Page 107 of Blood of Wolves

“Do you remember,” she began, hesitantly, and Rune slipped his arm around her, pulled her against his side, “how Oliver said he and Percy – that they bonded? That it was like they were in each other’s heads?”

“Remember when he told us just yesterday?” Rune said, teasing, and she blushed and leaned into him harder. “Yes, I do.”

“This is…this is going to sound mad.”

“Love, I’m looking right now at two dozen Sels caught up in ice halfway through our wall. It can’t get any madder than that.”

“No, I suppose it can’t.” She took a big breath anyway, because this felt big – as big as the whole sky and the drakes looping through it. “I…yesterday. When we were in the hallway. When I was – fighting.” She didn’t understand why that was difficult to say, but Rune rubbed her arm, and it helped. “There was this – I don’t know how to describe it – there was this – this flash.”

“Flash?” he echoed, curious, but not pressing.

“I must have black out for a moment–”

His voice rose with alarm. “You blacked out–”

“But it was blue. There was all this blue light. And then I was flying. I was – Rune,” she turned to him, and found his brows halfway up his forehead, eyes wide with concern. “I was talking with them. Withher. Percy’s mate. It was just as Oliver described it. The blue light, and the vision through the drake’s eyes. She was in my mind, and I was in hers.” After, she could hear the excitement in her voice, and watched his brows climb a fraction higher.

“Are you…bonded with her? Like Oliver with Percy?”

“No. But I think…I think I could be.”

She hadn’t been sure of what she’d been thinking, exactly, until the words were out of her mouth, but then there they were, between them, and Tessa’s stomach gave a swoop of excitement. Yes. Yes, that was what was supposed to happen. A bond. A mind and a soul open to her own, entwined with hers.

She wanted it, badly, suddenly. A trilling note in the back of her consciousness said she wasn’t the only one, that it had been the drake reaching out to her, at first, sensing her, calling to her. And everything in Tessa had answered, on instinct.

Rune searched her face a long moment, until his brow smoothed, and a fond grin tugged at his mouth. “Well. You are a Darke after all.”

She’d thought he might eschew the idea, and when he didn’t, she felt her own smile break wide. She leaned in to kiss him, and he captured her face and kissed her back, while the drake purred at the edges of her awareness, approving and glad.

~*~

Leif paused on his way across the wreckage of the great hall, and braced a shoulder against one of the surviving wooden pillars that marched along its edges. The wolves were waiting – his wolves, now, he supposed: those Úlfheðnar who’d raced to Aeres alongside Ragnar, and then knelt before Leif and showed their throats, supplicant and obedient – but two figures sitting on a bit of crumbled wall had captured his attention.

He couldsmellthem; he was still getting used to that. Could hear their voices, even from a distance. They were talking about the drakes, about the way Tessa felt sure that she was able to communicate with them, the way that Oliver could.

Then Tessa turned to face Rune, and leaned in to kiss him.

It was not a first kiss, that much he could tell. Tessa had always struck him as the sort who would hesitate, watching through her lashes, uncertain, and let the man kiss her, rather than the other way around. This was not a quick peck, nor a near-miss; not the kiss of two people feeling one another out for the first time. It was sure, and even-keeled, intimate for all that it wasn’t indecent.

Leif tensed, waiting for the flare of jealousy, of possessiveness – but it never came.

He felt strangely empty. Full of scents, and sounds, and this new, prickling awareness of his surroundings that he was still getting used to.

Revna approached. He could hear and scent her long before she drew up alongside him.

“Ah,” she sighed. “I’m sorry, love, I meant to tell you sooner.”

He snorted, and, when he glanced at her, saw her look of surprise. “I could smell them on each other, Mum. It’s not a shock to me.”

Her brows lifted.

He looked back to his brother, and the girl who was his betrothed, no longer kissing, but leaning against one another, heads together as they watched the drakes fly in lazy circles overhead. “I wasn’t in love with her,” he said, and it didn’t feel like an admission, because it wasn’t one. That emptiness persisted in his chest, cold and odd, but undeniable. “No formal promises were made. She’s very young. She and Rune are better-suited to each other.”

If anything, Revna’s look of surprise heightened, before she nodded and looked away. “You always were my sensible boy,” she said, approving. “Don’t worry, we’ll–”

“Mother.”

She whipped back around to look at him again.

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