Page 5 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“The gods themselves create the bonds between men to form packs. Skada, the wolf god, gifts them to those of us lucky enough to bear two souls. He determines which men will become stronger, better by association, and he finds fated mates for the worthy. I am not a priestess of the male gods. I cannot speak for them.” Aeve surveyed the table with a world weary eye. “But I know what a sacrament this bond is.”

“A sacrament my brothers and I will fight to honour,” Dane said, jerking his belt knife out and slamming it down into the finely polished wood tabletop. I watched a small crack form, sliding up, a fault line now in what was a perfectly smooth finish. “I’ve never harmed a woman before. That’s a point of pride for all of us, but I’m willing to swallow that pride if necessary. Witchcraft was performed last night, to try and fool my brothers and I into believing we were with our true mate, seeking to ensnare each one of us in a mate bond that goes against the will of the gods themselves.”

I caught the moment Dane’s head jerked sideways and so did Malia. She went pale, her hand going to her mouth, perhaps to stuff back the plea that rose there.

“Malia, daughter of Jael, you will not speak to me or my pack and especially not my mate again. You will not occupy the same room. You will not be present at court when any of us are. If you see any one of us at the market, you will turn around and leave your coin unspent, only to return when we are gone. This is the price of your continued existence.”

“But Your Highness…” an older man beside Malia began to say, evidently her father.

“Go! NOW.”

Dane’s bark forced a yelp out of more than one person around the table, but none more than Malia. I tried not to hate her. In my mind, I knew she was just a pawn. A vicious, nasty little pawn, but she was just a symptom of the sickness infecting this whole bloody place. I’d hoped Strelae would be better, more enlightened than Grania, and in some ways it was. But its core was rotten, just like my own country and she was evidence of that rot. I watched her go though, demure as a Granian maid, setting aside her napkin and pushing back her chair, swiftly scurrying out of the room.

“Brother, you are kinder and more benevolent than I feel I can be,” Weyland said, moving to the end of the table. He found Leia’s eyes in seconds, her hands tightening around her cutlery, as if that might save her. “Brack, send your conniving little wench of a daughter home to your estate. She can moulder there until such time she’s summoned again.” He grinned then, teeth flashing. “Something I will personally make sure will never happen.” Silence reigned over the table.

“Well, you heard my son,” Ulfric said. “Go, girl!”

She was up and out of her seat, despite the dark looks her family sent our way, her mother rising to follow after her.

“And you may as well go too, Raina,” the king said to the dark haired girl that had tried to capture Axe. “Your little ploys have failed and now you must live with the consequences of that.” He leaned forward, resting his head on his hands and staring at us. “We all must.”

I watched the last girl and several others leave the room, running away on little bunny feet and that went some way towards settling me. Of course, that’s when the queen spoke.

“And what about you, bastard?” Her eyes bore straight into Gael’s, her voice pure acidic amusement. “No girl you wish to banish? Not threats you wish to make?”

But Gael didn’t rise to the bait, he stepped over it without a thought. I looked up at him when I felt him appear beside me, the feel of his hand sliding up to claim the nape of my neck more reassuring than anything else today. He seemed to note that, sparing me a slow, assured smile, right before he turned to face his stepmother.

I wanted to maintain a tough facade, to stare down the bitch who’d tried to tear us apart, but all of that resolve dissolved as soon as his thumb brushed across the bite mark he’d left on my neck. A full body shiver passed through me, my traitorous body having had a taste of the pleasures of the flesh and was whining for more. So I couldn’t focus on her, the king or any of the other vipers in this pit, not when I felt Gael.

“No, my queen,” Gael replied, the amusement, the smugness radiating from his voice. “You got your wish. I have everything I’ve ever wanted, right here, right now. My mate.”

They’d called me that so many times before. Initially, it was a prison sentence, then some title made incomprehensible by the differences in our cultural backgrounds. But now I wore that label with more pride than either monarch did their gilt crowns. I was his, Gael’s, and he was mine. That knowledge beat strong and true inside my heart and to be honest, that’s all I wanted to deal with right now.

But we would never be allowed that choice.

“And the woman you pushed me towards will see you in the ground, come the waning moon, false queen.”

Aurora was up on her feet in moments, a riotous growl forming in her chest, right up until the king’s hand shot up and dragged her back down again. I watched her blink, saw the way his fingers bit into the flesh of her shoulder, burrowing hard in a way I understood all too well.

Feeling empathy for your enemies is always a difficult thing. You hate them so much they become inhuman things, all care for their wellbeing gone, but right then that hatred sputtered. Did he hurt her often, the king? Did he stripe her back with a birch branch or his stout leather belt? Did he create his very own ladder to heaven across her perfect white skin?

“I should’ve killed you when you turned feral,” Aurora snapped back. “Many told me I was a fool to let you live.” Her snapping blue eyes shifted then, meeting mine finally and that’s when she smiled. “I’ll settle for taking the thing you love the most. The sounds of your screams, bastard, as I slit the outlander’s throat will be music to my ears.”

I was supposed to be intimidated by this, to imagine her standing over me, her hands tugging my head back to press her knife at my throat, but I wasn’t. Going through what I had with Linnea and Father, the callous approval by the priests of their barbaric behaviour had hardened something inside me. I didn’t know if I would prevail or she would, but I knew this. The fight needed to happen. We needed to resolve this issue once and for all, because no matter what I built with this pack, she would always be there, looking for ways to unravel it.

So if the only way for us to resolve what burned between the five of us was to execute the queen, so be it.

I smiled then, not bothering to splutter out protests or threats. I didn’t need to. I’d meet her on the duelling grounds and then we’d know who would be left standing.

“I could say something about wanting to watch my mate tear your arrogant hide to shreds, but I won’t,” Gael replied. He pulled me closer, our bodies fitting together like two puzzle pieces. “You’re a rabid dog, gone mad with your own lust for power, and it's beyond time you were put down. C’mon, lass, there’s no need to expose you to this shit any longer.”

So we walked out, Gael’s arm around my shoulders, the rest of the pack surrounding us like an honour guard until we got to the stables. The smell of hay and horse and liniment was both welcome and painful, because I instinctively looked around for Nordred as soon as we came through the door, even as I remembered he was gone.

But to where? And why? He’d been there, a solid presence, all my life and now…?

“We should hole up at my manor,” Weyland said. “We can’t stay here. Mother—”

“We all know what she’ll fucking do,” Axe growled. “She’d poison half the palace and the temple too, if that’s what it took to save her hide.”

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