Page 20 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“No…” I said the word gently, then tried to soften the blow by reaching for him, but he flinched when my hand touched his cheek. “She’s going to try her best to beat me bloody, if not kill me outright. Nordred taught me to take a hit, but not this kind. Not in such rapid succession, over and over, the pain building up on top of itself.”

One of the things I’d learned as a child, copping all those beatings, was to ‘go away.’ Not be here, not be present, not see and feel and hear what was being said. Not watch my father’s face turn into a bestial mask as he turned on me. It was useful in the short term, but in the long? Well, apart from robbing me of the richness of reality, it was this. At some point, I had to come back again and when I did, everything I’d been pushing away came rushing in. As it did right now.

“Gael…”

The bond with him was less a sweet thing that tied us together, than a need that gnawed at my guts, creating a kind of pain he couldn’t assuage, because it wasn’t physical. But it wasn’t just him. As he moved in closer, dropping down to his knees so he could stroke my face, a deeper yearning clawed at me. I turned then, burying my face into Axe’s chest, clawing at his shirt when it got in the way, but also dragging Gael’s hand with me.

“What is she…?”

“She needs us,” Gael replied in an awestruck tone. “Like we need her. I think because her defences are down, she’s starting to feel it.”

Was this what they felt when they met me? Gods, I had a newfound respect for them. I closed my eyes tight, just feeling, breathing in Axe, then Gael, and finally Weyland. I needed them like air, like my next shuddering breath, and it wasn’t so much in a sexual way. Sex was a symptom, not the cause. I let out a little whine, my wolf shifting restlessly inside me. Neither of us was sure how to deal with this.

“Hush…”

Weyland’s voice carried all the weight of his alpha bark, but this was the softest of lashes. It took away a need to think or fight, to wonder what the hell was going on and let me do this. Just be, just feel, just let them in. Gael hit me first, hardest, all his worry and anger and frustration and need, that all settled until it became this. Just a deep, throbbing sense of him within me. My mate.

When he was with me, he could take a full breath, I sensed. When he felt my skin under his fingertips, he could allow himself to feel.

“Just so, lass,” he told me, reading my damn mind again. “Every scrap of me belongs to you, my love. All of it.” His hand rested possessively along the back of my neck

The others took longer to filter through. Axe loved holding me like this, I got that. He felt like I was so small, and finally, finally he could be the one to look after me rather than me thinking I needed to do everything myself. I felt his arms tighten a little, even as the others shifted closer, wanting to hold on to this moment. To breathe me in, to take great lungfuls of my scent into him and that was something I understood.

I was getting the same. Smoky, woody, and eminently masculine, it helped settle me as much as Gael’s touch. But there was more. The impulse to hold me and keep holding me forever. To press my body into his so it left an imprint, because in his heart, he felt like I’d already left one. I dared a look upwards then and those blue eyes stared into mine. Axe smiled, just a little, something incongruously soft on the big man’s face and then he leant down and kissed me.

There was no urgency in this. The time wasn’t right for that, but it was to make this connection. For my hands to go around his neck, as he had imagined me do the other night, my fingers to grip his braids and to just hang on as he claimed me in the gentlest way possible.

I didn’t take a breath until he finally pulled away, my eyelids fluttering at the flush of sensation that came with that.

“I’ll get you a robe,” Weyland said, smiling down at me. “You can get out of those clothes and warm your muscles up, keep them from hurting. Then I’ll take a look around this draughty old pile for some liniment. Our old nurse used to rub the bloody stuff into us.”

“Gods, old Nursie…” Axe groaned. “When we were young men, I was beginning to feel like the rub downs were for her gratification, not ours.”

Their voices faded away. Exhaustion hit me like a ton of bricks, my body having decided it was done for the day. It was the kind of tiredness that precludes sleep, even the effort of becoming unconscious too much. So when Weyland returned, drawing me out of Axe’s arms, I wavered on my feet until Gael stepped up to steady me and I let them. Just like I let them strip me off and then bundle me into a plush robe. Then I sat back against the stone benches, steam wreathing around our heads and just was.

12

“Where’s Dane?” I asked when we sat down at a table in the dining room. I’d gotten dressed in some proper clothes and the room was teeming with people, but not my mate.

“He’ll join us if he can,” Gael said, helping himself to a potato dish that looked like it’d been created with lashings of butter and cream.

“You’ll find things changed now,” Weyland explained, pushing a platter of meat towards me and not looking away until I took some. “You had his undivided attention for longer than I’ve ever known him to focus on anything, but our brother?” He looked around the high vaulted ceilings of the hall. “He’s a planner. Always plotting.”

“Which is why Father would’ve always made him heir, even if he wasn’t the eldest,” Axe said, then took a big bite from his chicken leg.

“He works long hours and we aren’t always privy to what he’s doing,” Gael said with a nod to my plate. I picked up my cutlery and cut into the meat, then took a bite. He watched me too closely, then seemed to realise what he was doing. “But no matter what he’s working on, it will be to the betterment of us, of all of us.” He looked around then at the crowd, a steady hum filling the hall as people had conversations, filled their bellies and even shared a laugh or two. “He’s never steered us wrong yet.”

“But he must eat too,” I replied.

I ate my own food in a series of economical movements, that feel good sensation of a full stomach making me feel even sleepier, but I pushed past it. I grabbed a spare plate then loaded it up with food, ensuring there was a wide selection on it before I got to my feet.

“You’re going to feed our brother?” Weyland asked, that devilish smile letting me know that this simple gesture had another meaning within Strelae, as always.

“I’m going to take him a plate. He’ll miss out—”

“Oh, I would love to be a fly on the wall for this,” Axe said, then reached for another chicken leg. “But the food here is too good.”

“How will you find him? He’ll go down to the kitchens when he’s ready,” Gael started to say, but I shook my head, then flagged down Fenster as he passed by.

---