Chapter 15
Istop squeezing Nordin’s arm. Stop trying to wrench it off my skin.
He’s not taking Nika as his mate.
A heat wave of shock vaporizes the cool sweat dotting my skin. “And I should care, why?” I pray my tone sounds as flat to him as it does to me.
He shrugs. “I just imagined—from all I read—that you might care.”
The mention of my journals chases away the heat. “That you’re still holding out for your true mate? No.”
He smooths his thumb over my throbbing vein, again and again, as if trying to iron out my pulse. “Twelve moons, Zas.”
“Twelve moons till I can leave the pack without being forced to return because I’ll finally be considered an adult?” I quip.
Gently, he says, “Don’t play dumb.”
I growl then, as though I were an animal like him.
“I don’t want you anymore! I don’t want to be with you!
I can barely stand to look at you! I hate you, Nordin Stormsson!
” I haul in a breath that feels spiked with shattered glass.
“I poured my fucking heart into those journals, and you just shoved them into your firepit.”
His thumb keeps sweeping. “You incinerated my gloves.”
“It’s not remotely the same thing!”
With a sigh, he rests one hand on the bottom of my spine and moves the other from my neck to the back of my skull. And then he rakes my quivering body into his solid frame. I flatten my palms over his abs and push, but my strength is no match for his.
“The words you inked were dangerous.” His lips burrow against the crown of my head. “Forgive me.”
“You read my journals, burnt them, then agreed to marry another woman. In what world does someone like you deserve my forgiveness?” I try to shake my head, but he’s slotted his fingers through my hair and curled them to lock my cheek against his scudding heart.
“I’m sorry I hurt you.” His thumb strains over my cheekbone as though to sweep tears, but I’m not crying.
Am I?
The pounding in his chest drills my temple, aggravating my headache.
“My father cornered me after I stormed out of the longhouse. He said that if I ever wanted to be Jarl—whether of our clan or of Krosson’s—I needed to accept the Fjords’ proposal.
That it was the only way to dispel everyone’s qualms.” He curls more of himself around me, holding me tight, tight, tight…
I can’t breathe.
I. Can’t. Breathe.
“I told him their qualms were unfounded. That I had nothing to feel guilty about and nothing to prove. But then I got home to your journals and…and I panicked.”
What is happening right now?
“I know it’s not an excuse for how much I hurt you, but I thought that if you stopped looking at me the way you did, then I’d be less at risk of desecrating Fenrir’s sacred commandment.”
Emotion clogs my throat, yet somehow, I manage to wheeze out, “How do I know you’re not just saying all this”—I gulp down an inhale—“to get me to come home and stay there?”
His fingers close around my blond locks and tug, prying my face off his chest. As our eyes latch, my lungs tighten to the point of collapse.
“Since there isn’t a version of reality where you don’t come home with me, what need did I have to confess any of this?”
“Where I don’t come home?” I parrot derisively. “I am the master of my fate, Nordin Stormsson. Don’t be—”
“Obnoxious? Presumptuous? Selfish?”
My swallows scrape like sandpaper. “Yes. All of the above. And more,” I add for good measure.
It pains me to admit that this is what I wanted to hear the night I served him my bleeding heart on a platter.
Nordin releases my hair, but only to slide his callused palm down my spine, then back up.
I hate how my body bends to him.
How my heart pounds for him.
“Please don’t push me away, Zas,” he murmurs.
“Can’t exactly hold on, though. Not if you want a chance to rule the pack someday.” My voice barely registers over the raucous howls that are echoing beyond these walls.
I suck in air, because…
Nordin must’ve heard them too, because he lets me go and crouches, plucking up my linen underdress. “Arms up, love.”
Love.
I raise my hands, and he eases my sheath over my head, then layers my wool overdress on top, before bending to retrieve my leather belt, which he cinches around my waist. My neck earns a fleeting caress as he frees my hair from the collar.
What a crappy idea it was to jump into the fjord. Though, if I hadn’t, then I might’ve missed out on Nordin’s apology.
I stare at him, at my fervent protector who defied the Council and his father to be with me. Well, more accurately, not to be with Nika, since he and I cannot be together.
What am I going home to? What will our friendship look like? I want to ask but block the questions, for shifters possess unparalleled hearing and the cabin walls are thin.
As he helps me into my tights, since I seem to be capable of nothing but cogitation, he scrapes a kiss over my lower belly that makes my throat expel his name.
What if someone had barged in and caught us? Granted, there was fabric between his lips and my skin, but still… Nordin doesn’t go around smooching bellies.
“They’re all still in fur.” As he pulls his tunic over his head, he says, “Boots.”
“This conversation isn’t over,” I blurt out as I trade one side of the cabin for the other—the one with my boots.
A corner of his mouth tilts. “I’d hate it if it were.”
“And it’s not…”
He belts his tunic, then stabs his huge feet into his equally huge boots.
I lick my lips. “It’s not a yes.” Leaning against the wall, I wrench on my own, much smaller boots. “To anything discussed here.”
His eyebrows drop, shadowing his irises, blunting their sapphire sparkle. He says nothing as he walks over to his cloak and collects it. I gather mine, wincing because the fur hasn’t even begun to dry.
I’m about to wear it and bear it when Nordin wordlessly filches it from my fingers and forces my arms through his coat sleeves. It’s huge and bulky, but exquisitely hot.
“Can you shift?”
He’s so contemplative that I think he might’ve missed my question, but then he shakes his head and slings my sodden coat around his nape like Arek had done with his friend’s body earlier.
My mind is still leafing through all that happened, when an icy breeze surges into the cabin and slaps my exposed face.
Nordin’s broad frame blocks my view of the outside world. “About time you found us, Syster.”
Saga’s here? Why am I surprised?
“…shot with silver,” Nordin is saying.
Did he mention who shot him? I suddenly hope not, since I can only imagine Saga must be furious with me already.
She mustn’t have trotted over alone because I hear a distinctly masculine mewl.
“I’ll run beside you, Vanoo,” Nordin says. “Thanks for the offer, though.”
Vanoo is a beast of a man. Larger than Nordin in both skin and fur, which is a feat considering Nordin’s stature. He’s also Nordin’s closest friend. I haven’t seen him in months, due to his temporary stay in the Glacier Valley, where he was helping rebuild a settlement caught in an avalanche.
Nordin pivots and rolls his head toward the white wolf pawing the snow. “Saga will give you a ride back.”
I snag my lip and chew the life out of it as I lumber forward, all at once excited and apprehensive to see her. I can’t fathom how angry and hurt she must be. Angry-hurt. Is there a term that encompasses both? Aggrieved, maybe?
My cousin lowers her head and gently butts my shoulder. Her version of a slap and a hug tied into one.
I sling my arms around her neck. “Thank you for coming.” My voice plumes in the frosty air, melding with the silvery puffs streaming from her nostrils.
After I let her go, she sinks her blue stare into mine. I sense she wants to hear me apologize for trying to escape, but I can’t give her those words, for they’d be false.
With a sigh, she crouches, her belly denting the downy layer of fresh snow. How hard it would’ve been to ford through.
As I climb onto her back, I glance around me at the six others, trying to glean their identity from the hue of their irises and facial expressions, which are preserved from skin to fur.
I recognize Leif immediately, which leads me to look for Tyron, whom I find hanging toward the back of the small pack, nostrils working over the air as though he’s caught a scent.
When his eyes narrow on me, then move to Nordin, my palate goes dry, as though I were sitting in the steam hut with my mouth wide, instead of astride Saga in the moon-glossed woods, tight-lipped.
I glance away from him, my panicked gaze clocking Nordin’s. When his features don’t turn strained, I relax a fraction.
“Straight home.” Nordin pats his sister’s long neck, and then he steps toward Vanoo and drapes my coat over his friend’s shoulders, knotting the sleeves beneath his neck so it doesn’t fly off. I catch Nordin smiling. “Looking like a true supershifter with your cape, Bror.”
Vanoo shoots his “brother” a droll look that spurs a chuckle from Nordin.
That sound… It’s rapturous.
As he turns back my way, Nordin catches me staring. I expect his expression to shutter but it remains soft.
How in Fenrir’s name am I supposed to stay angry with this male? To keep my distance from him?
Saga darts forward. I sink my hands into her shaggy fur and grip it for dear life. Nordin keeps pace beside us, his speed nothing short of phenomenal.
If I’d been capable of such speed, I might’ve reached the heart of Isrike in under a day.
I suddenly imagine myself standing there, in the narrowest part of the continent where one can see the eastern and western shores with a single spin.
It’s that narrow strait that won our continent its name: Isrike… hourglass.
Lore would have it that the three Gods loved their Rafbo board so much they etched its shape across Midgard and coaxed the landmass from the ocean.
Saga had scoffed the first time she’d heard the tale, insisting Gods couldn’t possibly have time for games, so Isrike’s origin must be pure fabrication.
But Mor had assured her that everyone had time for games, even Jarls, even Gods.
Saga remained unconvinced, yet ironically, year after year, she insists on being the one to pass the story down to each new generation.
A smile nips at my lips at the memory but declines when Saga bursts out of the woods. She draws to such an abrupt halt that I almost spill off her back. When she cranes her neck, a chill that has nothing to do with the arctic temperature slinks down my spine.
Carving over the rotund moon is a winged creature far too large to be mistaken for any bird.
Dragon.