Chapter 17 #2
“Nordin wishes to be the one to tell you. For now, he’d like you to climb on his back.
” My source of intel strides toward the immobilized vampyr and slings him over his shoulder as if Kjell weighed no more than a sack of leaves, despite the male being neither fine-boned nor small. “I’ll carry him to the sledge.”
Nordin steps around me and drops to his haunches. Though my joints feel like hardened steel, I somehow manage to swing my leg over his blood-matted fur. I try not to think of whose blood it could be as exhaustion curves my spine, and I rest my cheek on his neck.
Once I’ve locked my arms around his throat, he takes off through the clearing.
Some follow; others dart toward the dragon.
When the wet snap of flesh resonates through the land, I seal my lids.
Even if their intent is sustenance and not postmortem cruelty, I cannot watch them tear into the dragon.
I don’t have the stomach or heart for it.
My eyes remain shut until Nordin’s pace slows and a shrill, feminine voice rises from the night. There, on the narrow passageway between the two perilously bladed peaks of our pass, stands Mor. Her long, black hair swirls around her wan face, cutting across her reflective hazel stare.
The instant she spots me on Nordin’s back, she’s running and crying out my name in a pitch that fills me with renewed remorse.
Nordin stops moving and crouches, allowing Mor to sweep me off his back and into her arms.
“You’re safe. You’re safe,” she croaks before suddenly pressing me away.
This is when she slaps me for having left.
This is when she tells me how disappointed she is.
I wait for the chiding I deserve.
And wait.
But Mor doesn’t slap or yell.
She swallows, sobs, caresses.
Her grief-reddened eyes dart over my face, locking on the gash in my forehead that Nordin healed earlier. She raises a trembling hand and skims the tender skin before berthing her palm on my cheek and cradling it.
I don’t deserve her tenderness.
I try to apologize, but my throat is too tight.
Tight like the coils of guilt strangling my heart.
Tight like my mother’s embrace.
“I was so scared,” she rasps, pressing her lips to the crown of my head, the beats of her heart finally slowing. “So scared I’d lost you.”
My rib cage buckles under the weight of my emotion and sends a torn breath up my tapered throat.
“Shh.” She kisses my forehead again before exhaling a drained sigh. “Ulf wants to see you, Nordin.” Since he’s remained near, her pitch is soft. “You too, Zaskja.”
Of course my uncle would want a word with me. I may not be a werewolf, but that doesn’t make him any less my Jarl.
“Nordin, carry her down.”
She helps me climb back atop him and then shimmers into fur and races alongside us down the snaking road.
When we reach the longhouse, Ulf is pacing the rough planks like a caged bear. The admonition I was expecting earlier finally comes, not from my mother but from my ruddy-faced uncle.
“A dragon is dead, a vampyr is unconscious, and a fellow Alpha was injured with silver! What, in Fenrir’s name, went through your mind, Zaskja?”
Though his outrage makes me feel young and silly, I square my shoulders and say, “I didn’t touch Havrik’s hair.”
The reminder that I could’ve maimed the Ravine Jarl purples Ulf’s complexion.
“As for what went through my mind… I wanted to know more about my origins. Since you all hate speaking about valkyries, I thought I’d spare you by going to Ljosam?r and finding the answers myself. I didn’t think—”
“Clearly!” My uncle’s tone is so violent that I recoil.
“Ulf, she’s shaken enough,” Mor chides him.
“Do not coddle her, Eira! This is how we got here.”
My cheeks heat. “Please don’t fight. I’m sorry to have caused such an upheaval.”
“An upheaval?” Ulf snorts. “What you’ve done tonight could mean the end of our truce with the Hasam?ris.”
His ire leads Mor to clasp my waist and reel me into her side.
Nordin takes a step in front of me as though to wall me off from his father’s bladed stare. “The dragon and Kjell were all me, Far.”
“Remind me, Son… Why did they attack?”
“You know why,” Nordin replies so quietly that his voice barely scratches the air.
“You might’ve neutralized them, but you wouldn’t have had to if Zaskja hadn’t broken our pack covenant by going off into the Wilds by her godsdamn self.”
“Would you have allowed me to leave if I’d asked you?” I challenge my uncle.
His eyes flick to his sister’s. “Not until you were of age.”
I raise a dubious brow. “Because you would’ve let me leave later on this year?”
He works his jaw from right to left so many times that even when he says, “Yes,” I know it’s a lie. Which begs the question: Why is he lying?
Though I don’t doubt my uncle’s affection, I sense there’s more to his desire for me to stay put than familial concern for my safety. What if the story of how I arrived in the North was fabricated? Mor swore I wasn’t a changeling, but what if I am?
As the idea festers, I catch Taeric Skarnir’s name on my uncle’s lips.
“Do you think he’ll care who struck first when he flies over the dragon’s carcass, Nordin? Do you think he’ll just accept that Blaka’s pet went feral for no reason?”
Nordin crosses his arms. “I think he’ll care that I spared the scout’s life. As for an explanation, we owe him none.”
Ulf releases a scathing snort. “Because you don’t think Blaka will talk?”
“Not until his throat heals, which will take weeks. But that’s beside the point since we’re not handing him over to Taeric.
Before you go off on me again about carelessness, we have every right to detain the vampyr, since he not only attacked a Vale but he also—I repeat—struck first.” Nordin’s voice is as hard as the stone I bashed into Kjell’s jaw mere hours ago.
“Taeric would do the same if one of us went feral and bit one of his vampyrs.”
Ulf sinks a hand into his grizzled white mane. “How do I explain the attack when Taeric shows up at the pass?”
“I’ll explain it.”
“I’m the Alpha!”
“But you weren’t there. I was.”
“Was the dragon mated?” my mother asks suddenly.
I suck in air. Dragons might not be able to shift, but most have fated mates like weres—that much I know. If this one shared such a bond, then his mate will be chomping at the bit to seek vengeance.
Nordin glances over his shoulder at Mor. “He was a Silver, Eira.” His stormy-blue eyes go to me. “Odds are slim he had a mate.”
My lungs remain tight, for slim doesn’t mean nonexistent. I’ve heard stories of dragons hunting for their mate’s killer. They will slaughter anyone who stands in their way and won’t stop until the killer is dead…or until they are.
Much like wolves.
“Nordin, head to the pass. Once Vanoo pulls in, search the vampyr for silver weapons. I’ll meet you up there in a moment.” Ulf’s command pulls Nordin’s gaze from mine. “Eira, please step out of the longhouse. I’d like a word alone with my niece.”
His demand doesn’t go over well with my two protectors, who both protest leaving my side, prompting Ulf to use his Alpha pitch to dismiss them.
Once the door bangs shut and the fur drapes settle, my uncle says, “On to the matter of Havrik and his demands that you become his mate.”
Um, what? “I asked him to leave me alone. He wouldn’t.”
“Perhaps, but you harmed him with silver, Zaskja. Which is illegal. Any other weapon, and I could’ve negotiated.”
“Surely my heritage will put him off.”
“It won’t. It’ll entice him further.”
“Not once he realizes I have no magic to use and abuse.” Only a body. The idea of Varganson’s hands on me again makes my insides riot. “I’d rather go back into the Wilds and face off with a dragon than marry that repulsive male.”
“That repulsive male is an Alpha. He could offer you a better life than you’d ever have here.”
I gape at my uncle, disbelieving that those words came out of his mouth. “A better life?” My ears ring so loudly that I’m unsure whether I scream this or whisper it. “How deeply do you hate me, Morbror?”
Red slashes his cheeks. “I don’t hate you.”
“Yet you’re willing to marry me off to a monster.”
“He’s an Alpha.”
“I don’t bloody care about his standing!”
Ulf rolls his lips. “I think it’d be best for everyone if you took Havrik up on his offer.”
Warmth lines my lashes. It isn’t spurred by grief this time. “For everyone, or for you?”
“Don’t take that tone of voice with me. Not after everything I’ve done for you.”
“I understand you wish to punish me for all that’s happened, but do not force my hand into Havrik’s.”
“Or you’ll leave again? Don’t you think you’ve hurt my sister enough?”
His callous guilt-tripping blackens my mood. “Because you think Mor will jump for joy when she hears of your plan to pawn me off on the Ravine Jarl?” I shake my head and back up.
“For Fenrir’s sake, Zaskja, think of someone other than yourself for once! Think of Nordin! Think of his future!”
I halt my retreat and hold my uncle’s gaze. “I won’t sabotage his future.”
Ulf presses his lips tight, draining them of color before parting them once more to add, “If you truly love him, then you’ll do the right thing.”
“The right thing will never be to marry Havrik Varganson.” A suffocating chill wraps around me, colder even than the waters of the frozen fjord. “You realize he’d never forgive you if you forced my hand?”
“Which is why I won’t be forcing you. You’ll choose to marry him.”
“Except I’d never choose to marry Havrik, which Nordin would know.” I shiver so hard, my clumped locks frolic against my shoulder blades. “You want me gone? Then send me back to the valkyries.”
And then I whirl on my heel and burst out of the longhouse.