Chapter 25
“Do you need something, Nordin?” my smith master asks.
“A word with Zaskja.”
I purse my lips. We need words. Am I ready to have them? Yes and no. I would’ve preferred to have had them on my time.
“Since you’re here, can you make sure she gets home safely?”
“Of course.” He gives Koppar a nod. “Give my best to Astrid and the pups.”
I tug the gold through the drawplate with such vigor that I have a length of gold in no time. I cut it into even chunks, then pick up the pliers and begin to bend and hammer the rod into open links.
The slats groan as Nordin approaches my station. For a long moment, he just stands there, watching me work.
When I can’t take his silence any longer, I ask, “Had a nice nap?” My voice is tight. As tight as my coiled muscles.
“I did.”
I hit my piece of gold with such force that I flatten my link. I toss it aside, focusing on not making a mess of the rest.
Once he stands on the other side of the table from me, he says, “I didn’t have a choice in asking you to leave. You realize that?”
“I do.”
“Then why are you angry?”
“I’m not angry.”
“Come on, Zas. I know you.”
I finally toss my tools aside and flip my gaze to his. “I’m not angry, Nordin; I’m annoyed. There’s a difference.”
He scrapes a hand through his hair. “It was Far’s idea to send Nika to my house while Havrik was here.”
“Even though I wasn’t pleased to find out the way I did, I don’t care that she spent the night in your bed. Or in your clothes…”
“Clearly.”
My eye twitches at his sarcasm. “I don’t, since you didn’t spend the night with her.” My lid spasms again. “Right?”
His demeanor darkens as though I’ve slighted him in the worst possible way. “Of course I didn’t.” He reaches for my waist, but I pivot so sharply his hand doesn’t land. “I would never desecrate the promise I made you. Never.”
I lean my hip against the scarred tabletop, and then I cross my arms.
He scours my features, then my body language. “You don’t believe me?”
“I do.”
“Then what—do tell—is earning me such an icy reception?”
I tilt my head, sending a loose blond tendril skittering out from behind my peaked ear. “How would you have felt if Tyron had been half naked in my house, and I’d started stripping?”
“We’re shifters, Zas. Nudity isn’t—”
“How would you have felt?”
A muscle feathers his jaw. “I would’ve fucking hated it.”
“Then why would you do it to me?”
“My sister asked me point-blank if something was going on between us.”
“So you wanted to pretend that you were entertaining mating Nika again?”
“No. Of course not.” He shudders. “That’s the reason I didn’t ask you to stay.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to ask me to stay. I just wasn’t expecting you to let anyone else stay.”
His chin dips, brows knitting until only the black shine of his irises remains. “She didn’t stay. She got dressed and left.”
I don’t bite out: While you were getting undressed.
“Zas, it was a long fucking day and night. I was beat. I wanted to crawl into bed.” This time, when he reaches for me, his palm lands, his fingers grip. “With you.”
The pounding of my heart grows brisker when he glides his hand to the small of my back and draws me so close, the hard planes of his abdomen bump into my knotted arms.
I crane my neck. “You realize she came back for you?” I don’t bother tacking on her name.
“Don’t fucking care, love.” He curls his other hand around the frame of my face and winches it with the utmost gentleness. “The only woman I care about is standing right here, in front of me.”
My heart feels like it fractures in two—half of it drifting toward the palm with which he holds my face, the other half toward the palm molded to the base of my spine.
“I had an idea.” His callused thumb sweeps, sliding against my skin like his warm breaths slide against the tip of my nose. “About how we could be together without violating the law…”
“Uncovering my identity so that we could learn my true date of birth?”
His brows pull tight. “No.”
I suppose alerting the valkyries to my existence isn’t even an option in his mind. “Then how?”
“I’m going to challenge Havrik.”
My heart stops beating. Nordin can’t be saying what I think he’s saying. He just can’t.
“Once I’m Alpha, I can take you as my mate. The Ravines apparently have no qualms as long as the female is fully formed and willing—”
“Of course they’d have no qualms. They’re unruly brutes!”
“Not all of them. But that’s beside the point. With the right leadership—”
“No.” I seize either side of his face and shake my head. “Don’t you dare challenge Havrik.”
His hands return to his sides. “I thought you’d be enthusiastic about this.”
“The Vales are your pack. Your dream is to govern them.”
“My dream is to be with you. And not behind closed doors. Not to mention that the Ravines could do with new leadership.”
“I can’t let you risk your life for me. I love you far too much for that.”
His jaw clenches. “You speak as though I’d lose.”
My hands tremble over his scruff. “Havrik is sly.”
“Don’t think I can play dirty?”
“Not dirty enough, no. You don’t breach the law. That’s not who you are.”
His cheeks hollow as though he’s reining back his disagreement.
“Challenge him”—I take a breath to gather the courage to utter the next words, the only ones I think could stop Nordin from going through with this insanity—“and I walk away.”
He leans forward, his head pressing low. I think he means to whisper that he doesn’t believe I could walk away—he’d be right—until his lips crash into mine.
The shock springs my hands off his cheeks and drops them to his chest.
I want to yell at him to stop.
I want to pull him closer.
His hands find their way to my body again—one climbs up my spine to tangle with my hair; the other wraps around me, imprinting all the ridges of his anatomy into all the dips of mine.
When he coaxes my lips apart, shiver after shiver courses across the inside of my mouth, rippling across my palate before flowing through the rest of me.
He slides his tongue in, finding mine and stroking with maddening precision.
A moan escapes me, torn from a place so deep it could only be my soul.
Nordin slants his head, deepening this…this… Calling it a kiss feels amiss, for it’s so much more. It’s a collision of hearts, a plaiting of breaths, a meshing of selves.
A small voice in my skull hisses at me to put an end to this madness, but I physically cannot break away from him, and not because of his tenacious command over my body, but because of his unyielding grip on my soul.
This man is my everything. My past. My present. My future.
I find my toes curling to lift my body closer to his. I mustn’t feel close enough, because his knees bend, and his arms band beneath my ass to scoop me up. He clears my workstation with a sweep of his arm.
Metal dings. Stones skitter. Glass shatters.
May our love sound only like ruin to my ears.
May the clamor not echo throughout Isrike.
May what we’ve begun not end something else.
All my silent prayers evaporate like dew when Nordin steps into the V of my thighs and presses his ridged bulge against my soft center. I mewl. He licks the sound off my mouth, a pleased rumble echoing through his rib cage and sinking through the fingers I’ve splayed on his pecs.
He grinds his hips into me, causing a spark to catch on my core and another whimper to drop from my lips.
Oh, Fenrir… Oh—
Calling to Fenrir in vain carries his likeness to my lids, along with his codex.
The codex we’re infringing on.
It startles me back to my senses, and I twist my head, tearing my mouth off Nordin’s.
“Stop. Nordin. What have we done?” I pant so hard that I insert a breath between every word.
He pinches my chin to carry my tormented gaze back to his. “I might be principled, but I can bend the law just as much as Havrik.”
My lashes reel high. My lungs squeeze tight, but not as tight as my throat. “Is that why you kissed me? To prove that you stand a chance against a miscreant with psychopathic tendencies?”
His pupils shrink. “No. I kissed you because I needed to feel what’s worth fighting to my very last breath to protect.” He tips my face higher. “Which will not fucking be at Havrik’s claws,” he all but snarls, sending new shivers across my breastbone.
My lashes flutter as heat submerges my stare, causing Nordin’s face to shimmer like a dream, like a mirage. Except he’s neither. He’s the realest thing in my world.
His mouth caresses my cheek, smearing the hot trail of my tears. “Why are you crying?”
I draw a precarious breath. “Because I love you.”
He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes. “Then smile for me. Smile for us. Smile for the life we will build together.”
I try, but my lips refuse to bend. “I’m afraid, Nordin.”
“To smile?” His voice is so light it tiptoes across my aching heart.
“To rejoice. The world wants to keep us apart.”
“Yet the stars have aligned to keep us together.” He tucks a lock of hair behind my peaked ear before letting his fingers drift down the sensitive shell, eliciting a full-body shiver. “If we weren’t meant to be, Zas, the Norns would’ve tripped me up when I set out to retrieve you in the Wilds.”
“They set Havrik in your path. A frozen fjord. A silver arrowhead. A dragon. And a vampyr.”
His irises become incandescent. “And did any of them stop me?”
I lick my lips. “No.”
“I came out the victor from all those battles.” His fingers swirl down my clenching throat. “Believe in me, Zas. If you’re the prize, then believe I’ll never lose.”
I want to believe he has ascendancy over fate, but he isn’t a God. My marked hesitation tightens the set of his features.
“If you don’t believe in me, then…”
“I do.” My hands climb to his shoulders. “I truly do, but that doesn’t stop me from being scared.”
I pull him down and seal my promise with a second kiss. One so fierce, it makes our first feel like a hesitant whisper.
My blood surges like the northern winds that howl against our mountain ramparts, my pulse breaking into flurries with every click of Nordin’s teeth, every lash of his tongue, every stretch of his lips.
“I’ll fight for us too,” I murmur.
His mouth bends with an appeased smile. “I don’t doubt—”
A growl catapults out of him, and he whips around. My roaring pulse screeches to a halt.
Although Nordin blocks my view of the door, the ribbon of cool air that winds around me like a noose reveals that we’re no longer alone.