Page 8 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“And there was no one there to help you. Nordred didn’t come.”

“Nordred’s gone,” I replied, reaching down and unbuckling the swords my master had given me and tossing them onto a nearby bench. “I don’t know where, but he left these for me, because he knew.”

“We best find out if he has actually left,” Dane rumbled. “Because I’d like to ask your horse master some questions. Quite a few, I suspect.”

“But the lung sickness?” I rubbed at my sternum then, my focus shifting to my chest. “I think it’s gone. When I saw the six of you…” I swallowed, trying to moisten a mouth that had gone bone dry. “When I traced the way your bodies lay on the bed, the ways you intersected—”

“Lass…” Axe tried to get to his feet, to stop what was coming out, but I shook my head.

“But it was either breathe or die and I chose to breathe.” I nodded then. “I’ll always choose to breathe.” My eyes jerked sideways, seeking Gael’s, my mates. “What would have happened if the rest of the pack had met us at the pub? What did you have planned?”

“Planned?” Gael looked almost pained then, something big and intense rising behind his eyes, fighting to get out. “Gods, Darcy, I wish I could say it was all as neatly set out as that.” He shifted closer, blocking out the room, the other men, so there was only him and the sound of hissing water hitting the ember stones. “We dance to your tune, love. We want everything you’ve bloody got to give, but not before you’re ready to give it.”

His hand slid down my cheek, his thumb brushing across my mouth and when my lips parted, it surged forward, seeking the slick of my tongue.

“The bloody queen probably did us a favour of sorts. We’d have been drunk, on beer, on the crowd’s responses, on the support of the people, but most of all.” He removed his thumb and then leaned over, ready to kiss me, but stopping himself. “We’d have been drunk on you, Darcy, like we have been since the moment we met you. It’s all gone out the window, every plan, every thought, every scrap of bloody sense. We’d have fallen on you like wolves, ready to devour every inch.”

For a second, I just stared, the sound of my heart racketing around in my ears, but then I stepped free of my mate.

Gael’s face fell, I caught that, just as I saw the moment hope flared hot and hard again. I kicked off my boots, stripped off my belt, my jerkin and then my trews, leaving me standing there in just a shirt, when I returned to him. My mate’s breaths were noisy in my ears as I unbuttoned his jacket and pushed that off his shoulders, then tugged his shirt free and up over his chest. He was forced to take over because I wasn’t tall enough to get it over his head and then he was done. My hands hovered in the air, ready to touch all that bare muscle when I heard a small grunt behind me.

When I spun around, each of the men had leaned forward now, arms resting on their knees as they watched me closely, watched us to see what would happen next. I moved closer, taking up a spot on the stone bench a hand’s span away from Dane, my legs tucking up against my chest.

“So we just sit here and sweat?” I asked in a far smaller voice than I’d hoped for. I was threatening queens only hours ago, and now all of a sudden, I was a meek little mouse again, startling when Gael sat down on my other side.

“You let the heat take all that’s bad inside you and pull it out. You let it purify you,” Dane informed me before reaching over and pushing my knees down.

I was forced to lean back then, Gael and Dane’s arms resting along the back of the bench as I closed my eyes and let a long breath out.

4

After spending some time sweating out everything that had happened to us, we then took turns plunging into baths to wash all the grime away, leaving us scoured clean. Then I got to sleep in the very place queens had in Strelae for countless centuries. This… the feel of them as they got into bed beside me. The dip of the mattress. The shift of the blankets. The sounds of their sighs, then, finally, the press of their bodies. It all settled me in ways nothing else could.

Gael was at my back, his hand against my stomach, holding me close, and even though I felt that frantic pulse set up beneath his palm, my eyes were heavy. He let out a long sigh of contentment and then pressed a kiss to the back of my neck before settling down. But Weyland? He resisted the pull of sleep for a moment, staring across the pillow at me and this gaze stopped me from taking the last step into sleep.

I reached across, grabbing his hand, shivering slightly at the way it ramped up the pulses inside him and me, and he seemed to need that. Some of the shadows in his eyes faded as he caught the way he made me respond, would always make me respond. Because I made him feel the same way.

I moved my hand then, sliding it across his bare chest, feeling the satiny smooth skin across hard, hard muscle, going down, but not too far down. His cock… my mouth… the burst of his seed in my mouth… I could feel, remember it all, my throat swallowing reflexively in response and he seemed to know exactly what I was recalling. He shifted then, wedging me hard between his body and Gael’s and that’s when I could relinquish my hold on consciousness. I could no longer see the horrors of this morning, not when we were like this.

“There you are.”

Her voice was soft and rich, brimming with a kind of loving affection I found myself turning towards like a flower does the sun. That’s when I saw her.

Hazy and golden, bright light fanned through her reddish blonde hair, making it hard to see her face clearly. But her smile? I saw that, felt that, more radiant than any sunlight. She stroked her hand across my cheek, her eyes shining with the most perfect of loves. One that would never end, from the moment I was born, until I was on my deathbed.

“Mother?” I said, knowing somehow this was her. She nodded slowly then.

“Yes, my darling Darcy.” Her fingers combed through my hair, tugging gently at the knots until it fanned across her thighs, because I lay across her lap like I was a small child again or perhaps she was so much bigger. A massive, gentle presence, her back, her body sheltered me from all that was hard and hurt. “My beautiful girl.” I nestled in at that, content in a way I’m not sure I’d ever felt, willing this to last forever.

And for a time, it did. There was just her, smelling of lavender and lemon, her fingers stroking, stroking, lulling me further and further into this strange subspace, where time, reality, the world, even my very self didn’t really exist. I was just contentment, a personification of a feeling that seems so very simple, right up until you re-experience it. But after such a long time bereft of this, of being safe, secure, held, my soul seemed to gobble it up, gorging on the feeling so it could be digested later at leisure.

Then she spoke.

“I knew it would be like this,” she said. The words were just sounds right now, her tone still soft and even. “She showed me how it would be if I bore you, my beautiful daughter. I saw my life and my death.” A little snarl formed in all this peacefulness and I frowned slightly. “But she showed me your life. I was to bear a queen, which for some women would be enough of an incentive, but I needed much more than that. I was a duchess and I saw first hand how hollow a title was, so she made me see.”

I shifted then, slowly, resentfully, like a small child being woken to get ready for the day. I stared up at her and she stared back, those blue eyes flaring bright.

“She showed me what was to come, all of it. What that bastard… What the duke would do to you. What Kristoff…” She let out a little sigh and with it went all of the softness. The golden light that had wreathed her head darkened then, seeming to swirl and roil like a storm in the making. “I know what’s coming.”

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