Page 11 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“Food,” Dane said abruptly, breaking the dense silence. “Fenster will have prepared us some dinner.”

All he got from his brothers were a few low rumbles, but Axe and Weyland turned to follow him up the stone stairs into the citadel proper, while Gael held me back. His lips were on my neck, his chest pressed into my back as his hands began to roam.

“It’s not bread and stew I’m hungry for, Darcy,” he told me in a voice that was part growl, his teeth nipping at my neck, making me shiver in response, before he pulled away.

Food wasn’t what I hungered for either, I realised as I watched him precede me, which brought up the most pressing question. How did I lie in that massive bed with the entire pack, when I was mated to only one of them?

6

Dinner was a subdued affair, but not for the reasons you’d think. I’d found three of my mates in bed with other women. I’d challenged a queen to a duel to the death. The men had severed their relationship with their mother, we’d discovered that Dane owned a whole bloody castle and… There was a hysterical edge to my thoughts, but they were quickly crowded out by this.

I watched Gael’s hands move, long fingered, strong palmed, things that did everything with a kind of economical briskness I couldn’t look away from. I catalogued every nick and scar there, then the way they grasped the bone handles of his cutlery. But when he set them down abruptly, I jumped, because he got to his feet and scooped me up in one arm and grabbed my food with the other, placing both of us before him. Food on the table and me on his lap.

“Eat, Darcy,” he told me, his deep voice making me squirm. “I can feel what you want, what you need, but you must eat first.”

“Fuck Mother,” Weyland growled, watching the two of us intently. “If she hadn’t… If we didn’t…”

“But we did,” Dane replied with a deliberate calm. “So Gael’s advice is apt. Eat, because we’ll have a long hard day ahead of us tomorrow.”

As I sat perched on Gael’s lap, my hands finding my utensils, I felt curiously exposed, because it felt like everyone watched me the way I had watched my mate.

“Eat,” Gael prompted again. “I’m not above feeding you like a child.”

My fork stabbed into the slices of meat I’d put on my plate, my knife slicing across it at his highhanded words and that’s when he laughed. I focussed on eating my meat and my vegetables to the sounds of Gael’s chuckles, because I knew he bloody would hand feed me if I didn’t.

For me, some of the tension had leached out by the end of the meal. A fire crackled merrily in the grate, so I was warm, full and very comfortable nestled down in Gael’s arms. Fenster had sent up this complex confection of cake, cream, fruit, and nuts that had completed the meal nicely and I was basking in the afterglow.

Then Gael had to ruin it.

“We need to talk about how this will go,” he said, a raspy edge to his voice letting us know how intent he was. “I claimed my mate last night. By rights I should’ve been abed all day, just learning her and all her responses.”

“And you want to do that now,” Dane said in a flat voice. His gaze flicked to the other two of his brothers. “There are no shortage of beds. You could take one of the other bedrooms as yours, Gael, until such a time as we work out the nature of our bond with Darcy.”

“No,” Weyland snapped.

“Brother, they can come back… afterwards and sleep between us,” Dane reasoned. “Our bonding time as a pack can continue.”

“No,” Weyland reiterated. “I mean yes, everyone needs to sleep in the same bed. I don’t think I could sleep if you didn’t.” He frowned slightly, pressing a finger to his brows as if to smooth this away. “I…” He let out a little huff of breath and then collapsed back against his chair. “Please don’t punish us by locking us out from this. You don’t have to touch me. I won’t even touch you, not if you don’t want me to.”

It was the pleading that did me in. Not in a whiny way, not like a child. Instead, it was this quiet desperation that had me stiffening.

“Damn you, Weyland,” Gael growled. “You don’t have to, lass. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. It’s been a long day, a hard one. We can just sleep—”

“But we can’t, can we?” I answered and was met by silence. “I can’t. We can’t unring that bell.” They’d been careful, understanding, waiting for me to get to a point when I was ready to pursue a relationship on a physical level, but something had changed. The slide of Gael’s hand over my spine had a different meaning, because now I knew exactly what it was capable of. “I’m not going to be able to just lie there beside you and sleep like I was your sister.”

“If it’s at all relevant, I’ve never had sisterly thoughts about you, lass,” Axe rumbled.

“Perhaps you won’t,” Dane said. “Then that puts you in a very different position. One where you must be clear about what you want and don’t want, even as that changes from moment to moment. It was always going to be the way of things, having four mates. We wouldn’t always fall upon you like starving wolves, taking you as a pack.”

Dane’s tone was cool, almost cold, so why did I shiver at the mental image he created?

“Even when we are all fully tied to each other, there will be times when you reach for only one or two of us. It isn’t the same as experiencing the pleasure with you, but don’t think we would not get anything from being in the same room as you seek your bliss.”

“So…” My words were there, all ready to be said, but I didn’t, not yet. “You want to watch.”

“Every damn thing I can,” Weyland replied, his tone harsh. “I always do anyway. When you lay beside me, I watched you sleep. When you’re on the training ground it felt like I fought with you because I traced your every move with my eyes. I watch you drink, eat, sigh, laugh, cry… Today, I watched your heart break and then you put the two pieces back together and forged ahead. It’s not enough you’re so fucking beautiful my eyes ache with it, but you’re strong too. So fucking strong. I’ll always be proud any moment I’m by your side, but none more than when you share your love with my brother.”

Weyland spared Gael a glance then, over my shoulder.

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