Page 6 of The Heir
With my father’s warnings that I shouldn’t listen to my mom, I’d distanced myself from her. At the same time, my mom’s protective love had made me see how unfair and harsh my father was to me. That made me resent him from a young age. Any child wants to make their parents proud, but in my case, they wanted opposite things from me. My mother spoke of fairness and compassion while my father wanted me to be a strong, assertive leader unafraid of conflicts. I had tried to impress him for as long as I could remember and built a hard shield of toughness around me.
My dogs interrupted my thoughts with excessive barking. Lifting my head from the sand, I shielded my eyes with a hand and looked along the beach toward town, but it was empty. I hadn’t seen a single person on this part of the beach since I arrived.
“What is it?” I asked my dogs when they came running and rubbed their wet fur against me.
Pushing at me with his head, Huginn insisted that something needed my attention while Muninn raced past me in the direction of the small cabin. I rose up from the sand and turned to understand what had them so excited. That’s when I saw Linea, a family friend that I hadn’t seen more than once in the last ten years. She sat relaxed on the steps in front of the small cabin and was now scratching Muninn behind his ear.
My false sense of security that no one would be able to sneak up on me here without the dogs alerting me had let me swim naked. I was acutely aware that Linea was between me and my clothes, which were all inside the house. I considered covering my crotch for modesty, but that would reveal I felt uncomfortable standing naked in front of her.
Raised not to show weakness, I squared my chest and walked up to confront her. “What are you doing here? How did you sneak up on me?”
“I wouldn’t call it sneaking up on you. I walked along the beach for twenty minutes to get here.”
“My dogs would have seen you.”
“You were sleeping, and they were playing in the water.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
She tilted her head. “No?”
“I was thinking!” It shouldn’t have surprised me that Linea seemed unaffected by my nakedness. Motlanders were used to nudity. But being naked in front of a woman wasn’t an everyday thing for me and my best armor was the arrogance that I’d practiced so well. “Move away from my door. I’ll put on some clothes.”
“As you please.” When she stood, both her long copper-colored hair and the summer dress she had on flowed in the pleasant breeze from the ocean. She got out of my way and focused on my dogs while I stormed inside the house and banged the door shut.
Questions raced through my mind while I dressed.Why is she here? Is she alone, and how the fuck did she find me?
When I returned outside, my two loyal dogs were on their stomachs in front of her.
“How did you find me?” My tone was accusatory.
Linea didn’t offer me a glance but spoke while scratching the belly of my dogs. “The same way we found Sparrow. You leave an energy trail wherever you go.”
“Bullshit. How did you track me?”
She raised a brow and looked up at me. “If you must know, your massive ego was so loud I could hear it all the way up in the Northlands.”
I scowled at her, silently telling her I wasn’t amused.
“Thor, it wasn’t nice of you to leave without saying goodbye. It made your family and friends freak out. Did you consider that people would think you had been kidnapped and hurt?”
With a scoff, I defended myself. “No way. I went to Mila and Jonah’s house on my way here. Mila is my cousin, so I did tell family that I was in the Motherlands. It should be fucking obvious to everyone back home that if I’m in the Motherlands I’m safe.”
“Your logic is flawed. If you wanted your family and friends not to worry, you could have told them you were visiting Mila, but you left without a word. It took your parents quite a while to figure out you had gone to the Motherlands. And for the record, Mila is as puzzled as everyone else. You left your drone at her place but didn’t tell her where you were going.”
“That’s because I wanted to be alone.”
Linea crossed her bare arms, unconsciously pushing up her breasts, which were beautifully presented by the cleavage of her flowery summer dress. Averting my gaze, I held onto my armor of anger and confusion over why she was here.
Looking up and down the beach she breathed, “I know you wanted to be alone. This is a fine place to have an existential crisis.”
Feeling called out, I snapped at her. “I don’t have an existential crisis.”
“No?”
“No!”
“Then what do you call this?” She threw her arms up while looking around at the palms, sand, water, and the small cabin.
