Page 48 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

I didn’t want to. I felt that hard inside me as I stared down at his sleeping form, but I had to. His words about a child… My hand went to my belly, still smooth and flat as a maiden’s. Maiden… that was the trigger word. I pulled on my clothes and strapped on my weapons and then padded through a citadel starting to wake up, making a beeline for the training grounds.

“I wondered if you’d turn up,” Selene said, her eyes sliding to the brand new bite mark on my neck. She wasn’t the only one. Gael was standing there with a sword hanging from his hand, already having raised a sweat in training.

“Did he make sure you wanted this?” he asked, his words coming out in a flurry as he wrapped his arms around me. “He didn’t hurt you, did he? He took his time, made sure you felt right about this? If he didn’t, gods help him—”

“Gael.” He went quiet and still when I said his name. “It was perfect, just like it was with you. He is my mate. You are my mate.”

Something loosened inside him then, his lips finding the mark he’d left on me, his teeth fitting perfectly into the indents before he licked his tongue across it.

“And your mate needs you, badly. Weyland’s not one to share, but he’s bloody going to need to…”

And then it was my turn to freeze. I shot a look over his shoulder at Selene, who was watching on with a wry smile.

“Maybe we should talk about this after training?” I said. “I’ll be here for a while. You can go and find Dane and—”

“The prince stays here,” Selene asserted. “I have a theory and Gael here has volunteered to help me test it.” I frowned and pulled back from my mate whilst at the same time I grabbed his free hand with mine, rubbing my thumb across his knuckles. “If the old tales are true, your mates can augment your strength and vice versa. We’ll train you for the upcoming duel, but, Darcy…,” She stared at the two of us, inspecting us like she’d never seen us before. “You may have an advantage the queen does not. She is not King Ulfric’s true mate. She has political sway and a complex web of alliances to draw upon, but on the duelling ground?”

Her smile slowly spread and when it did, I caught a flash of fang.

“None of that matters. Only your strength, your speed, your fangs and claws.” Gael sidled in closer at that, his hot breath fanning across the sensitive skin of my neck. “And your sword. If you can draw anything from your mates to help with that?” She shrugged then. “Well, that can’t be helped, can it?”

“So, how do we do this?” I asked, trying to focus on Selene, but Gael’s presence was a terrible distraction. He and Weyland had introduced me to these sensual pleasures and now I couldn’t seem to stop wanting them.

Selene’s smile faltered at my question and she frowned slightly.

“That’s the problematic bit. We know what the old queens used to be able to do. There’s plenty of records of their exploits. But how? They didn’t need us to train them. Mother taught daughter the skills the queens possessed, not the Maidens. But we lost that link…”

Selene’s grip on her sword tightened.

“So we must try to discover them as best we can, and I think that means putting you in real danger.”

“Selene…” Gael growled, shouldering forward.

Part of me loved him pushing his way into the gap between me and the Wolf Maiden, and another part of me wanted to smack him. The latter part won. I elbowed him in the ribs, catching him unaware, chuckling as his breath was forced out with a big oof.

“When Darcy was in danger, when we all were,” Selene explained, “that’s when she tapped into whatever it was.”

“A golden light,” I said, then shrugged. “That’s what it felt like. Or fire. The Morrigan was talking to me through it.”

“What?” Selene said, and Gael let out a low hiss at that.

“She was telling me that I was her daughter but I wasn’t the only one making offerings to her,” I said, although it felt really strange to say those words. I couldn’t deny my experience, but… I was used to Grania where the priests were the only ones supposed to hear the gods themselves and, even then, most people were not confident that it actually happened. Gods were distant, mysterious figures who looked after the massive forces that shaped our lives, like storms or war. “But she said it was through this experience, through battle, that I would come to understand her.”

“Hm… With your permission, I would like to bring this information to Mother Aeve’s attention,” Selene said. “That…? There’s been no record of a queen doing that.”

“But there is of her pulling power from her mates,” I reminded her briskly, grabbing my sword and then going for a shield. Selene’s sword slapped down on the wooden surface before I could pull it from the rack.

“Real danger, remember,” she said.

“You’re not going to slice and dice my mate like a side of lamb on a festival day,” Gael snapped.

“That’s right, I’m not,” the Maiden replied. “But a few slices across her skin will push your protective instincts, if not hers. What if that’s the key? The queen’s consorts have to push their energy to the queen? You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”

“Everything I have to give is hers,” he said in a dour voice. “As you know.”

“Well, then…” Selene lifted her shield, making it clear just how uneven a fight this was going to be. “Let’s begin.”

Whiskey was, indeed, a bastard of a drink, I found. My head throbbed as I fell into a loose pose, raising my sword, and my reflexes were dulled by a sleepless night of pleasures. So she got her first cut in pretty early, my teeth gritting at the white-hot pain burning across my forearm.

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