Page 92 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

He let out a hiss then, but far from deflate, the man seemed to transform. When he walked towards her, he did so with a kind of grace she’d seen him demonstrate on the sands of the training ground or on the dance floor. But this time when he prowled, he did so to her.

“That I…” His hands dove into the folds of her hood, pushing it down onto her shoulders before he unclasped the overgarment, letting it fall to the floor. “That I loved you?”

She couldn’t speak, think, breathe, not while he looked at her like that. One part cruelty, one part desperation, and she couldn’t think as to which she wanted to win. All she could do was lean into his palms as he cupped her face.

“That I’ve dreamed so often of you standing right where you are, I’m not entirely sure you’re actually here and not some fucking fever dream.”

That profanity bit deep and she craved the pain, gazing up at him without blinking.

“I think I’m seeing Del’s point with this story,” I told my mates, casting them a sidelong look. “Nordred… He was like a father to me.”

“And at some point he was the queen’s lover.” Dane searched my face then, but not for the usual clues to my mood.

“What?”

“You have the look of him,” he announced. “Not enough to have your father questioning your mother’s fidelity, but if you know where to look…”

“Especially now you have blue eyes rather than brown,” Weyland agreed with a nod. “So Darcy’s…”

“No,” I said, shaking my head sharply. I let out a little laugh, to push that theory to one side, ridiculed and based on nothing. “No, I can’t be.”

“Can’t you?” Gael’s voice was much thinner, almost plaintive, and that’s when it brought it all back.

I rejected the theory about my lineage with a vehemence that must’ve taken my mates by surprise, but there was a reason for my response. Because the idea of it, spoken aloud like that, it made it bigger. It gave voice to one of my deepest held desires, my most fervent dreams. Because every time my father hauled me into his room and striped my back. Every time Linnea visited her petty cruelties on me, trying to hamper me, hobble me into the mutilated form that suited her, I dreamed. That Nordred was duke and I was his daughter, that the entire keep benefited from his wisdom and advice, not as horse master and weapons trainer, but… as my father.

I’d cried out for him the first time the switch hit my back, the first time Linnea clipped my ear with the back of her hand. I’d cried out for him each time one of their petty little tyrannies was directed at me, until my father threatened to dismiss the man outright, sensing a point of pressure to be applied. Then I’d kept my mouth shut and just cried out for him inside.

But Nordred hadn’t come.

He couldn’t, I’d reasoned. He relied on the gold my father paid him to look after his horses, needed a roof over his head and food in his stomach. Then there were the other people that worked in the stables who also looked to him for guidance. Gods, half the bloody keep went to him with their problems and I…

“If he was my… whatever number great-grandfather or uncle,” I bit out. “Then why…?”

“Why did he let it happen?” Gael asked, his gaze softening so much I couldn’t bear to meet it. “Why did he let those bastards mark you up like a beaten dog?” His voice had become a feral growl now. “I’d like to know the same.”

“And why are we left wandering like fucking sheep on the way to slaughter?” Axe added. “Isn’t he supposed to be able to level mountains, part the seas and—?”

“Ride the winds…” I whispered, seeing, feeling Eleanor say those words. And as if they were a magic phrase of old, the past rose up and swallowed me whole.

46

I knew exactly how it felt when Eleanor kissed Nordred, because I’d felt the same when I kissed each one of my mates. If I leaned over now and offered my mouth to them, they’d take it and that exquisite feeling of completeness would rise up, soothing me in ways nothing else would. So when she cried the first time Nordred kissed her, forcing him to pull away, I knew why.

To go so long without love feels like when you’ve sat in the same place for an age, all the blood gone from your extremities. You’re numb until you move and then the pain begins. The pain of having what you need now, coupled with the pain of having gone without for so long you thought you might never feel any different. So the queen grasped at her advisor, afraid to let him go, kissing him and kissing him until her lips ached, then going back for more. But Nordred wasn’t going anywhere. The courtier, the advisor, was gone, because under that lurked a man and now he’d been given leave to shoulder forward, that part of him wasn’t going to back down.

“They had sex,” I said bluntly, my mind instinctively recoiling from the details. “So perhaps your theory is right. Perhaps he is…”

I shook my head. I closed my eyes, taking one long breath, then another, trying to push the story on by will alone. I caught glimpses of them, together, wrapped up tight in the other, and not just for this night. They were like iron filings and a lodestone, inextricably drawn to the other whenever they could. Slipping away from gatherings to meet in dark rooms. Walking through empty forests, only to stumble upon the other, then drag their lover down beside them. Rutting over and over, frantic declarations of love spilling from their lips, the curious feeling of his seed sliding down her thighs each time she was forced to meet with some other pack of suitors the only thing to carry her through.

“Gods,” I rubbed at my forehead, willing the images away. “Yes, it was definitely possible she was with child.”

But if Eleanor was worried her brother would notice the change in her, she needn’t have. Another much more pressing event had his attention and it should’ve held hers, too.

“The humans are staging a full scale invasion,” Callum announced, throwing down a roughly drawn map onto the dining table.

Eleanor had been swimming in a sea of pleasant feeling. Nordred had dared let her sleep in his bed for the night, and that intimacy? It was shocking how good it felt, to pretend for the night at least that they were what they knew to be true: formally mated. She’d breathed in his sighs, shifting over and over in his bed, waking to feel him against her, to breathe his scent in. But she looked over at the map with a frown.

“This is the number of ships that have been sighted?” Nordred asked.

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