Chapter 26
Someone’s here.
Someone’s caught us.
May it be Mor. She’ll yell, but she’ll keep our secret.
“I can’t decide whether to hurl or to…or to…” Saga gulps in air as though she truly were about to throw up.
I’m glad that I can’t see her, and that she can’t see me.
“How could you, Nord? And you, Zas?” Her disgust wafts through the forge’s air, tainting my fragile joy.
I want to melt through the woodgrain of my table and vanish into the abounding shadows. Or better yet, into the kiln. I’ve never wanted to disappear more than in that moment.
“Sorry I lied to you, Saga,” Nordin says, his big body vibrating with adrenaline.
She snorts. “I bet you’re sorry.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, willing this not to be real.
“Only for my lie. Not that you found out.” Nordin’s answer startles my lids wide. “I dislike lying, particularly to you.”
“Are you expecting me to clap and tell you both how giddy I am that you’re hooking up? You’re family! It’s wrong on so many levels. How could you?” she repeats.
Nordin’s leathers creak as he squares his shoulders, self-possession restored. “Are you done?”
Saga snort-laughs. “Am I done?” She sounds unhinged.
I gnaw on my lip while rolling one of the loosened stitches she sewed into my gloves days ago.
“You do realize Zas isn’t twenty-one?”
“How old were you when you slept with that Glacier shifter during the summer equinox? How old was he?”
Saga was nineteen and the male was a century older. However, unlike Nordin, the Glacier wasn’t vying to become Alpha.
“How do you know about that?” She steps closer, peering around her brother. “Did you tell him, Zas?”
Nordin places a protective hand on my thigh.
“I would never have betrayed your secret,” I say.
Her lids slit. “Someone did.”
“I heard it from Lenora’s brother,” Nordin says. “He came to tell me, because he was worried there’d be repercussions.”
Saga’s lips remain stretched tight. “It was consensual.”
Nordin locks eyes with me. “So is this.”
She bounces her chin between Nordin and me. “Except you two are related.”
“No, Saga. We’re not,” Nordin replies calmly.
She plants both hands on her flared hips as though to find something solid to hold on to. “What about your dream of becoming Alpha, Nord? Did that slip your mind when you slipped your tongue into Zaskja’s mouth?”
If only I’d waited until my twenty-first birthday to give him my journals…
Nordin finally pulls away from the table. He takes one step forward, then pivots and holds out his hand to me. Once my feet kiss the ground, his fingers spear through mine and fold, anchoring me to his side. “Nothing slipped my mind.”
“You broke the codex.”
“Our desire isn’t wanton, Saga,” he argues.
“For fuck’s sake, Nord, it doesn’t matter if you’re both consenting. The fact remains that you’re of age”—she swings an arm in my direction—“and Zas is not!”
Unease has me shifting from foot to foot.
“You can accept it or report us.” Nordin’s pitch remains low and steady. “It’s ultimately your choice.”
“My choice?” she shrills, knuckles whitening. “I report you, and I lose you both. I already lost Bjorn.” She huffs in annoyance. In anger. In frustration. “Since when—” Her throat dips. “How long…?” Her voice is still rough but no longer abrasive.
“Since tonight,” I say, deciding that all else shouldn’t count to the world even though it counts to me.
“Do you know that yesterday, Nika asked me if something was going on between the two of you, and I laughed in her face? I said: He’s like a father figure to her.” She grimaces, but not more than I do.
“I’ve never considered Nordin like a father. Why would you say that?”
“He found you and sort of raised you with Eira.” She tosses a hand in the air. “It just came out.” She scrutinizes our twined hands.
I shudder.
Saga heaves in a deep inhale. “Couldn’t you have waited a year?”
I glance up at Nordin to find his face inclined toward me and his stare resting on mine. “We tried.”
“You didn’t look like you were trying all that hard…” she grumbles. “Fuck, Nord. If anyone else had walked in…” She drags her palms down the sides of her face. “Eleven lunar cycles, you guys. That’s all you needed to wait.”
Not for the first time, I remind them, “Perhaps I’m already twenty-one?”
The siblings exchange a look that tells me I’m reaching.
I bristle. “If you know something about me that I don’t, then I’d appreciate—”
“We don’t,” Nordin says. “But the Council recorded your birth as the seventeenth day of Twelfth Moon. There’s little to no chance they’ll agree to look into the matter before issuing a condemnation.”
“Little is not no chance,” I point out.
Nordin gives my hand a gentle squeeze. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Not anymore.”
I pivot to face him, frustration simmering beneath my skin. “Challenging Havrik isn’t the solution.”
“Challenging Havrik?” Saga shrills.
Distant howls penetrate the forge, cutting our conversation short. When Nordin’s fingers clench around mine, I suspect something sinister is afoot.
“Is it Havrik? Is he back?” I ask, my stomach snarling into more knots.
“No.” Nordin raises my hand to his mouth and brushes a kiss to my leather-clad knuckles before letting go. “I’ll see you in a bit. Saga, get Zas home?”
“Which home would that be?” she asks.
Nordin turns on the threshold of the forge with a cocked brow. “Glad you’ve accepted us being together, but tonight, hers.” And then he’s melting into fur and bounding off.
“What happened?” I ask, my voice full of nerves.
“Kjell bit Tyron,” Saga tells me.
“Kjell’s awake?”
“I’m guessing as much. Unless vamps sleep-bite…”
I suck in air. “Will Ty become a vampyr?”
“No. Wolves can’t be turned.” She side-eyes me.
“Valkyries can’t either, for that matter.
Only humans. The bite will probably put him out of commission while his body combats the infection, though.
The problem will be Kjell. Once a vamp gets a taste for supernatural blood, they can slip into a frenzy.
Not to mention…other weird stuff can happen. ”
“Like…?” I prompt her, my heartbeats snarling.
“Like a mind link.”
I gape. “Are you talking about a mating bond?”
“Yes, without the lovey-dovey crap thrown into the mix. Speaking of Tyron and mating bonds… I imagine your crush on him was fabricated?”
I search her stare for condemnation. Find none. “I couldn’t exactly tell you I had a crush on your brother, now, could I?”
She turns toward me and takes both my hands in hers. “Yes, you could have, Zas. You can tell me everything.”
I cant my face. “How would you have reacted?”
“Probably like I did right now, but I would’ve come around to it.”
“You wouldn’t have begged me to stop thinking of your brother in that way and insisted that my crush would pass?”
She scoots her lips to one side. “It was just a shock to the eyes. I’ve recovered. I think.” The grimace that seizes her expression coaxes a laugh from my throat.
“Zas?” She dips her chin, looking squarely at me now. “I don’t want to be a killjoy, but what happens if he gets a mating bond?”
“He says he’ll reject her.”
The uncertainty that glints in her expression waters the doubt already buried in me, making it poke through the soil of my thoughts and surge. “I know it’s rare, but it happens. Look at Nika.”
“Look at Havrik,” Saga counters, reminding me why Nika rejected her mate.
“I’m sure there are a few hateful females.”
“I suppose,” she says, sounding far too dubious for comfort.
Nordin may insist he’ll reject a mate, but odds are, he won’t. I need to come to terms with that. But how does one come to terms with love being finite?
Saga must sense she’s rattled me, because she pulls me into a hug.
“I didn’t mean to sadden you. Odds are, he’ll never have one.
” Though she sketches soothing circles on my back, I feel the contrary of soothed.
“Maybe the reason he doesn’t have one is because you two are meant to be.
Maybe that’s why he’s the one who found you in the Wilds so many years ago.
And the reason Mr. Control-Freak surrendered to the call of the flesh. ”
“That’s not why…” I draw back from her embrace, futilely palming my collarbone to ease the flutter of my pulse.
“When he mentioned challenging Havrik, I reminded him that the Ravine would play dirty, so even if Nordin were the strongest of the two, he wouldn’t necessarily win.
And then I told him that he wasn’t the sort to breach the law.
I think he kissed me to prove he was capable of it.
Oh, Saga…” I clutch my elbows. “We can’t let him go through with this. ”
“No, we can’t.”
“How do we stop him?”
“Short of stabbing him with silver on the regular to keep him from shifting, I can’t think of a way…” Her tongue pokes out of the corner of her mouth. “Hmm.”
“What?”
“I could trim a teeny piece of his hair after each full moon.”
“He won’t be able to shift.”
“Yes, but he also won’t be allowed to challenge anyone to a duel, much less an Alpha. Also, it’ll keep him out of the Wilds, so away from vampyrs and dragons, since no werewolf in their right mind will go bounding outside the wards in skin. The way I see it, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”
Yet I’m reluctant to encourage it, because there’s no way in Hel Nordin will view his sister’s act as an attempt to shield him from danger.
Fortunately, Saga doesn’t need to curb Nordin’s ambition, for someone beats her to it.