Page 44 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“Bloody hell, this needs to stop!” Dane yelped, lunging for me as it felt like I was about to faceplant off the table, but something inside me yanked me back, my centre of balance reasserting itself. I stood on the edge of the table, arms outstretched, a sloppy smile spreading across my face as cries of amazement around the room reflected my own.

“Beat the bastard back!” Selene shouted, raising her mug to me. “A wolf doesn’t submit, it hunts!”

My head jerked up at that, her words tapping into some other part of myself that wasn’t affected by drink. I prowled across the table top towards Weyland and it was then his smile faltered, something else hotter and more immediate blazing in his eyes.

“You’re coming for me, lass?” I was supposed to be cowing him, fighting for his surrender, but he tossed his head back, staring in a way that said anything but. “Nothing would please me more.”

And so he raised his sword, holding it firmly now in front of him, his body turned on its side, providing me with a smaller target to hit. I lifted my weapon then nodded in recognition before I attacked.

My sword whistled through the air and the audience pulled back further, seeming to see there was a real risk now. But while I was moving like lightning, Weyland was blocking just as fast, never swiping at me, but countering my every strike.

So I moved faster.

I felt a familiar burn in my arm as I did so, the noises, the shouts from the crowd dying away, morphing into one big hazy mass. But not him. I was exquisitely attuned to Weyland’s moves, the tension in his body as he held himself ready, but the looseness in his legs as he shuffled, shuffled across the tabletop. I was ready to strike, harder, faster, when I saw his tongue flick out, collecting the small beads of sweat forming on his lip.

My grip almost softened, my sense of purpose almost faltered as I watched it move, as I caught the moment his lips glistened, then curved back in that insolent smile, full of challenge. A small growl formed in my chest as I slashed my sword through the air, but I wasn’t sure why. Did I want to wipe that smile off his face or did I want to replace it with my own? But moving closer, coming within his orbit, even if I had to fight to get there, that felt good and right.

Mine, she agreed, the other half of my soul, an impatience tangible in her growl. And we were going to claim what was ours tonight, she made that clear. She was forced to wait in the background, watching me engage in all of my incomprehensible human rites, but not now she’d been given her head. If trumping our mate was what was required for her to get what she needed, then she would do whatever was required to make that happen.

Which prompted what came next.

That strange feeling of fire that flared and died down inside me in ways I didn’t understand, it roared up now, blasting everything else away. Alcohol was burned out of my system, my conscious mind coming back online with a rapidity that made me blink. It fired my limbs, hardened my muscles, then directed me to where I needed to go. Weyland seemed to sense something had shifted, his sword point dropping, his eyes widening and that’s when we pressed our advantage.

We almost cut him with the first slash, only long honed reflexes preventing that with an ugly twist of his wrist. But any sense of wonder he might have been experiencing was shoved to one side as his focus narrowed. When he grinned now, I saw his fangs flash, my sword moving faster, faster as his followed suit. “Yess...” he hissed, even as I saw him struggle to keep up. He laughed even as he fought to protect himself, the sound wild and unfettered, right up until the tip of my sword scored the back of his hand.

“Fuck!” he snarled, dropping his sword with a clatter, inspecting the cut to see how bad it was, but I couldn’t seem to focus on his wellbeing. My own weapon fell to the tabletop, and I stepped over it and all the other paraphernalia, closing the distance between us.

My hand went around his wrist, my fingers feeling the wet stickiness of the small trickle of his blood, right before I brought the cut to my mouth.

What would Father or Linnea have thought about this moment? What would Kris? I stared up into Weyland’s eyes, his smile scrubbed away and replaced by an open mouthed look of wonder as my tongue flicked out, swiping the cut clean.

I blinked as it hit me, the fire inside me burning, burning, until there was nothing left but the part of me that ached for Weyland. As his blood, his taste rushed into my mouth, he came with it.

He wanted me, that was clear. A slow, dull ache usually in the pit of his stomach, a pain he seemed to rush towards rather than flinch away. It reminded him every day he was alive, of his want, his need of me. His love. I almost jerked away when I felt that. it was like the heavy weight of the crown from my dreams, a responsibility, an honour surely I didn’t deserve. But his hand went to the back of my head, tangled in my hair and held me where I was.

“That’s it,” he told me in a low tone, just for me. “Get your taste of me. Because I carry yours with me all of the time. From the last kiss, there’s a constant sweetness in the back of my throat to remind me that it happened. That it might happen again.”

I lifted my head then, forced to lick away a small drop of blood from the side of my mouth and he watched every second of that.

“Can it happen now?” That was a plea, yet there was nothing plaintive in his rasping tone. “Can I have everything I’ve ever wanted or needed, lass? Can I have you?”

I didn’t know how to respond, caught in the blue fire of his eyes as I was, but then she moved inside me, forcing my neck to unbend, to let my head fall forward in a slow nod, right before he jerked me close.

My ears were full of the sounds of shouts and cheers and the crash of breaking crockery, but everything else was him. Weyland. He beat hot and hard and true in my heart. Somehow he’d weaselled in there, even if I hadn’t seen it coming. I was swept up into his arms and out of the pub, Dane handing the publican a pouch full of gold for our destruction. Weyland put me on the pommel of his saddle, swinging up behind me and something settled inside me as I felt his body press against mine.

“I shouldn’t race my horse through the streets of Snowmere at night,” he told me, his voice a ticklish buzz in my ear. “There might be potholes or obstacles that will hurt my Boulder, but I can’t fucking wait any longer and I think you feel the same.”

As the horse moved restively underneath us, his hand slid down, coming to settle low on my pelvis.

“Weyland…” I gasped at the vicious clench of need.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, right before he snapped the reins and kicked his horse into a canter.

23

“Weyland!”

We heard Dane’s shout from the courtyard but we were already in the stables, sliding down from our horse’s back. A sleepy eyed stableboy emerged and took Boulder from Weyland as he rushed me inside the citadel walls. Dane called his brother’s name again, but that just made Weyland grin, his grip on my hand tightening as we ran down one corridor, then another in the near darkness, until he found an open doorway to an unused bedroom.

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