman in a mask, or a guillotine, rather than the fall of the lord’s own sword or axe.

Weakness. They were all so weak.

“Evening, boys,” Ragnar greeted them, and received only nods, and then an exchange of glances in response. He didn’t think they’d let him pass, especially not with the way he was grinning at them, but one opened the door and the other ushered him through.

“You may have ten minutes,” the first said, and the second added, sneering, “And we don’t care what for.”

Ragnar turned to speak back over his shoulder as he descended the stairs. “Come now, you don’t think I could find a better pair of legs to get between if I was that desperate?”

His answer was a swift thud of the door closing, and the flame of his candle bent double, flickered, and nearly extinguished.

It recovered, and when the flame was steady again, he cupped his hand before it, and continued down.

The bottom step creaked – something he’d noticed earlier – and he leaned all of his weight on it a deliberate moment, so that it creeeeaaaaked. Doubtless his footfalls had been audible the entire time, but, well. He’d always liked toying with people. Especially his cousins – they were so easy to rile, and so delightfully flushed and righteous when he did so – but enemies were fun as well.

The Sel – Cassius, if he’d told the truth about his name – was sitting upright against his patch of wall, legs crossed, hands resting in his lap, now that his chains had been lengthened to allow it. His head was tipped against the wall, and his eyes were closed, but Ragnar could tell by the rhythm of his breathing, and the fractional twitch of his white lashes against his white cheeks that he wasn’t sleeping. Only resting – and waiting. His tension was a finely controlled thing, but detectable all the same in the minute shifting of cloth that no human could have heard; the lifting of his heartrate, a quick rap visible in the side of his throat.

Ragnar didn’t need the candle, but he carried it anyway; walked up and set in on the floor in front of the Sel, just beyond his reach should he care to test the length of his chains. Ragnar sat down opposite him, legs crossed in mirrored posture. He waited a beat, and then put two fingers in his mouth and whistled sharply.

The Sel opened his eyes. Purposefully – he hadn’t been startled. In front of Leif, in front of all of them together, he’d reeked of fear, and panic, the cloying stink of desperation. Now, though, his scent was calm; cool and soapy from his bath. No whiff of magic remained – the cut-off tattoo had gone to a vial in the surgery, where the pasty and charmless Colum wanted to poke and prod it and do gods knew what with it. Without that hint of the supernatural, the sight of the Sel didn’t put Ragnar’s hackles up. In fact, he felt nearly cheerful.

The Sel stared at him a moment, and when Ragnar didn’t speak, only grinned at him, silent, finally said, “You’re the thrall.”

“Aye. S’pose you read about that, too, did you?”

“We are alike in that respect,” the Sel said. “We live at the mercy of others.”

Ragnar snorted. “Don’t compare me to you. I’m not chained to a wall.”

His head tipped a fraction. “But you have been. Haven’t you.” It wasn’t really a question, and Ragnar felt the bitter edge of his smile. This wasn’t how he’d planned on this going.

Time for a redirection.

Ragnar said, “All right, then, no more chitchat from you. Tell me, since you think we’re so similar – since we share that bond,” he said, mockingly. “Prisoner to prisoner, like. What’s your angle?”

He frowned. “Angle?”

“You speak the king’s own Continental, but you don’t know what I mean by that? What’s your game, man? What are you trying to get out of playing the good little dungeon dweller? Why cooperate?”

The Sel’s brow smoothed, and he was the portrait of serenity again. “It’s as I already said: I wanted to return to Seles. It’s what I want still.”

“And you…what? Think if you cooperate like a good little boy Lady Amelia will send you back on the next ship? Maybe blow you a kiss from the docks?”

The Sel – Cassius – studied him a long moment, gaze tracking back and forth across his face, and down to his torq, and back up again, so that Ragnar felt like a specimen pinned to a board, wriggling at the mercy of a passionless scholar. He resisted the urge to shift his weight, and forced his grin – surely now a rictus – to stay fixed in place.

“You think I have ulterior motives,” Cassius said, finally.

“I know you do.”

Cassius’s head tilted the other way. “Is that because you have them, and therefore assume that I do?”

Ragnar couldn’t hold his faux grin anymore. When it dropped, he didn’t attempt to hide his snarl. “I’m not ‘assuming’ anything, you bastard. Nothing you told the others is true – except wanting to get caught. That bit you weren’t lying about, but you had to get caught so you could infiltrate the enemy ranks, and work on them slowly from the inside. Get them to trust you, get them to come to you for advice on fighting your countrymen. And all the while you’re leading them into a trap. Wham.” He clapped his hands together, and the sound echoed off the stone walls around them; Cassius didn’t flinch from it. “Just like that you’ve got them.”

Again, the Sel stared at him, cool and assessing, face betraying no emotion save detached puzzlement.

“Well?” Ragnar demanded. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

“You’ve already said you don’t believe me. What could I say that would make any difference?”

As a chief, Ragnar had been known for his mercurial shifts in temper. Generally, because none of his men – pre-change – had ever had the sense to know when his smiles were warnings, and his laughter the grumble of approaching danger, rather than an expression of joy. Since the change, he’d become too used to being understood, even when he tried to obfuscate. Leif could always tell what he was thinking, no matter what he said; the rest of the pack knew when to leave well enough alone, even when he was smiling wide enough to crack his face.

But this foreign bastard knew nothing, so Ragnar leaped to his feet with a loud, rough growl; stalked forward across the crushed rock of the floor and took the Sel’s throat in a tight, clawed grip. He pressed his thumb to the apple of the man’s throat, and dug in viciously, half-shifted nail pricking the skin. A pearl of blood welled, but did not drip.

And Cassius did not react, head tipped back, neck loose and pliant, gaze unbothered. The obedience, that placid acceptance of the abuse, heightened Ragnar’s growl; it was echoing around them, now, the nasty snarl of a beast; probably the guards above could hear it, though if they did, they didn’t interfere.

Ragnar thrust his face into the other man’s, and said, through clenched teeth, “I’m watching you, you devil. Whatever you’re trying to do, you won’t succeed.”

“Will you?” Cassius returned.

Ragnar thought of killing him. It wouldn’t take much: he was unarmed, and restrained, and had no will to fight back besides, apparently. It would be the work of a moment, done before he could properly think it. A wrench of his neck to the side, a slash of half-shifted claws over the throbbing vein in his throat. A hand clamped tight over his nose and mouth, until his feet kicked, and then were still. Ragnar probably wouldn’t even be punished for it. Leif would do that thing with his eyebrows that meant he’d wanted to think better of him – foolish, sweet cousin, always thinking a man had the capacity for change – and Amelia might protest and glower. Surely her generals would raise a fuss about him being dangerous and untrustworthy. But in the long run, he would have done them all a favor, and there’d be one less Sel in the world.

But he couldn’t make himself do it.

He released the man with a shove, and stepped back, disgusted with himself.

When he was partway up the stairs, Cassius called after him. “Chief Ragnar.”

Ragnar paused, and his hand tightened on the railing until the wood creaked. “I’m not that. Not anymore.”

Cassius turned to him, slowly, hair whispering over his shoulders, the bone white of a wise old crone, the sight of it chilling against his smooth, too-pale face. He was like a ghost, one who’d found peace in death. “I’m not sure you know what you are. But you will learn.” It had the ring of prophesy, and lifted Ragnar’s hackles until all his skin tingled unpleasantly. “Before the end, you will know what you are, Ragnar Thorbrandsson.”

Then he blinked, and his face was just a face once more, brow wrinkled as though he was confused. His gaze dropped, and he murmured, “Sorry.”

Ragnar snorted in dismissal, and continued upward – though it was an effort not to run.

~*~

Thoughts of Amelia plagued Leif on his way up the stairs to his borrowed room. Truth told, being inside the house like this – being civilized again – was drawing on the version of himself he’d been before his turning. Four walls, and painted ceilings, and fine furniture gone dusty from disuse put a damper on his wolf; he imagined the thing sleeping, sulkily, curled up somewhere in the center of his chest, eyes closed against the silver candlesticks and tattered silk wallpaper. His senses were sharper now in every way, but he didn’t feel on the edge of losing himself wholly to the animal inside…

Save when speaking with Amelia.

He’d known staying behind with her in private had been a risk, and the wolf hadn’t disappointed: sitting up, tongue lolling, drawing her scent through his nose, over his tongue, deep into his lungs to fester there, until it became harder and harder to remember why he shouldn’t just grab her and drag her down to the rug before the hearth. A wolf instinct – the instinct and the actions of his Úlfheðnar ancestors, only men, but with never a concern as to whether the women they mounted wanted it, or reciprocated their interest.

He was getting better at keeping the beast in check. Tonight, physical exhaustion and blazing soreness had beaten back the relentless surge of want into something manageable. A pleasant stirring, only, and so the man in him had been able to study the lovely lines of her face in the firelight, and admire the way she tried to joke of her dead family, and nearly succeeded, save the flash of real hurt in her eyes. He’d heard the quickening of her heartbeat, and smelled the way she’d gone damp between her thighs – that had nearly been his undoing.

He'd thought about kissing her – had wanted to – and had known, as her pupils expanded, and her breath hitched, that she wouldn’t just allow it, but reciprocate.

But he’d bid her goodnight, because it was the right thing to do.

And because, should the wolf become too itchy and insistent under his skin, there was always Ragnar to sate his hunger.

He thought of Amelia all the way up the stairs, her snort of laughter, the way her shoulders had stiffened when he made mention of her sword skills, and then he arrived at his room to find it empty, with no fresh scent of Ragnar lingering in the air, and then all his thoughts shifted to what the Sel prisoner had said.

He closed the door, lighted the candles, and sat down in Ragnar’s usual chair to wait.

He didn’t wait long. He heard a floorboard creak down below, and then the fast, silent jog of soft-soled boots on the stairs. In the time it had taken Leif to get upright and out of bed, Ragnar’s limp had improved so that it showed only occasionally. It would plague him forever, no doubt, but didn’t appear to cause him distress or pain; it was a check on his stride – not unlike the torq he wore – but not a plaguing injury.

The door opened, and he entered on a swirl of anger, bitterness…and the scent of the prisoner, Cassius.

His gaze landed on Leif, and he froze, hand tightening on the doorknob. His expression was caught out, for the span of a heartbeat, and then he affected a grin, and his posture loosened, and he closed the door with a tsk. “Off to bed so soon? Either you exploded like Selesee black powder the second she touched you, or you sent her storming off in a huff because you were too eager.”

“Amelia doesn’t strike me as the type to storm off.” If she left a conversation, he had no doubt she’d leave someone feeling as if they hadn’t been able to keep up, and had been dismissed. He nodded to the bed. “Sit.” Not an order – but there was a heaviness to his voice. A hint of command, and not a shred of amusement.

Fair: he was feeling heavy and unamused at the moment.

Ragnar knew that, because though he tried to smile his way out of it, the line of his mouth went tense. “You mean I actually get the bed for once? Or you mean you’ve stolen my chair?” He edged toward the bed, but only partway. “Isn’t that just like a prince: always wanting the best things for himself.”

“Ragnar. Sit.”

He sat. Quickly and without further fuss, face wiped clean of its smile.

“Where have you been?”

Ragnar’s shoulders rounded forward a slight fraction, and his gaze fixed on a spot to the left of Leif’s face, so their gazes didn’t quite meet. “Does my collar come with a leash now, alpha?”

The faintest trace of bitter mockery laced the words, and that put Leif’s hackles up. He said, “It can, if it’s necessary. You were with Cassius – I can smell him on you.”

Ragnar’s gaze shifted over a fraction, so it collided with Leif’s, a visual strike, a flash of blue; Leif expected to hear the chiming of swords. “Jealous?” Ragnar said with something like relish.

The pitiful part was, Leif was jealous. A little. The sensation of having misplaced a favorite pair of gloves and finding someone else wearing them. (No, no, that wasn’t the right sort of metaphor at all, but he refused to think of unfaithful lovers in this instance; refused.) But he couldn’t smell so much as a trace of sex on him, not even restrained lust, nor the hateful urge to fuck someone for debasement. His anger was purely personal, crackling and sharp-edged, and Leif knew that he would tell any lie, now, to share a little of that anger with Leif.

In a calm voice, Leif said, “Why did you go down to the wine cellar to see him?”

Ragnar’s gaze slid away again, and became hooded. He shrugged. “I was bored, and you didn’t want me around.”

Ah. Ragnar was jealous, too.

“I wanted to speak with Amelia privately a moment, is all,” Leif corrected.

Ragnar’s sneer returned, nasty to hide the underlying hurt. Leif could hear the jerk and leap of his heart in his chest; felt the constriction in his lungs as if it were his own. He didn’t understand the source of his anger, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with Amelia, jealousy or not.

“A short meeting,” Ragnar said, with a low, humorless chuckle. “You must have left the lady wanting.”

“There was no wanting involved,” Leif said, firmly, though Ragnar’s sly look said he knew that wasn’t true. A less-than-steady sly look. “If you must know, I wanted to suggest she take up sparring, properly instructed sparring. I wanted to suggest it in private so as not to embarrass her in front of her people. That way, on the road, sparring can look like her idea, rather than a weakness I’ve noticed.” He lifted his brows. “Satisfied?”

Ragnar snorted. “Hardly.” Some of the tension across his shoulders eased, however. But not all of it. And his torso was still a stack of hard knots, his smirk flickering and faltering as his gaze flitted toward the dark window.

Leif stretched his legs out before him, and massaged at a sore place in his right quadricep. “Ragnar,” he said, conversationally, and saw the pluck of awareness at the back of Ragnar’s neck, the stiffening of his spine. “Was he lying? Or were you tasked with killing me? You, personally,” he clarified, not wanting to offer a chance for any dodging or half-confessing.

Ragnar held still a moment, while Leif stared at his back, and then bent his head, shoulders bunching as his arm lifted; his voice came out muffled, as if he was chewing at a hangnail. “I think you already know the answer to that.” Clearer; the slackening of his arm, as his hand dropped back to his lap. “You just want me to say it.”

“Yes,” Leif said, not ordering, but asking. “Did your Sel managers tell you to kill me?”

“Yes.” Voice breathless, and quiet, as though saying it aloud bore a cost.

Leif waited for an anger that didn’t come. He was more curious than anything…and the strain in Ragnar’s voice – his beta’s voice – was plucking at his alpha side in a way that made it difficult to stay seated. “How were you supposed to do it?” When Ragnar didn’t answer straight off, he said, “The Sels are arrogant and think us stupid. They gave you specific instructions.”

Rueful note in Ragnar’s voice, “You know them that well, do you?” Quiet again, voice heavy and resigned: “Yeah. I had instructions. I was supposed to kill all three of you: you, Rune, Erik. At the Yule Feast. After. When the house bedded down for the night, I was supposed to tiptoe through the palace, and kill you all in your beds.”

Leif snorted. “With guards in the halls? And torches? Erik with Oliver in bed beside him?”

“I told them that would never work,” Ragnar said with contempt. “I said, ‘The boys, maybe, sure. But I could never sneak up on Erik, and even if I did, and I got past his guards, and I cut his throat, his little Southerner would wake and scream bloody murder before I could cut his throat, too. There was no way I could get away with all three of you and live to enjoy the fruits of my labor.”

“And that was the whole point for you, wasn’t it? To be crowned King of Aeretoll? You’d need your head attached to your body for that.”

Ragnar moved in a sudden burst of violence, upper body twisting around, hand slapping the foot of the bed, expression twisted up with a snarl that was more pain than fury. “Do you not understand?” he asked with a growl. “They want to wipe your country from the map. They want to enslave the girls pretty enough to rape, and kill the rest. The bargain I made would have killed a king, but saved a people.”

Leif met his sparking gaze with a level one of his own. It was easy, in these moments, to let him rave, and to draw upon a reserve of alpha calm; to lead, and let Ragnar thrash through his role as follower until he’d tired himself out. “I didn’t think you cared about Erik’s people.”

Ragnar bared his teeth with a snap. “They might have been mine. If Erik had died of a fever, or in battle; if he’d fallen beside Frode, they would have been my people.”

Leif shook his head, slowly. “Mother still would have had children. I would always have had the greater claim to the throne.”

“You…” Ragnar snapped his teeth together. Click. He took a huge breath, and faced the window again, shoulders trembling as he exhaled. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, voice leashed again. “I was never going to be king. I wasn’t meant for it, and wouldn’t have been good at it anyway.”

Leif listened to his ragged breathing a moment, the wolf in him wanting to cross the room and bridge the gap between them; wanting to offer proximity and touch as means of comfort.

He said, “I don’t believe you.”

Ragnar stilled.

“Say what you like, but I don’t believe that being king is your great dream. That you were willing to kill us for that.”

He held still another moment, then his head turned a fraction, so Leif could see the suggestion of his profile; the edge of cheekbone and jaw, the bristle of his short beard, a rich golden brown in the candlelight. “I didn’t kill you, though, obviously.”

“You weren’t successful at it, no. But you were ready to allow us to be killed. By others.” A twitch at the side of his face. “Ormr handling Rune was your idea, wasn’t it?”

“Ormr was a fool I could stand to lose.”

“He wasn’t a wolf?”

“No.”

“And Rune was drunk and being an idiot,” Leif guessed.

“Erik would think it was an accident. And if he thought Ormr did it intentionally–”

“Which he did.”

“Then I could say he was a bastard and let him face the chopping block.”

“A fine line of thinking, for a responsible clan chief,” Leif said, dryly, and Ragnar flinched.

“You try it some time,” Ragnar spat. “You try leading that rabble across the Wastes and holding onto a single shred of control.” He turned far enough for Leif to see one flashing, furious blue eye.

He held up a hand, asking for peace. “All right. Ormr failed with Rune. So you rode with us to the Festival.”

Ragnar heaved another deep exhale, and turned his head, so Leif could see nothing save the tangled spill of his hair over his shoulders. “The bloody drake was supposed to finish you off, plus a few lords for good measure.”

Every time he looked at Percy, or Alpha, or any of them, he was transported back to that night outside Redcliff, across a plain of moon-silvered snow, fighting Úlfheðnar dressed as Beserkirs, men screaming and dying…and then the roar, the shriek, the hurricane of wind snapping off white leather wings, as Percy touched down in their midst.

And Oliver came riding out from the fortress, yelling for them all to wait. The night Oliver had thrown himself between a wild, fantastical beast and Erik, and broken the shamans’ hold over Percy, and spared them all a violent, gory demise.

“But that didn’t work,” Leif said. “Thanks to Oliver.”

“God. That bugger,” Ragnar scoffed. “Who’d have dreamed he could communicate with the beast? That he could ride the bloody thing?”

“He’s a Drake.”

“But that’s just legend!”

“So are skinwalkers, but here we both are.”

Ragnar subsided…but didn’t speak further.

Leif prompted him. “When we made it to Dreki Hörgr in one piece, you decided to get us up into the mountains.”

Ragnar gave a long-suffering sigh. “Little Lord Death was with you, and I thought, ‘Why not take the chance to get rid of him as well?’ More the fool me. If not for him, the Fangs would have surely finished you off.”

“Percy helped.”

Ragnar turned, a whole twist of his upper body this time, frowning.

“Oliver’s drake,” Leif explained.

The frown deepened, accompanied by a curl of his upper lip. “He named it Percy?”

“We’ve all judged him harshly for it, rest assured.”

Ragnar shook his head, wondering. Southerners, his expression said. Then he sobered. “In any event, none of you fuckers would die, so.” He shrugged. “Here we are.”

Here they were, alpha and beta. Master and thrall. Warrior and war prize.

Leif had gotten some answers…but been left with one pressing question. He said, “If it had come down to it, if you’d had the chance, would you have ever done it yourself? Would you have killed any of us with your own two hands?”

Ragnar, fingers dancing along the carved wood of the footboard, stared down at the coverlet. After a long beat, he said, “Maybe with Rune. I never cared for him.”

Leif wanted to shudder at that – at the admission that his own brother, his closest flesh-and-blood, held no meaning for the man he’d fucked – but suppressed it. “But not Erik,” he said. “And not me.”

A slow blink was Ragnar’s only response, but Leif read plenty in it.

He said, “What would your masters have said if they knew you’d turned me, rather than killing me?”

“They do know.”

“What if they knew,” Leif insisted, “and recaptured you? What if they held you, instead of me?”

“They’d kill me,” he said, without hesitation. “But slowly.” A flickering dart of a glance, vulnerable and hurting beneath the screen of his lashes. “I would have at least done it quick. For Rune.”

Leif took a slow breath, and let it out. “Yeah.”

Ragnar turned away again, and moved to sit on the edge of the bed, facing the window, shoulders bowed, head bent.

Unable to deny the wanting of his wolf anymore, Leif steeled himself against the pain of it, and rose, slowly. He saw Ragnar stiffen, as he heard him get up, but he stayed where he was, which was what Leif wanted. The floorboards creaked beneath his weight, and then the bedframe, as he slowly, painfully, teeth clenched, climbed up onto the mattress on his knees, and shuffled forward, until he knelt behind Ragnar on top of the coverlet.

Ragnar tensed further, just before Leif’s hands landed on his shoulders, and beneath the thin leather of his tunic, and the thick satin of his skin, the muscles there were dense and rigid as those of an ox straining against a yoke.

Leif hummed low in his throat, and dug his thumbs in; massaged the flesh beneath his fingers until, with a deep exhale, and further bowing of his head, Ragnar relaxed into the touch all at once, and then arched into it like a cat asking to be petted. Leif brushed his hair off his neck and massaged the remaining tension he found there; lingered over the pulse in his throat for the pleasure of feeling it thud against the pads of his fingers. He followed the knobs of spine down past the neckline of his tunic, down between his shoulder blades, and then dug in with his knuckles, sweeping outward presses, painting invisible wings out from his backbone.

Ragnar whined, softly, and Leif’s thoughts shifted: toward the unraveling of laces, and the scrape of skin under his nails, and hot breath panted in his mouth. All in good time. He was too sore and tired to hurry.

He petted over him – his wolf, his packmate, his beta, his mate mate – until Ragnar finally tipped his head back against his chest, and gazed up at him, soft and hungry, his pupils drinking up the candlelight. “Alpha,” he murmured, and gripped one of Leif’s hands, and pulled it down to his chest, inside the open V of his tunic so it rested over his slow-thumping heart as it picked up speed.

Leif bent his head, so their lips met, upside down, but not awkward. Easy, so easy, and warm, and slick, and as simple as breathing. He murmured against his mouth: “Would you kill me now?”

Ragnar’s answer was immediate, and spoken with hushed reverence. “No. But I’d kill anyone who tried.”

25

High above the forest, on the warm updrafts, the females coasted with wings spread, heads dipping through the low, tattered-linen clouds to snatch at birds. Amelia glimpsed the jagged black feathers of a vulture, before Valencia’s jaws snapped closed over its body, and her sense of urgency heightened as a tightening of the knot in her stomach.

They couldn’t wait any longer. This, now, was the last chance for the Great Northern Phalanx to join them.

Last night, knowing she’d be too jittery to sleep for some time, she’d swung through the kitchens for a cup of water, then returned to the library, once Leif was gone, and settled down with a fresh candle, a map of the west half of the country, and every book she could find on the Bridelands and surrounding duchies. She’d pored over merchant accountings, and boring family histories, searching for the sorts of finer details not found in a general’s memoirs – especially not since the nation had been ruled by a peaceable line of kings for three-hundred-years. She wanted to know about secret tunnels that let out into hillsides; which farming families had hidden stores in underground vaults. They needed spider holes, and backdoor means of access to manors and chateaux. They could never beat the Sels with sheer numbers, but through ingenuity, memory, and attention to detail, they might stand a chance.

She jotted notes on a scrap bit of parchment, and when her eyes became gritty, and her vision blurred, she made tea, and then spent some time paging through the scant selection of books on magic. Oh, what she would have given for access to the hidden vaults in the king’s palace, where a young Connor had first learned of Drakewll’s dragon history. All she had at her disposal now was a collection of children’s stories, and two other slim books that called the magic “legend” and “myth.”

“It’s reality,” she’d muttered, and finally decided that she was too tired to be productive any longer.

The stairs had creaked beneath her feet on the way up, too-loud in the oppressive silence of the house.

But then she’d reached the top of the stairs, and though she’d stood still, the wood-on-wood creaking had continued. A familiar sound, but one that, in her state of fatigue, had taken her a moment to place. Then she’d recognized it as the rhythmic creak of a bed frame – a bed with two occupants, fucking.

Heat had flooded her face. The nearest room, the source of the sound, was the one Leif had been using since his arrival. There could be only one person in there with him, and the fact was confirmed when she heard a low, male murmuring of “alpha,” and a shudder through the whole of the floor, and a grunt of male effort, followed by a soft, barely audible lupine whine.

For a moment, she’d entertained the idea of creeping up to the door, and cracking it a fraction, and seeing what she could glimpse. But shame followed quick on the heels of that thought, and she’d hurried up the next flight of stairs to her own room…where she wound up lying for a long time in the dark, listening to the sounds of the two men below…enjoying one another.

There had been a desperate edge to it: the way, occasionally, Ragnar’s whines would rise to a high pitch, and then Leif’s voice, the words indecipherable through the floor, would murmur something, low and soothing, and then, after a pause, the creaking of the bed would resume.

Sleep had come slowly, and reticently. She stifled a yawn, now, and then, frustrated with herself, used the reins to angle Alpha’s head up toward the sun, urging him higher. He climbed with a few hard flaps of his wings, tore through an ephemeral smear of cloud, and emerged above to give her a breathtaking view of the forest, spread out like a dark patchwork quilt, from horizon to horizon.

The road twisted like a narrow coil of golden thread, its curves glimpsed only at intervals, concealed by trees for long stretches. It wove its way past the boles of great, ancient trees; crossed streams at crumbling stone bridges, and wound its way north, toward the vast river that separated kingdoms. An army the size of King Erik’s would have kicked up a cloud of dust visible above the canopy, even in the places where she couldn’t lay eyes on the road itself. But the forest was still; all that lifted from the tree tops were birds: singular hawks, out hunting, and, spiraling like smoke, a murmuration of starlings, doubtless startled from their roosts.

Amelia shaded her eyes with a gloved hand, and held Alpha hovering a moment longer, waiting, staring, willing. Hoping to see three specks on the wind, the arch of distinctive dragon wings taking shape in the distance. But no. The only drakes for miles were her own, the girls swooping and skimming and chittering impatiently, sensing her – and by default Alpha’s – disquiet.

Finally, she turned Alpha’s head, and pointed him for the manor. Leaned forward as he plunged through the air, eager to be moving again.

It was time to march. She would have to catch up with her family somewhere down the road, in a future about which none of them could be certain.

26

“You’re not scrubbing hard enough.”

Tessa adjusted his position where she knelt at the edge of the streambed, the smooth, hard stones pressing uncomfortably into her kneecaps, and redoubled her efforts with the stiff, horsehair brush she was using to remove a green horse manure stain from the hem of her favorite riding skirt. Strangely, Oliver had insisted on riding a horse today, at Erik’s side, and letting Percy fly free. It had seemed a good idea to allow the other two drakes a respite as well, and so Tessa had taken to her mare, and, in the last leg of the day’s trip, as the sun began to set, had dismounted so she could walk and stretch her legs, Estrid leading her own mount alongside her, so they could talk, and kick at pebbles, and enjoy the chance to work muscles that hadn’t seen nearly enough walking as of late. A march was a messy business in all aspects, she’d learned, and she apparently hadn’t been careful enough dodging horse piles as the dark set its teeth into the sky.

“Try a bit of sand,” Estrid said, and demonstrated by the light of the lantern they’d brought to set between them, dipping the wet bristles of her own brush in the sand at the edge of the stream and then applying it to a stain on one of her shirts.

“All right.” Tessa did as told, and watched as the stain finally began to loosen its hold. “Ah. That works.”

“A soak would be better.” Estrid dunked her shirt and then whipped it out of the water with a snap that sent droplets flying; a smattering landed along Tessa’s arm, and the side of her face; she wiped them away with the back of her wrist. “But we don’t have time. We’ll be lucky if these are dry by morning.”

“We’ll hang them by the fire.”

“Obviously.”

Not for the first time, Tessa felt a swell of gratitude that Estrid had agreed to accompany her on this journey. Well – she’d more or less announced she was going, and left no room for refusal, but that was the way she did everything. Bossy and too-confident by half, but honest; Tessa had found that, after hours spent learning of magic, and all its sinuous, uncertain parameters, Estrid’s straightforward orders were not merely easy to follow, but welcome. She knew where she stood with Estrid – simply Tessa, and not princess, and she didn’t have to worry about how she came across, if she was tired, or cranky, or didn’t feel much like company. Estrid was comfortable with silence or conversation, and read her easily; could pry at Tessa when she was being stubbornly quiet, or say something bawdy and hilarious when Tessa was at her most out-of-her-depth and homesick.

She’d never before had to wash her own clothes, or cook her own food, or soap her own saddle, and so she felt intensely self-conscious about asking for direction: wholly useless and irrelevant as a ribbon in a warhorse’s mane amidst this company of useful and necessary men and women, functional and unfussy and vital in a way that she, a gently-reared lady, had never been. But Estrid had stepped in without being asked, and instructed, and demonstrated, and though Tessa still had much to learn, and felt like her hands were all thumbs, at times, she was more competent than she had been.

“Let’s see.” Estrid leaned over to peer at her skirt. “Another rinse, and that’s as good as you’ll get for now.”

Tessa nodded, and dunked it under the chuckling surface of the stream. The daytime temperatures might be warming as spring took hold, but the water was cold, and her arms were prickly with gooseflesh.

“Now, snap it,” Estrid said.

Tessa stood, and did so – and doused herself with water.

“Haha!” Estrid didn’t try to stem her laughter – but offered a bit of toweling while Tessa was gasping and blinking frigid droplets from her lashes. “Bet you won’t do it like that again.”

Tessa scrubbed her face, and shook her head. “Decidedly not.”

Still laughing, Estrid took the towel, slung it over her shoulder, and led the way up the bank. Tessa gathered her wet things, nodded to their escort – two helmed and mailed guardsmen with spears on their shoulders – and followed, leaving one of the two of them to bring the lantern, what with both their hands full.

The lights of camp – cookfires, lanterns, and torches set on stakes along the perimeter – guided them through a crush of low ferns and crawling blackberry vines to the clearing in which Erik had halted them for the night. It was just off the road, still within sight of it, and judging by the old rings of stones on the ground, and the felled logs set up on hewn blocks for benches, been used as a camp for generations. A large clearing, but a larger army, and so their tents were set up closely, in long lines with barely enough room to walk between them.

Estrid was staying with the other unmarried young ladies who’d come with sword and shield: second or third daughters, or those without marriage prospects, wanting to test their mettle in battle before settling down to the business of mothering and household running. She walked now, though, with Tessa toward the end of the first lane of tents, where the king and his prince had tents beside one another, stakes driven in behind them as a makeshift fence between the royal family and the wild of the forest. They’d set up lines beside the fire before they went to the stream, and went to hang the clothes up straight away.

Rune was seated before the fire, where a brace of hairs smoked on a spit, sipping from a pewter cup with Magnus on one side of him and Lars on the other.

When he spotted her, Rune lowered his cup, and smiled – he smiled at her in a way that lit his entire face from the inside out, turned his eyes to the warm brown of strong tea, and which left her stomach fluttering with happy butterflies; she didn’t know if it was the sort of feeling that would fade with time, but she hoped it wasn’t.

By contrast, Magnus choked on his wine, spilled some down his tunic, and leaped to his feet, thrusting his cup toward Rune, who took it with a chuckle that went unregistered. “Your grace!” he exclaimed, eyes comically wide – it clearly wasn’t his first cup of wine – and moved toward her, hands outstretched. “You – you did laundry?!” He said it with the absolute horror of the sort that would have left her laughing, if his assumption that she was incapable of such a thing hadn’t been so hard to bear.

“Yes, I did.” She clutched the wet clothes tight to her chest so he couldn’t take them.

“Your grace.” He reached for them anyway. “Let me–”

“No, Magnus,” she said, firmly, and attempted to lift a single, challenging brow the way that Revna would have in this situation. “I promise I have it well in-hand.” She was pretty sure her brows didn’t move independently, however, and that Magnus wouldn’t have looked nearly so dejected had Revna been the one to refuse him.

He looked crestfallen.

Chuckling, Rune said, “Mag, leave it. You’re going to pull something trying to act like a Southern gentleman.”

“And you’re not a very good actor to begin with,” Lars put in, unsmiling, and sent Rune off a fresh burst of laughter.

Cheeks flushed dark, Magnus ducked his head, swore under his breath, and returned to his perch on the log, shoving at Rune for good measure, who was now laughing so hard he had to wipe his eyes.

Estrid, already pinning up clothes on the line, said, “I noticed you didn’t offer to help me with my laundry.” Lips pursed in a wry smile as she regarded the men.

“Begging your pardon, my lady,” Magnus said, cheeks still dark with embarrassment, “but I knew that I might lose a hand if I offered to help you.”

That got a snort out of Lars, and Rune howled.

“Whereas Her Grace is – well, she’s – I mean, Southern ladies–”

“Don’t do their own laundry, aye,” Estrid said. “Nor carry things. Nor wipe their own bums, I’d imagine.”

Rune choked and Lars slapped him helpfully on the back.

“But Tessa,” Estrid continued, as Tessa, her own cheeks now warm, joined her and began – less deftly – to pin up her sopping clothes, “isn’t a Southern lady. Not anymore. She’s a Northern princess, and she’s far from helpless.” She sent Tessa a brief, bolstering look, and though it eased some of her initial worry that the people of the North still thought her a delicate flower, it didn’t make her any more capable.

She still had a long way to go to prove herself.

Estrid leaned in close, while Rune was attempting to wrestle his laughter back into submission, and whispered, “Men are fools. Never forget that.”

Tessa snorted. “Even Leif?”

She’d meant it in a teasing way, but Estrid’s face shuttered, lips compressing, jaw tensing. “Especially him,” she muttered. “Running off with that traitorous murder. He’s the biggest fool of all.” She pinned the last of her skirts in place, and stepped back, hands propped on her hips, giving a short nod of satisfaction. Tessa could read the anger in her, though. Anger at Leif? At Ragnar for turning him? Or at herself, for caring about it at all?

Tessa spared a glance toward the men, who’d regained their composure, mostly – Lars had never lost his, and Rune was sipping from his cup, cheeks pink and eyes watery, but laughter subsided for now. Magnus had pulled a flask from beneath his cloak and was filling his cup with a viscous clear liquid: the strong spirit called mistress, no doubt; he wouldn’t be doing much guarding tonight if he had all that he’d poured.

She stepped in closer, and kept her voice low. “Estrid. Do you…”

Estrid’s gaze snapped over, flashing a clear warning. Leave it, that look said.

But Tessa was a Northern princess now, and growing into the role all the time. Northern princesses didn’t leave things.

Tessa lowered her voice another fraction. “I know you at one point hoped that he would court you–”

“Oh, please.” Her expression spoke of disgust, but her cheeks were stained as pink as Magnus’s.

“And he might still–”

“Tessa,” Estrid said, firmly, and turned to her. Her brows were notched together, mouth an angry slash, cheeks hectic red. The face of a woman trying to battle her finer feelings into submission, one made almost comically sinister by the addition of her bejeweled eyepatch. She looked every inch the swaggering lady pirate of a children’s story, and it was an effort to keep from smiling. “I did fancy Leif, when I was younger.”

Tessa didn’t point out that “when I was younger” was a mere few months prior, when Estrid had given Tessa snide looks across the great hall.

“But whoever or whatever he is now…” She shook her head, and for a moment, Tessa caught the glimmer of fear in her gaze, though perhaps it was only a trick of the firelight. “No.” She sounded sure. “I don’t want him any longer. That moment has passed.”

Tessa nodded, relieved. A part of her had feared that Estrid’s reason for coming on the march was to try and meet up with Leif, and, now that Tessa was married to Rune, try to turn his head once more. Tessa had feared for her friend’s heart: whatever his motives now, Tessa doubted romance was anywhere on Leif’s mind right now.

Estrid wiped her damp hands on her cloak and then rubbed them together with an air of brisk efficiency. “Now, then. Didn’t His Royal Deadness want to see you for another lesson?”

It was Tessa’s turn to make a face. “Ugh. Yes.”

Estrid turned from their tent – Tessa waved and called to Rune in explanation before following – and said, “I thought you liked all that magical nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense. But it gives me a terrible headache, going walking on the other side.”

“It sounds unnatural to me. Especially with Náli as teacher. What does he know about anything besides corpses? Going off with him into dreamland sounds like a good way to wind up a corpse yourself.”

They’d had this argument before, and so Tessa didn’t argue back this time. Only hummed, and picked up her skirts as they stepped around bits of twig and new, stinking puddles where a horse or two had parked out to relieve themselves before getting tied up on the picket lines.

“What will you do,” Estrid continued, “if you run into one of those black hole things your sister told you about? The kind that Sels come pouring out of?”

Tessa frowned as they paused and allowed a trio of men with a deer slung on a spit to pass in front of them. They ducked their heads and murmured her title in deference, once they saw who she was. “I’ve thought of that,” she said, as they began walking again. “And the truth is, I don’t know what I’ll do. Try and close it, I suppose. Blood does the trick, and Rune’s given me a knife I keep on me at all times.”

Estrid snorted.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just you with a knife. Ready to spill your blood.”

Tessa had learned not to take that sort of comment as an insult, because it wasn’t meant as one. She’d even learned to enjoy surprising Estrid, and Northerners like her: there was a certain satisfaction in disproving people’s assumptions about you.

Náli’s tents were set a little apart from the others, the plain gray and white of his house colors, his skull banner affixed to the central of three, set in a horseshoe-shape around a fire. All of his Dead Guards wore the same tunic, and boots, and sword belt, and cloak, wore their hair in the same style, with shaved sides and a single, tight plait down the center of the skull that hung down to mid-back behind. She’d learned their faces and names, though, and knew that it was Klemens who sat in front of the lord’s tent, and Einrih who was breaking sticks into smaller pieces and feeding them into the fire.

Klemens glanced up from the knife he was sharpening, hands stilling, and said, “Ah. You’re early, your grace.”

Her smile froze on her lips, and she pulled up opposite the fire. “Is that a problem?”

A muffled, indistinguishable sound, and a rustling of the tent flap behind Klemens’s back left him exchanging mildly amused looks with Einrih, who shook his head.

“No,” Klemens said, and went back to his knife. Over his shoulder, he called, too loudly, “Princess Tessa here to see you, my lord.”

“Shit!” That was Mattias’s voice.

Followed by a loud, put-upon sigh from Náli. “Fine. One moment,” the Corpse Lord called.

Estrid’s nose wrinkled. “Really? We’ve been in camp an hour? It’s only just now gone dark!”

Klemens shrugged.

A beat later, Tessa realized what they were implying, and her face heated.

Estrid chuckled, and elbowed her. “Married and still blushing?”

“Shut up.”

Both men grinned.

“You can shut up, too,” she said, effect ruined by the wobble in her voice.

Estrid laughed.

The tent flap lifted aside, and Mattias ducked out. His normally-tidy braid was fraying, little wisps poking up at odd angles atop his head. His face was flushed, and his tunic half-laced. Because Estrid was right, and Tessa was married, she knew well the reason a man might be pink-cheeked and hastily-dressed. It was a look she found charming and alluring on Rune – embarrassing on someone else.

“Your grace,” Mattias greeted, a trifle breathless. “My lady.” He held the flap aside and gestured. “Won’t you come in?”

Tessa wanted to hesitate – it felt wrong to enter a place where two people had just been…doing what two people did together, alone in a tent – but in the spirit of becoming more Northern, she nodded and ducked inside.

Inside, a small coal brazier had created a curtain of heat that enveloped her – and which heightened the scents of fresh sweat and sex. She fought not to make a face, and instead focused her attention on Náli – which didn’t really dispel her acute knowledge of what had occurred in here moments before.

He sat cross-legged – bare-legged – on a rumpled heap of furs, wearing a loose gray shirt with a white wolf fur draped across his shoulders. His hair was loose, pale face flushed, though his expression completely composed, as though he wasn’t barefooted and gleaming with sweat.

“Ah,” he said, and sipped from a steaming pewter mug. The scent of lavender wafted from it, once she was seated beside him, and its rich, floral smell covered some of the sex musk. “You’re early.”

“Were you?” Estrid asked, and sat down across from Tessa, mirroring Náli’s cross-legged pose. “Or did you even get to finish at all?”

The color in his cheeks heightened, and a faint wobble of his mug on the next sip betrayed a reaction, but he held himself firmly in check when he leveled a low-lidded look at her and said, “I suppose you would like to know. Vicarious experiences instead of actual ones and all that.”

Estrid’s brows slammed together.

“All right,” Tessa said, quickly, before they could devolve into a full-on argument. They took shots at one another that should have drawn blood, and while some onlookers seemed to enjoy that sort of thing, Tessa didn’t. “If you’re ready, Náli, I am as well. What is tonight’s goal?”

“I thought we’d go and see your sister, and see what her status is.” His gaze flicked to the door. “Oliver isn’t coming?”

“I couldn’t find him. He went to the officer tent before we went down to the stream, and wasn’t back yet.”

“Hm.” Náli took a noisy slurp of tea and looked unconvinced. “How did he seem today? Was he present? Or was he sitting like a wooden tilting dummy on his horse? Off wandering?” He made a gesture over his head, and mimicked the slack-jawed expression Oliver had been wearing of late each time they flew.

Tessa frowned. “I was riding several rows back today. I’m not sure.”

Náli shook his head. “He’s up to something.”

She felt her frown deepen. “What do you mean? You make him sound like…like some sort of villain or something.”

“No, like some sort of idiot, which he is if he’s messing with magic he doesn’t understand off by himself somewhere.” He set his cup aside, and folded his hands together, beneath the diamond hung round his neck. “But we’ll worry about him later. For now, close your eyes, and free your mind of trivialities.”

She still wanted to laugh when he said things like that, but it was getting easier to do: to shut her eyes and shunt her thoughts to the side. She liked to imagine drawing a curtain over everything important and pressing; saying, hold on, I’ll be with you shortly, and then stepping into the wide, black void that, within a few moments, would offer her a light, and in that light, a doorway to another plane. Visualization was key, he’d said, and looked different for everyone. Náli himself talked of falling and then rising, of the sun in the sky. It had never been that way for Tessa; it felt more controlled…but that didn’t mean any less difficult.

Náli was still speaking, but the words no longer mattered. His voice had become a soothing murmur, calm and quiet without his usual show of haughty impatience. It washed over her like a warm balm, and, thus lulled, found the pinprick of light easily in the distance, and walked toward it.

It seemed to take hours, but she knew it didn’t; she walked, and the light swelled, and there was that uncomfortable moment of feeling squeezed until she thought she might be sick, and then she stood in the gray field, tall grass swaying around her waist, Náli standing beside her. Thankfully, he was fully dressed here, in his usual grays and browns, boots tightly laced and cloak tugging in the breeze. They hadn’t brought their drakes.

“I wish I could do that,” Tessa said with a sigh.

“Do what?”

“Come through on my own without Alfie’s help – not that I don’t enjoy bringing her,” she amended, quickly. “But I wish I was strong enough that I was able to do it alone.”

“You did it alone this time, didn’t you?”

“Only because you came as well.”

He shrugged, and his gaze skimmed away over the plain, avoiding hers. “I’ve only been able to do it without the well for a short time. You’ll learn.”

It was the closest he’d ever come to complimenting her.

“Now. Shall we call your sister?”

She nodded, and took a deep breath. This part was difficult as well. She found that she wanted to close her eyes, but didn’t, knowing there was no need.

He chuckled beside her. “You can shut your eyes.”

“I can do it,” she snapped, with more bite than she’d intended, and he breathed another quiet laugh.

“Yes, I suspect you can. The trick is for you to suspect it as well.”

“Náli.”

“Hm.”

“I don’t like it when you try to play older and wiser.”

“But I am wiser.”

She sighed, closed her eyes – ignored his snort – and shouted out a mental call to Amelia.

The grass rustled, and when she opened her eyes, Amelia stood across from them – dressed for battle.

“Oh,” Tessa said, startled. Amelia had told them her party would be marching soon, but was surprised all the same by the dyed red horsehair tail on Amelia’s helmet as she unbuckled it and tucked it under one arm. Her hair beneath was plaited tightly to her scalp to keep it out of the way. “You’ve left already.”

“Not quite.” Amelia’s smile was small and regretful. “At dawn. I’m…” She gestured to her armor. “Rushing around, trying to make sure we haven’t forgotten anything.”

“We’ll go, then. I don’t want to hold you up.”

Amelia shook her head. “I can take five minutes. I’m sitting on a rain barrel, currently.” She glanced down at herself. “Gods, but armor is heavy.”

“Lia, you should get some sleep. Surely someone else can do the checking. Or you can do it later,” Tessa suggested, but Amelia shook her head.

“I tried to sleep, and I couldn’t. The yard here sounds like a festival: one last night before we move, and I think my army’s trying to drink all the wine, rather than carry it.”

Tessa’s stomach turned at the thought. “Oh no. They’ll feel terrible in the morning.”

Náli – forgotten at her side – snorted. “Try telling them that.” He added, “Hello to you as well, Lady Amelia.”

“Hello, brat,” Amelia said, tone dry, expression touched with fondness. “You know, you remind me of my friend Reggie. The two of you would get on like a house afire.”

Náli’s lip curled. “Reggie?”

“Not Reggie L’Espoir?” Tessa said on a gasp, and Amelia grinned and nodded. “Oh, you’re right! I knew he seemed familiar! You’re just like Reggie,” Tessa said, turning to him, and found his expression had grown more disgusted. “Don’t worry: it’s a good thing.”

“Mostly,” Amelia said.

“He’s blond as well, though a few shades darker, and was once the finest tourney night in the east. He never lost a joust. He felled much larger men, just as you do in sword contests.”

His gaze narrowed, but he seemed somewhat mollified.

“And he’s very pretty as well,” Tessa said.

Amelia countered, “He’s a pretentious shit. Just like you.”

Náli’s gaze shifted between the two of them, and he took a deep, long-suffering breath. “I see how it is. I teach you of magic, I bring you here to this place–”

Amelia chuckled.

“ – and you treat with all the respect due a stray dog. ‘Help us, Náli. Lie quietly and take our abuse, Náli.’”

“You’ve never lied quietly a day in your life,” Amelia accused.

Slowly, deliberately, Náli lifted a pale hand and pressed the back of it to his forehead, head tilting back in dramatic display.

Tessa burst into giggles, the kind that made her chest feel light and fuzzy.

Amelia grinned. “Pretentious shit,” she reiterated, and finally earned a grin from him.

They took a moment to enjoy a bit of levity, as if by unspoken agreement. Laughter, Tessa feared, would be in short supply in the weeks and months to come, so she let hers peter out naturally, as it would.

When they’d settled, Amelia grew serious. “I went out this morning. Yesterday morning, I suppose. One last scouting trip.” Her expression was apologetic. “I looked for your army, but I couldn’t find it on the horizon. We can’t wait anymore, Tessie.”

“I know,” Tessa said, and she did. “The Inglewood is vast. We might be another week getting to you.”

“Well, that’s the thing.” She reached into an interior pocket and came out with a folded paper that she opened to reveal a map. “If you hadn’t come to me, I would have come to you: I’ve talked with the others, at length, and we’re not so sure you should try to catch us. Edward thinks a pincher maneuver might serve us better, and I agree.” She stepped in close, and Tessa and Náli each took a corner of the map to keep the breeze from refolding it. “See here: the main road runs straight to the Crownlands, the widest, flattest, easiest route, doubtless heavily fortified by the Sels at this point, and used as their main means of travel deeper into the continent. But the old logging road…” She traced the thin line of it, from the northernmost tip of the Inglewood, it cut a diagonal path across Chartres, a rocky and arid duchy, which flooded from the snowmelt in spring, and grew only the hardiest of vegetation. It boasted one chateau, and was considered a territory, rather than a proper duchy, its baron old and sickly, most of its residents sure-footed mountain goats.

“No one uses that road anymore,” Tessa said, catching on, pulse quickening.

“Exactly. The gate’s most likely overgrown. The Northern army could sweep straight under the mountain, through the old tunnel, and pop out behind the palace, well behind the Selesee defenses.”

“And then do what?” Náli asked. “Be surrounded on all sides by the enemy? The Great Northern Phalanx needs room to maneuver.”

“Do you think our enemy doesn’t know that?” Amelia countered. “They’ve studied us: there’s a bloody dossier.”

And then she told them the disturbing tale of Cassius the Sel captain taken captive, and all that he knew about them. He’d recognized Amelia and Leif and Ragnar on sight.

Náli gave an airless, humorless chuckle. “We’re all going to die,” he said, brightly.

“No. No, we are not.” Amelia’s face had become fearsome: the dauntless older sister who could instantly soothe all her worries and give her the courage to get up, and dust herself off. That had usually applied to falling off a pony, when they were younger; it worked here, too, though, as they marched to war. “We have magic, and we have manpower. We have to use them to our best advantage is all.”

“Oh, is that all?” Náli mocked.

Amelia’s gaze was blistering when it locked with his. “Yes.” She quieted, and looked down at the map. “I’d love to speak with the king myself – have a proper war council about this. But you two will have to go to him for me and report back.”

Tessa nodded, and gave the map one last glance, trying to memorize its lines and curves.

“Speaking of the king,” Amelia said, frowning. “Where’s Oliver? He’s the one who’ll be most convincing for Erik.”

Tessa frowned, too, and a glance at Náli proved he did the same.

“Oliver’s here,” Tessa said. “In camp, I mean.”

“But he’s gone walking on his own,” Náli said, scanning the vast, empty plain. All around them was only the waving grass, and the distant shadow of the mountains. “Bloody fool.” He sighed, refocused, and took a moment to study the map as well.

Amelia bid them goodbye – a fast, fierce hug for Tessa, and an encouraging murmur in her ear – and then it was just the two of them, red and pale hair streaming like banners in the wind.

Náli scraped his back with an impatient gesture and said, “Shall we go and find him?”

Tessa nodded. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

~*~

“This game is terribly dull.” Oliver affected a yawn from his position slumped sideways in his chair, leg kicked up over the arm of it. The first time he’d sat this way, he’d done it as a show of insolence, fully expecting to be reprimanded for it; but no reprimand had come, and he’d found sprawling far preferable to sitting upright after a day in the saddle, so it had become a habit to sit every which way but properly.

Across the table, and its board of purple and black tiles, the emperor sat pitched forward, elbows resting on his thighs, gaze fixed on the game as though it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. As if he was gleaning something of Oliver’s strategy by staring at the tiles he’d already moved.

The joke was on him, because Oliver had no strategy.

“It is a game of patience,” Romanus said. “Of which you seem to be in short supply.” Face smooth as still water, he stared, and, slowly, without aid of his finger, one of his purple tiles lifted and hovered over three spaces on the checkered board. It touched down with the faintest click. Only then did the emperor’s gaze lift to meet his, unreadable. “You were sickly as a boy, were you not? You must have played many such games, to ease the passage of time.”

There was no inflection in his voice, nor expression on his face, but Oliver still sensed a kind of censure. Not of him, necessarily. Oliver had the strange sense he was angry at someone else.

“I played chess,” Oliver said. “Which was more complex and interesting than this.”

A single white brow lifted a fraction. “And did you play chess without aid of your hands?” When Oliver didn’t answer, he nodded to the board. “Your move.”

Oliver sighed – and hoped it covered the strain of seizing a black tile with nothing but his mind.

When Romanus suggested it – well, told him that he would and could – during their last meeting, Oliver had laughed. But when Romanus had stared at him…and stared at him…and then demonstrated, Oliver’s belly had filled with a cold, childlike fear. Not of the emperor, but of himself. Of the things he might be capable of. If he could move an object with his mind, what else might he do? What power lay untapped in his veins? And, even more frightening: what if it sat dormant forever, and him unable to tap into it in a time of need?

He'd managed to move the tiles that day, but only a few millimeters. In the waking world, he could move nothing. Erik had caught him just today trying to move a low-hanging branch from their path with a flick of his fingers and a no-doubt constipated look, and Oliver hadn’t tried it since.

He didn’t want to try it now, but shoved all other thoughts aside and bent his mind to the tile. To its shape, and its weight, and the effort it would require of his fingers to lift.

The headache came on instantly, a sharp pain above his left eye which left the lid twitching. The pain spread outward in jagged darts: across his forehead, over his ears, and around to the back of his skull. Bright spots crowded the edges of his vision, and sweat bloomed across his chest and back.

But the tile moved. Twitched, quivered, and lifted, finally, teetering in the air before it landed with a clatter one square over.

Oliver gasped. The headache had spread down his neck and across his shoulders. He was shaking.

“Better,” Romanus said, and moved his next tile seemingly without effort. “Don’t strain so much.”

“Oh,” Oliver panted. “I never thought of that.”

His sarcasm was either lost on the man, or ignored.

Ignored, Oliver thought, because he sat back and folded his hands over his stomach, gaze going to the fire, no longer interested in the game. “You’re strong.” It wasn’t a compliment, but a statement of fact. “Not as strong as I’d hoped, but stronger than you know, certainly. You lack practice, and a proper upbringing, but you’ve shown improvement since our meetings began.”

Oliver frowned. As his headache faded, and clearness of thought returned, he reflected on the fact that Romanus was saying such things more and more. He spoke of him with a certain…familiarity. A proprietary air, almost. Not as strong as I’d hoped. As if Oliver was someone for whom he harbored hopes and expectations. Someone he’d thought about before their first meeting.

Oliver pulled his leg down, so he sat with his feet flat on the rug, and said, “How long did you study me? Before we met, I mean. How long were you planning these lessons?”

The fair brow crinkled, and Romanus’s pale lilac gaze shifted toward him, edged with something like hurt, which Oliver couldn’t understand. “How long have I studied you?”

Inwardly, Oliver squirmed. He was too bold by half, coming here, learning from the man, speaking plainly. Not giving away secrets, no, but allowing the real him to shine through: arguing, and disagreeing, and pushing just a little too hard, as he was wont to do. It was easy, at moments, to forget that he wasn’t speaking with a ruler like Erik; that terrible power and threat lay behind the occasional indulgent, amused glance, and that there was no love there, no attraction, not even affection to save him, should he place a conversational foot too far wrong.

He swallowed. “Hope implies expectation. Expectation implies familiarity, and we’ve only just met. I have to assume that you’ve observed me from afar.” Spied on him, he meant, but he knew that to be too bold a statement.

Romanus watched him a moment. “No, I have not studied,” he said, finally. “I could not find you, for the longest time. But I have searched.” His gaze bored straight through Oliver, fixed and intense, and he couldn’t understand why. If the man was as immortal as he claimed, and the Drakes had always been dragon riders, why had he searched for Oliver in particular? What could possibly be so special about him that he would draw the gaze of an emperor from across an ocean, and a kingdom, and across the waking plane of existence?

“Why?” he couldn’t help but ask.

Another moment passed, and then Romanus turned back to the fire. “I think that is a conversation for another time. When you’re ready.”

“But I–”

Oliver. Ollie!

A shout in the back of his mind. Tessa’s voice. A pluck of all his nerves, as though someone had chopped the flat of their hand against the back of his neck.

“Your friends are calling you.”

He could hear it as well?

If he could move game tiles with his thoughts, he could doubtless do anything.

Oliver sat up straighter, heart thudding. “Is this place shielded from them? From all others?”

Romanus propped his temple on his knuckles, at his leisure. “Are you worried they’ll find you here? With me?”

“Are you?” Oliver countered.

He flicked the fingers of his free hand dismissively. “A girl and a child necromancer do not trouble me.”

Ollie? Ollllliverrrr.

The headache returned, duller, but more all-encompassing.

“Do they suspect that you are keeping something from them? Hiding something?”

“No. I–”

Ollie, where are you? Are you here?

He winced.

“This is but a small taste,” Romanus said, rising. Seated, it was easy to forget how tall he was; he towered over Oliver, and the pounding of Oliver’s head, in rhythm with the pounding of his heart, left him unable to rise and take a step back from the man. “Of what it will be like later. You cannot exist as two people. No one can. You can be Oliver Drake…or who you really are. Until that choice is made, you cannot know peace.”

The headache grabbed and squeezed around his temples; the pressure built behind his eyes.

OLIVER!

“What…what are you…talking about?”

Romanus reached for him – Oliver braced for a strike – and a cold touch landed on his cheek, light as spring rain. “Choose who you wish to be,” he said, softly, “or the fortunes of war shall choose for you.”

A flash. A spin. Darkness.

And he opened his eyes to find that he lay sprawled across dry gray grass, as though he’d fallen there.

He blinked the white flares from his eyes, imaginary fireflies spinning and clouding the familiar environs of the Between.

Twin shadows fell over him.

“Ollie!” Tessa’s voice, audible now, ringing above him, shrill with worry. “There you are! We couldn’t find you.”

He recognized the silver and diamond ring on the middle finger of the hand that reached down to him: Náli.

Oliver took it, and let Náli’s deceptive, wiry strength haul him to his feet. Náli’s gaze, from which he quickly looked away, was accusatory, and too-knowing.

He looked instead into Tessa’s concerned face.

“Ollie, are you well? You look pale?” She patted his cheek, and then frowned when her hand came away damp with sweat. “Where have you been?”

Oliver marshalled his expression to something wry. “What would you say if I told you’d I’d been to the latrine? Would you still be desperate to find me then?”

Her face colored, and her eyes widened.

He chucked her under the chin, as he had when she was a girl, and then felt foolish for it. Felt foolish in general: awkward and out of sorts after having been snatched from Romanus’s solarium. “I’m teasing.”

“I know,” she murmured, and drew herself upright. Her face did something strange: composed itself in the mask of a woman grown. The mask of a princess, sure of herself. No longer the doubting, fearful girl he’d escorted up the eastern coast of Aquitainia.

How easily he forgot that, sometimes.

“I was practicing on my own,” he said, and stepped away from both of them. Walked a circle in the grass and blinked his vision fully clear; willed away the remnants of his headache. “I appreciate Náli’s guidance, but I can’t always rely on him or on Percy.” He turned back to them, several paces distant, now, and offered a smile.

Tessa’s brow was crimped, though she smiled back.

Náli knew something wasn’t right, and so Oliver let his gaze slide off of him without lingering.

“You’re right,” Tessa said. “I should learn not to rely on others’ strength as well.” She frowned. “Ollie, are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.” His grin felt forced. “I suspect supper should be ready soon. Shall we go back?”

She stared at him a moment longer, then nodded. “Yes. And we must tell Erik what Amelia said, and present him with her idea.”

“Ah. She always does have good ideas.”

“Yes, doesn’t she? Let me tell you of this one…”

And she did, and Oliver committed it to memory. “Tell Amelia, the next time you see her, that’s she’s as brilliant as ever.”

“Or you can tell her yourself.” Tessa smiled, bowed her head, and shimmered out of existence.

Oliver gathered a breath–

“Wait,” Náli snapped, and strode across the grass, expression thunderous, suddenly. “You stay right there, your lordship.”

Oliver could have fled back to the waking world – wanted to, in fact. But this confrontation was going to occur whether he wanted it to or not, and it would be better to get it over with now, away from the eyes and ears of everyone else.

Náli stomped to a halt in front of him, close enough for Oliver to feel his forceful exhale across his face. “You’re not practicing,” he accused.

“I am, I can assure you. Rather diligently, in fact.”

“That’s bollocks.” Fury sparked in his gaze. And fear. His face was all screwed up with it, teeth flashing like that of a frightened dog. “You’re meeting someone. Someone here beyond the veil, in secret.”

Shit. Oliver affected bored and said, “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I bumped up against someone else’s magic while we were searching for you. Someone’s powerful magic. They had shielded you from us. With a bit more pressure, I might have–”

“Don’t.” Fear overrode Oliver’s desire for secrecy. “For gods’ sakes, don’t push at it, whatever you do.”

Náli looked triumphant a moment, and then his face fell. “Who is it? Whose magic shouldn’t I push?”

Oliver chewed at his lip.

Náli’s head tilted. “Aside from my ancestor, the people of his village, and you and your lot, the only one I’ve ever encountered here was–” His eyes bugged.

“Náli–”

“No.”

“If you’ll let me explain–”

“Ollie, no.” He gripped the front of Oliver’s tunic and shook him. “Tell me you aren’t meeting with the Selesee emperor. Tell me it isn’t him.”

Oliver sighed.

“Romanus Tyrsbane, the Immortal Emperor Unchallenged . Romanus Tyrsba–”

“That is his name, yes.”

Náli gripped his shoulders and shook him again, harder this time. “You idiot! You bloody fool! What are you doing? What are you thinking? He’s been searching for you, and you just waltz right into his trap? Willingly?”

“If it was a trap, how am I not still in it? How am I standing here getting spit on by you?”

Náli started to say more, then released him and began to pace a tight back and forth line in front of him, gesturing to the empty air, strangling an invisible opponent until the veins in his throat threw shadows. “Good gods, Oliver. The emperor? Really?” When he darted a glance, Oliver inclined his head in a silent yes. “Good gods,” he repeated, and kept pacing, his turns tight, cloak flaring behind him. “Why? Why would you…? How? How did he find you?”

“I didn’t seek him out, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“What I’m wondering is why you think it’s a good idea to meet with our enemy in private, in a plane you still hopelessly don’t understand. Do you know: if you’re killed in this realm, there’s a good chance you’ll turn up dead in our own?”

“The thought crossed my mind.”

“Did any other thoughts cross your mind?”

Oliver sighed. “I was dreaming. I entered this plane unintentionally in my sleep, and found myself in a solarium – the royal one in Aquitaine, if the drawings in books are at all accurate. I could see a fire in the grate, and when I walked toward it, I found the emperor seated before it. He offered to teach me more about magic, and I let him.”

Náli paused, and gaped at him. “He offered to teach you,” he deadpanned.

“Yes.”

“Magic.”

“Yes.”

“And you…let him.”

“Also yes. Náli, can you please stop panicking and listen to me a moment?”

“That would be easier to do if you weren’t taking tea with the bloody fucking emperor of Seles!” Náli shouted.

Somewhere, the clumsy beating of dove wings echoed across the field.

Oliver said, “Wouldn’t you have done it?” When Náli opened his mouth to protest, he said, “If he hadn’t come at you with a sword, and tried to run you through – if he’d offered you knowledge instead. If he’d wanted to sit down and talk magic over a cup of wine…wouldn’t you have let him teach you as well?”

Náli’s mouth worked soundlessly a moment, then he cursed and glanced away.

“You’re not a coward,” Oliver said. “Don’t ask me to be one.”

Náli let out a shaky sigh. His expression had softened a fraction, though, when he lifted his head. “There’s bravery, and then there’s stupidity.”

“He’s not shown himself to anyone but us. He’s not explained himself. I still don’t understand what this war is about, but I have a chance to learn something of it, talking with him.”

“What it’s about? That doesn’t matter. It’s about the same thing as every other war: conquest. Taking. His personal reasons don’t matter.”

They do to me, Oliver thought, but didn’t say. He wants me for a reason, and I want to know why. He tried a different tack.

“He’s haughty. He thinks he’s so much smarter than all of us, but that’s the sort of hubris that causes slips. If I can get close to him, I can learn his weaknesses.”

Náli’s mouth tugged to the side. “You already are close to him,” he said, sadly. “But you’re not in control of anything. Not with a man like him.”

Oliver took a breath…and released it without arguing further. There was no point. They had reached an impasse, and their conversation was reigniting his headache.

He said, “Don’t tell Erik. Please.”

Disgust tweaked Náli’s fine features. “What you do or don’t tell your lover is none of my business.” He grew serious. “But I will inform my king if at any point I think his consort has been compromised by the enemy.”

“Náli.”

“That’s all I have to say to you.” Náli turned away, and vanished.

“Fuck,” Oliver said to no one, closed his eyes, and opened them to see the inside of the small, private tent that was his and Erik’s alone.

As if conjured by Oliver’s guilt, the flap lifted, and Erik ducked inside. Whatever Oliver’s face did – flared hot with guilt, eyes widening – it caused him to pause a moment, and frown.

“All right?”

Oliver nodded. “I was speaking with Amelia. Tessa, and Náli, and I all were. Her army’s marching west.”

Erik made a grim face, and stepped fully inside, letting the flap close behind him. “I feared as much.” They had a low table that was really just a plank set on two crates, where cured meat, bread, and cheese had been set out, along with a flask of wine and two cups. He made straight for the wine, filled both cups to the brim, and turned to sit cross-legged as Oliver did. It was an endearing pose for a man as physically powerful as him, and Oliver smiled as he accepted the offered cup.

“What?”

“You’re very cute.”

Erik sighed, long-suffering, but his cheeks pinked as he took a sip. “I looked for you at the council table.”

Which was code for: you were supposed to show up.

“Ah. Sorry. Time tends to get away from you when you’re walking between worlds.”

“Hm. What other news did your cousin have to share?”

Oliver peeled back a fold of bedroll to get to the bare earth beneath. His knife – the small, less-fine one he carried for work rather than eating or fighting (gods forbid) – made for a decent stylus, and he set about sketching a crude map that included the Crownlands, Chartres, Inglewood, and the old logging road that Amelia thought they should use to come at the capital from the opposite angle.

“A pincher maneuver,” Erik said, and sounded as though he was impressed despite himself. “I’ve used one myself – but only when I lacked the numbers for a direct frontal assault.”

“Darling, against the Sels, everyone lacks the numbers for a direct frontal assault.”

Erik made a half-agreeing sound, and tapped the jagged border he’d drawn to indicate the mountains ringing the Crownlands. “There’s a pass? Up and over? They’ll have scouts on the peaks, in the old watchtowers – I’m assuming there’s watchtowers? Any monarch worth his salt would have watchers on the mountains, especially at his rear door.”

Oliver smothered a grin – and then winced. “Yes, there’s watchtowers. And signal fires, even. I think you’d approve. But we won’t be going up and over. We’ll be going under.”

Erik arched a brow.

“There’s a river. The logs came down the road in wains, and got dumped into the water to travel downstream. But a tunnel was bored, here, through a series of natural caves, to create an easier way to get the timber to the city, without having to deal with a steep climb. Gold deposits were found there was well, so it’s a bit of a mine, and a bit of a secret entrance.”

Erik’s other brow went up. “And how secure are these mines?”

“No one can ambush you, that’s for sure. The tunnels go straight through, with no murder holes, or sight lines for archers, or–”

“No. How stable are they? Are they well-supported? Or will the ceiling come down on our heads?”

“Ah. That I can’t tell you.”

Erik gave him a look.

“I’m not a builder.”

“Of that I’m well aware.” A reluctant grin tweaked Erik’s mouth. “We’ll need to present it to the council, and come to a joint decision, but the idea has merit.” He sighed. “I wish we could conference with the Southern forces, all of us face-to-face.”

“I know. I’m not sure it’s possible to take anyone who isn’t…magically inclined…to the other plane. I suppose we could try it.”

“No.” Erik shook his head. “I have no great desire to go tampering in magical places.” He didn’t shudder, but scratched at his beard in a way that suggested he’d felt the urge to. Then he sent a quiet, devastating smile Oliver’s way. “I trust you to play messenger on the other side.”

Inwardly, Oliver twisted with guilt. He’d come from their enemy – not one of them, not a random solider, but the enemy. The emperor. The villain to Erik’s hero.

He didn’t deserve this gruff, darling man’s trust, and his stomach was knotted with the knowledge.

His face must have betrayed him, because Erik’s smile slowly slipped, and he said, “What is it?”

The urge to tell him everything, to bow his head and spill his guts, and confess like a child caught stealing sweets boiled up within him, and nearly choked him. He’d never in his life thought he’d get to experience a love like this, to be loved by a man like Erik. To jeopardize by hiding, by sneaking, by lying…

But he did what he did for the good of them all, he reasoned.

He said, “I–”

Blue crowded his vision. A bright crackle of it on the edges, and a moment later, he heard the accompanying shrill cry of alarm from Percy: inside his head, and outside of it, echoing across the camp.

Then the horns sounded.

~*~

The worst part of going walking for Tessa was the way she got a little bit lost on the way back. The day that Amelia’s party was attacked, and she’d been dragged through the veil by her sister’s desperate cries for help, Tessa had come to as she was being dragged down off Alfie’s back, with no memory of landing. She’d hadn’t truly fainted, had still been sitting upright, still gripping the reins – in fact, her fingers had been pried from them, when she refused to let go – but she was keenly aware of how vulnerable she was, lost somewhere between realms.

Tonight, she closed her eyes in the Between, Oliver reassuring and smiling across from her, and when she opened her eyes again, she lay flat on her back, looking up at the ceiling of a tent. Her own tent, rather than Náli’s: she recognized the shape of the smoke vent above. She recognized, too, the dust-sweat-hair-oil mélange of scents that surrounded her, that clung to the clothes of the person supporting her head on his lap.

Rune’s face leaned over hers, carefully-braided hair dangling down to tickle at her face, lover’s and prince’s beads clicking softly together. His smile was soft, his brow furrowed. He spoke quietly, as though afraid her hearing might be too sensitive.

“Are you well?”

“Mmhm.” She reached to finger the beads that hovered over her, their now-familiar carvings warm from resting against his chest. “Are you? You were laughing quite forcefully before.”

He snorted, smile twisting wryly, cheeks pinking with embarrassment. “I expect to make a full recovery.”

She smiled, and then sat up – which set the tent to revolving. She groaned, and let Rune help her. Once she was upright, he leaned aside and returned with a cup of what proved to be strong-brewed tea with lots of sugar.

“Thank you.” Tessa didn’t want to drink it – it felt like a waste of their limited sugar supply – but the first sip across her tongue was impossible to resist, and she drained off half the cup.

Rune hovered at her side, stroking up and down her spine. “Is it always going to be this way? Will you always…” He made a helpless gesture, brow furrowed with concern. The first time, he’d been so alarmed he was shouting when she came to, ignoring Erik and Oliver’s attempts to calm him until her eyes had opened.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly, “but I hope not.” She frowned down into her tea. “I fear it’s because I’m not as strong – magically – as Oliver and Náli. I’ve not asked Amelia, but I don’t think she sits around like a useless doll after she’s come to a conference beyond the veil.”

Rune dropped a kiss on her shoulder, and rested his chin there, afterward. “You’re not useless,” he said, automatically, staunchly supportive, even in the face of her self-criticism.

She smiled, and turned her head, so their cheeks brushed. His stubble tickled her skin.

“Learn anything?” he asked, breath pleasantly warm in her ear, scented with the sweet wine he’d been drinking earlier.

“I’m learning that your head is heavy.”

He snorted, and rested more of its weight on her shoulder.

“And I learned that you carried me back to our tent – unless that was Estrid? Or perhaps Magnus rushing to my aid? I couldn’t refuse it while I was unconscious.”

“No,” he scoffed, “it was me.” He lifted his head, mock-affronted. “Do you think I can’t carry my own wife?”

“I know you can.” She kissed the tip of his nose, which mollified him; melted his expression into something gooey and pleased. He was so terribly easy. Revna had assured her men only got easier. Until, she’d warned, they hit that age when they start really doubting their vitality. Then they’re fussy as old hens. Tessa figured she had a long while yet before it was time to worry of that.

“Where did you go this time?” he asked.

“To see Amelia.” And she told him of Amelia’s idea about the logging road.

He was frowning thoughtfully by the end. “You’ll have to tell Erik.”

“Yes. I was thinking of doing so now. Do you think he’s still awake?” Beyond the tent flap, the camp bore the air of contained chaos: supper, and changing watch shifts, and wine-fueled laughter around fires. She’d expected a march to war to be a somber affair, but instead, each night was more like a celebration: drinking, and singing, and story-telling, and men challenging one another to wrestling matches or sparring sessions. So far, the Northerners were living up to their jolly reputation as men who fought hard and played hard as well. She’d even seen a little of the camp followers, perched on knees, sharing cups…doing other things.

“Or,” she amended, do you think he and Oliver are…?” Her face heated.

He grinned. “Fucking?”

“Rune!”

“Well, that’s what it’s called, darling,” he laughed.

“Yes, well. I don’t like to think of Oliver like that. Or your uncle for that matter.”

“Do you think they like thinking of us that way?” he countered, single brow lifted.

“No one should think of anyone…doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Fucking,” she whispered. “Happy?”

“Very.” His grin turned leering, and he caught her around the waist, and hauled her up against him. “Shall we?”

She spluttered a laugh. “Really? Now?”

“Why not? Talking of it makes me want to.”

“A stiff wind makes you want to,” she said, and he smiled, unrepentant, before he kissed her.

“Is that a problem?”

She leaned in to initiate the next kiss, stomach melting pleasantly. “Not really, no.”

A spark of blue flashed suddenly across her field of vision. She froze, and gasped against his mouth, as Alfie’s warning flared in her mind.

She heard a drake cry: first Percy, and then Alfie, and then Valgrind’s youthful scream. A trumpeting that heralded danger.

And then the call of horns, ringing out across the clearing.

Tessa scrambled up from Rune’s lap, heart already racing. “There’s someone here – something’s coming – we have to–”

“Tessa, wait!”

She turned – she was halfway to the tent flap already, without weapon, or cloak, holding her cup as if that would do some good – and saw Rune snatching his sword in its scabbard up from the floor and buckling it on with fast, jerky movements. Outside their tent, the tramp of running feet, men’s shouts, and the horns, blasting again and again. The drakes had gone aloft: Alfie shared an image of limbs snapping as her wings unfurled and propelled her upward, through the canopy and into the open air for a better vantage point.

Rune slung his quiver onto his back, secured it in place, and hooked his bow over his arm.

Tessa went for her own sword, the slender, lightweight blade specially made for her to wear on dragonback. Her hands were slick with sweat, and she buckled its belt so clumsily that Rune came to help with a quiet here, let me.

When it was secure, he glanced up, and caught her gaze, his own gone hard, and ready, his fear nearly hidden, and shored up with a healthy dose of natural bravery. He hooked his fingers in her sword belt, and held them there.

She could read in his expression that he wanted to tell her to stay here, but he said, “Ready?”

She pushed the disorder around them from her mind – the shouts, the yells, the thunder of footfalls, the crashing of armored men running into the forest; the calls of the drakes overhead – and focused on him. On his familiar and beloved face. This was different than the day she’d snatched up a sword in the palace. That had been a heat-of-the-moment snap decision, reason lost to the terror and necessity of the moment. But now she knew what it felt like to fight; knew the scent of spilled blood, and the sight of death.

She took a deep breath, and nodded.

Their tent flap lifted, and Estrid poked her head inside. “Are you two coming or what? We’ve not got time to stand around gazing soppily at each other!”

Rune sighed. “You had to bring her.”

Tessa smiled. “She wouldn’t be left behind.”

“She’s standing right here, you fools, come on!”

~*~

He hadn’t paused to don his amor, but Erik had plopped Oliver’s helmet down onto his head before they raced out of the tent, swords drawn, and Oliver was grateful for its protection as twigs and bits of splintered wood rained down on them. Erik shielded his face with a gloved hand, and peered upward into the tree canopy with a quiet curse. Oliver tilted his head back, and through the tunnel of steel that was the brow of his helm, saw a flash of firelight on bright scales – bright purple scales.

A beast like a ribbon twisted between tree trunks, fangs flashing white, its wings long and narrow, supporting a slight body with a whipcord tail. He’d not seen one himself, yet, but he knew from Amelia’s description that these were the small, nasty little drakes that had come through the portal that day on the road.

“Look out!” someone shouted.

An arrow flew through the dark, and sank, quivering, in a tree trunk, wide of the mark. The drake twined through the air, turned toward them, and hissed. Its wings spread, preparing to dive, and Oliver brought his sword across his chest, ready to meet it.

But then a sleek white head dove down between the branches from above, and Percy’s jaws closed over the creature’s neck. The small drake squealed, and was dragged up through the canopy and out of sight. Oliver heard the crack of its spine snapping.

And then, suddenly, the forest was boiling with the things. They streamed out of the trees, small and quick enough to slither in midair between branches, their narrow wings made for tight quarters.

Above, the cold-drakes screamed in rage, and their wings beat the tree tops back and forth as though the Inglewood were in the grips of a hurricane.

“Oliver!” Erik shouted, but Oliver ducked the slash of a sharp tail, brought his sword along a gleaming purple flank, and was struck in the back of the head by something.

“Fuck,” he muttered, staggered to his knees, and had to scramble forward to avoid being trampled by a loose horse.

The air rang with the chime of steel, the clink of armor, the hoarse bellows of the men; the screech of the small drakes, and Percy’s roars from above. Branches snapped and flew, a splinter lodged in the back of his hand, the pain sharp like a bee sting. Oliver pulled it with his teeth, lurched back to his feet, and brought his sword up to block the gnashing teeth of a drake who’d wound up on the ground somehow. In the firelight, he saw the black-oil slick of drake blood across the dirt, and spotted a ruined wing. Fangs clamped down on the blade of his sword, immobilizing it.

Oliver ripped the dagger from his belt and slammed it through a yellow eye. The drake went limp with a gurgled cry, and he pulled dagger and sword both loose, and kept moving.

It was the sort of tightly-packed chaos that got men killed in stupid ways. Trampled in the crush of bodies; tripping over a root and bashing one’s head open on a tree trunk; falling on someone else’s dropped weapon; ending up with a friend’s arrow stuck in your back thanks to hasty firing. Erik was shouting orders, trying to get everyone into some kind of order – and doubtless that would work. Eventually. Oliver could already hear men echoing the orders, sending them down the line. But he could also hear that, somehow, Erik was very far away. He’d wound up clear on the other side of the clearing, and the little purple drakes were diving at every angle, too many for Percy and Alfie and Valgrind to pick off from above.

Something slammed into Oliver’s shoulder, and he flew sideways to crash into a tree. The impact knocked all the breath from his lungs, and the dark forest swayed around him.

He fumbled around and got his back against the trunk. The clearing of camp seemed leagues away, a tangle of writhing men and beasts; kicked fires had caught several tents, and the blaze roared high and hot, bright enough to make his eyes water. It backlit the drake that had crashed into him, stalking forward on all fours, head tucked and jaws open, fangs gold in the firelight, eyes two burning pits of sulfurous yellow.

Oliver fought to draw a breath, and brought sword and dagger before him, blades crossed, as ready as he could be. When he sent a call to Percy, he was so flooded by panic and desperation, and the impossibility of Percy’s task to fight them all, his rage and sense of impotence, that he closed off the bond between them. He must do this alone, as himself. He tried to recall all of Náli’s, and Bjorn’s, and Erik’s lessons. The tips Magnus had hurled at him while they sparred. But this was no man, and it wouldn’t fight like one.

The drake opened his jaws wide, shrieked, and charged.

From the right, a flash of silver, a wink of lightning.

The drake screamed, and its head flew upward, and, before it toppled to the side and lay dead, Oliver saw the hilt of a large knife protruding through the base of its throat, sunk in the tender, unarmored join between scales.

A man filled the drake’s place, a towering silhouette against the firelight, broad-shouldered, and narrow-waisted. Hair two long, straight sheets over his shoulders.

Oliver could have struck, as the man closed the gap between them, hands obviously empty, the knife lost to the body of the still-twitching drake. He could have run the man through with his sword, and stretched up with a quick flash of his dagger to slit his throat. But he held still, and took a deep breath, finally, because this was a silhouette he recognized.

A hand landed on the tree trunk beside his head, and a face leaned in close, and tilted, so that the firelight slid over pale, regal features, and gleamed on white hair and brows.

Impossibly, Romanus Tyrsbane stood before him, and when he gripped the tip of Oliver’s sword in two gloved fingers and moved the blade aside, Oliver allowed it.

“What – how – what are you doing here?” Oliver asked, still trying to get his breath back.

Romanus’s lips twitched in what might have been amusement, and he brushed the dagger aside as well. “Put these away, you have no need of them, and follow me.”

He stepped aside, and moved around the tree, out of sight.

Oliver stood panting a moment, gaze shifting to the drake on the ground, to the main body of camp, where men were forming up ranks, back-to-back in a circle, spears raised toward the drakes that harried them from the trees. He spotted Rune firing his bow up into the lower branches, Tessa and Estrid flanking him, swords gleaming in the firelight. There was Erik at the center, standing taller than nearly everyone, sword lifted as a signal, a beacon to draw men’s attention, to channel their panic into something useful.

Oliver sheathed his weapons, and ducked around the tree.

In the darkness, Romanus was nothing but a sense of solidity; a shape in the gloom, a silver glimmer of hair and eyes. “Did you bring men as well?” he asked, “or only drakes? Will armored soldiers come pouring out of the forest next?”

“Only the drakes.” He wasn’t imagining it: Romanus was definitely amused. The lilt of his voice threaded with laughter.

Realization dawned, and Oliver’s stomach twisted in an unfamiliar way. Part fear, part anger…part something like flattery. “They’re a distraction,” he accused. “To allow you to see me.”

“I can’t very well see you now, can I?” Something brushed his hand – he jerked – but it was only Romanus’s hand, smooth and cool, large enough to envelop his. “I’ve brought you something.”

“I don’t want it,” Oliver said, but went unresisting when Romanus turned his hand palm-up, and pressed something cold and metallic into the center of it.

“You do,” Romanus insisted. When he drew his hands back, Oliver lifted his own to his face, and squinted through the dark. There was just enough ambient glow from the fire for him to make out a delicate gold chain, and a small chunk of purple stone set in a golden medallion.

“Amethyst?”

“Yes. From the first mines of Seles. It is…an heirloom.”

Oliver searched for his gaze in the dimness, a wink of silver in the shadows. “Why give it to me? So you can track me? So you can find me when you want to do this?” He gestured to camp, its turmoil.

“No,” Romanus said. “It’s a gift.”

“But why? What does it do?” Oliver’s heart was racing; the furious thrashing of it at the base of his throat was wild enough to choke him. His hands went clammy on the chain, and he nearly threw it out through the trees.

Nearly.

The coin-flare of Romanus’s gaze slanted, as though he’d tilted his head. “It doesn’t do anything. It’s a jewel. A decoration.”

“But…then…it’s not magical?”

“No.”

“Then why are you giving it to me?”

“Because I wanted you to have it,” he said, simply.

“But…why go to all this trouble? Anyone could see you here! You could be captured! Killed!”

A quiet breath of a laugh. “Does that worry you?”

“No!” Oliver protested, too loudly.

A shuffle of leaves, and then Romanus stood directly before him, close enough to see the smooth, white grain of his skin in the orange light; close enough to smell the lavender that always seemed to cling to him. Like Náli, but not. Not really. Náli didn’t leave his belly clenching this way.

Slowly, as though to give him a chance to resist, Romanus folded Oliver’s hands around the necklace and squeezed them tight. “Keep it. I want you to.”

“But–”

He stepped back, and turned away. Oliver glimpsed the toss of his hair, a flapping sheaf of white, like a banner of truce in the darkness, and then he was gone.

“Romanus?”

No answer.

Oliver stepped forward into the place he should have occupied, and found the air colder – cold enough to give him goosebumps. But no sign of the emperor.

He clenched his hand tight around the delicate chain and its medallion. Its jagged bit of amethyst.

I wanted you to have it.

He breathed. In, and out. In, and out.

Then he slipped the necklace in his pocket and turned back to camp.

~*~

The drakes had stopped attacking.

The drakes were gone.

The dead ones lay like limp ribbons across the ground, black blood reeking and sticky as tar. Men were picking themselves up, or calling to one another, or scanning the tree tops.

Percy landed with a heavy crash, tree tops snapping, splinters flying, and dropped the purple drake he held in his jaws so that he could set upon its corpse with his claws, eviscerating it in a messy spill that left Oliver turning his face away and choking down a gag.

“Oliver! Ollie!” Erik came charging toward him, leaping over scattered fire debris and felled drakes, his face contorted with worry.

He reached him, and gripped his arms, patted his chest, his neck; cupped his cheek, gaze raking over him, searching for injury.

“Sweetheart,” he said in a choked voice. “Are you hurt? Your helmet’s gone.”

“Oh.” It was, now that he thought of it. “I must have lost it somewhere.” He gestured vaguely behind him. “I’m fine.”

But Erik kept patting him down, breathing in ragged, open-mouthed draws.

“Erik. Darling.” Oliver rested a hand on his chest, stilling him. Offered a smile. “I’m unhurt. I swear.”

Erik studied his face a moment – and then dragged him into a crushing embrace. One so tight it lifted him clear off his feet, so that Oliver had a view of camp from over his broad shoulder.

He saw men dousing the tent fires with buckets.

Saw Rune giving Tessa a once-over just as Erik had done with Oliver, while Estrid stood aside with arms folded, her good eye rolling skyward.

He didn’t see a single dead man sprawled across the ground, only a few nursing minor wounds, thank the gods.

Oliver allowed himself a moment of sagging relief, hugging Erik back.

And then his gaze collided with Náli’s.

The Corpse Lord stood with naked sword in hand, its tip resting on the ground. A fine line of blood marked a scratch on his fair cheek, and his eyes sparked furiously. His jaw worked, and the accusation on his face couldn’t have been plainer. It left Oliver’s insides shriveling.

You did this. This was your fault.

“It’s all right,” Oliver murmured to Erik, stroking his hair. “I’m fine. We’re all fine.”

Náli regarded him with utter disgust a moment, and then turned away.

“It’s all right,” Oliver repeated, but his lips were numb, and his voice was unsteady, because nothing was all right at all.

In his pocket, beside the sapphire he’d pried from a cave wall months before, the amethyst necklace dragged at him.

A gift from an enemy.

Held unknowingly against the strong, quick-throbbing heart of his lover.

THE END

~*~

The adventure continues in

Drake Chronicles Book VI:

Avarice of the Empire

Coming soon!

About the Author:

Lauren Gilley is the author of forty novels and counting, including the Dartmoor Series, and her Sons of Rome paranormal fantasy saga. She writes contemporary and historical novels with a focus on found family and surviving tough odds. She blogs, sometimes, at hoofprintpress.blogspot.com, and accepts emails at authorlaurengilley@gmail.com. When she’s not writing, she’s mucking horse stalls, or walking her giant dog.

You can also find her on:

Instagram: @hppress

Twitter: @lauren_gilley

Facebook: “Lauren Gilley – Author”

Other Titles by Lauren Gilley:

The Dartmoor/Lean Dogs Legacy Series (in reading order):

Fearless

Price of Angels

Half My Blood

The Skeleton King

Secondhand Smoke

Snow In Texas

Tastes Like Candy

Loverboy

American Hellhound

Shaman

Prodigal Son

Lone Star

Homecoming

The Wild Charge

Long Way Down

Nothing More

The Sons of Rome Series

White Wolf

Red Rooster

Dragon Slayer

Golden Eagle

Lionheart (coming soon)

The Hell Theory Series

King Among the Dead

Night In A Waste Land

Mystic Wonderful

Vanish Into Light

The Russell Series

Made for Breaking

God Love Her

Keeping Bad Company

The Walker Series

Keep You

Dream of You

Better Than You

Fix You

Rosewood

Standalones

Whatever Remains

Walking Wounded

Shelter

The Drake Chronicles

Heart of Winter

Edge of the Wild

Blood of Wolves

Demon of the Dead

Fortunes of War
Avarice of the Empire (coming soon)