Chapter 32
Nordin carries my aggressor out of the lake in his jaw and spits him out at his sister’s feet. Pebbles clink as Tyron’s limp form settles and Nordin morphs back into skin.
As more Vales emerge from the woods, starlight dripping off their human locks, I swim as best I can with one working hand toward the shore. My progress is slow but steady.
Deep panting unsettles the darkness as a lone male rushes past the others.
Sweat glazes Leif’s brow while dread glazes his eyes. “Is he—dead?” His chest expands and shrinks in rapid succession.
Saga crosses her arms. “Funny that you’d inquire after Ty’s condition but not after Zas’s.”
He gestures to me. “I can see sh-she’s alive.”
Like the day of my first blood, Nordin wades back through the lake, stare so daggered it could pierce bone.
The set of his jaw sharpens when he reaches me and beholds my upturned face.
He tips my chin up on a finger that shakes with unbridled fury and rakes his stare over my bruised skin.
I don’t think I bleed, though I doubt it matters to Nordin.
For his ears alone, I murmur hoarsely, “He said Vaelen asked him to bring me to him.” My throat aches from Tyron’s strangulation. “I saw him flying overhead earlier.”
Nordin’s lids spasm as he glances upward at a sky that’s as forebodingly dark as his expression.
“Tyron knows what I am,” I murmur.
Nordin’s eyes flash back to mine.
“I’m sorry for insisting on playing this game. I didn’t think it would devolve…” I snag my lip. Let it go. “It’s my fault that he was acting out of sorts. It’s my fault that he was bitten.”
Through barely separated teeth, Nordin growls, “Let’s be crystal clear about one thing: The bastard’s actions aren’t your fault.”
His thumb sweeps over my cheek. I wince as he skims the spot where Tyron dug in his nails.
“I led the vampyrs to us, Nordin.”
My wolf doesn’t seem to be listening, though, too busy scouring my neck. From his intensifying glower, I suspect he finds the bruise left behind by my pendant. How will he react when he learns that Tyron shattered my wrist?
A small breath leaves my lungs when he scoops me up and pivots. “I can walk.” My tone must sound too meek because he doesn’t set me down.
Though perhaps he doesn’t put me down because he senses I might try to run toward more trouble. With a sigh, I rest my cheek against his thundering chest.
Under his breath, he mutters, “Sorry it took me so much time to get to you. I was on my way when my father asked to see me.”
I itch to ask him why, when a possibility brushes my mind. One that worsens my wariness of Ulf. What if my uncle called Nordin away to buy Tyron time to abduct me?
“Bite mark’s fresh,” Saga says from where she’s now crouched at Tyron’s side. She’s got his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
I squint at the two dark points on the inside of his forearm, my heart vaulting into my throat, filling my palate with frenzied beats. Tyron must’ve found Kjell.
“Vaelen.” Nordin delivers the name like a hunter pronouncing the identity of his next prey.
“Vaelen?” Saga echoes.
“Tyron met with Kjell’s brother,” he explains.
“Why?” Saga straightens.
I skirt the real reason with a half-truth. “Venom, apparently, sharpens the senses.”
“No. That’s not—” Leif stops talking brusquely.
His earlier promise twangs like an overtightened lyre string.
“You were in on his plan…” I croak as Nordin finally sets me down, banding one arm around my waist and gripping my hip.
I can’t tell if he holds me to steady my balance or to keep himself from remodeling Leif’s deceitful face.
Saga looks between the three of us before snapping, “You were saying, Leif? That’s not…”
Leif pushes his black braids off his shoulder, then kneads his nape. “Ty was only trying to aid the pack. Vaelen promised the Sons of Odin would retreat if Zaskja was brought to him.”
“You knew?” Saga explodes, pitching upright.
Leif winces. “He was trying to aid the pack,” he repeats, as though harming one to help the rest is a valid excuse. “Vaelen wanted to use her as a bargaining chip to get his brother back. That’s all it was.”
“All it was? How dare you?! How fucking dare you?” She socks him in the shoulder.
“No one was supposed to get hurt,” he mumbles through a grimace.
“Just abducted and gifted to the enemy?” Saga deadpans.
I cradle my smarting wrist to my chest.
“Vampyrs haven’t harmed a single shifter,” Leif counters. “Not on purpose, anyway.”
“Get out of my sight,” she hisses. “Now.” Then she steps past him and hollers, “Who else was in on this?”
I keep her father’s name from trespassing, even though it teeters on my tongue. Just like it has every time I’ve been alone with Mor lately.
“In on what?” one of the bystanders—Vanoo’s youngest cousin, Dov—asks.
“It was only me and Tyron,” Leif murmurs. “No one else.”
Saga whips around. “I told you to leave, didn’t I?”
His grimace is the last thing I witness before he shifts and gallops away.
“Dov, carry Tyron back to the longhouse,” Nordin commands before dropping his voice and murmuring to Saga, “Go with him.”
And then, arm still curled around my waist, he rakes me forward, past onlookers harboring expressions marred by varying degrees of antipathy.
Right before I lower my gaze, I meet Nika’s.
A combination of shock and disgust contorts the pretty oval of her face.
Is her sympathy for me or Tyron, though?
Halfway home, Nordin notices my raised arm. “Why are you holding your wrist?”
“I think it’s broken.”
He pivots and delicately pries it out of my hold. When he twists it, I squash my lips to stifle a whimper. His expression is so murderous that I worry he may scalp Tyron without a trial.
He calls forth his wolf talons and slices a strip of fabric off the hem of his tunic, which he ties as a sling around my neck. If only his wolf saliva could fix broken bones, but it sadly only works on skin.
As he tends to me, I say, “We need to release Kjell, Nordin.”
“No.”
“That’s already two attempts on my life. How many more—”
I go quiet because he’s taken my face between his hands and tipped it. When he leans forward, my heart thrashes. Kissing me out in the open would only aggravate the situation.
Thankfully he keeps his mouth off mine.
“Gustafson will be scalped before dawn.” His decree warms my gaping lips but chills the rest of me. “I dare anyone to so much as try to harm you after witnessing his punishment.”
Even though I threatened Tyron with doing just that earlier, the news that it might be his fate makes my heart squeeze. “He wasn’t himself, Nordin. He was under the influence of the venom and worried about going hungry.”
“He permitted a vampyr to feed off him, which is as addictive as henbane and punishable all the same.” After a beat, he adds, “My parents thought he could change, but he’s as rotten as his deadbeat father.”
Though I’m soaked to the bone, I somehow still feel the frigid water bleed from my hair down my spine. “But scalping…”
Nordin’s eyebrows dip. “Why are you trying to reduce his sentence, Zas?”
“Because I’m afraid it’ll just infuriate the pack. Besides, if I hadn’t set foot in the Wilds—”
“If you want to pin the blame on someone, love, you pin it on me.” His words are quiet but edged. “If I’d explained the intense bloodthirst vampyrs have for valkyries… If I hadn’t tried to push you away by accepting a betrothal to another woman, you would’ve stayed put.”
“I can take responsibility for my actions,” I say, right as a twig snaps nearby.
Though the air is as black as dragon scales, I don’t miss the twin pinpricks of light emanating from a prowler.
“Has Mor heard about Ty’s attack?” I ask, bringing my attention back to him, even though he’s staring steadily at the wolf watching us.
“If she hasn’t, she will soon,” he murmurs, as the lurker finally scampers off.
I think of the list I burned earlier and add one more pro: No more attempts on my mortal life.
What choice do I genuinely have but to set Kjell free if I want a future in the North with Nordin?
The Council rules that Tyron’s attack was a misguided act of folly committed under the influence of venom. He incurs punishment, but since no one died at his hand, not in the way Nordin demanded.
Sigrid volunteers to trim Tyron’s hair. As she does so, my aggressor stares straight ahead of him, at nothing and no one. In embarrassment?
I get my answer when all his locks have settled around his stool like dead snakes, and he finally blinks out of his daze. As he stands, he rolls his neck, which is still festooned in dried blood, then squares his shoulders and locks eyes with me.
There’s no remorse within the green depths. No shame either.
“Apologize to my niece on your way out,” Ulf says before adjourning the trial.
Nordin, who stands at my side, pops his jaw. “Un-fucking-believable,” he mutters.
His father cuts him a look.
One that must be accompanied by a command through the mind link because Nordin’s stare tapers in rage. “No,” he snaps, then growls out the same word, the veins in his hands bulging from the hard fists he makes.
“You’ll leave the five valleys for a week, starting now.” Ulf’s voice thunders with his Alpha pitch.
My breath hitches.
Nordin starts to shape a “no,” but it comes out as a cross between a hiss and a pant. “I’ll keep my fucking distance.”
“One week, Son.” Ulf sounds drained now.
“Far.” Saga sucks in a sharp breath. “That’s…”
My heartbeats are so loud they create a dull hum against my eardrums. Is Ulf sending Nordin out of the valley to keep him from scalping Tyron, or is he doing it to make sure his son can’t intervene should anyone else try to do away with me?
Nordin shakes his head as though he can’t believe he’s the one being expelled. And then he pivots on his heel, his wild eyes setting on my face. He stares like he wants to say something, anything, or maybe just take me with him. If only I could leave…
My mother tightens her grip on my hand. “I won’t let her out of my sight,” she assures him.
One week. I won’t see Nordin for a whole week. I didn’t think I could hate my uncle more, but I was wrong. How could he do this?
My wolf steps back, then flips around and stalks out of the longhouse.
Saga casts me a worried glance as she goes after her brother, trailed by Vanoo. I hope neither lets Nordin out of their sight.
A throat clearing sheers my attention off the settling fur curtain.
Tyron stands before me, wearing an expression that’s so brazenly relaxed it bunches my shoulders. “Forgive me for my willingness to sacrifice you to preserve our pack from hunger, Zaskja.”
My lid spasms at his sorry excuse for an apology.
“Approach my daughter with ill intent again”—Mor tightens her grip on my hand, which she’s been strangling since blustering into the longhouse, seconds after me—“and I’ll be the one holding the blade to your head next. Do I make myself clear, Tyron Gustafson?”
His features remain entirely tranquil as he gives my mother a vague nod and walks toward Leif, who lost one braid for having aided and abetted him.
At least, the latter won’t be able to shift until the next full moon.
As for Tyron, one moon cycle won’t be nearly enough to grow all his hair back.
Not even if the sky is cloudless and he sits out in the open from dusk till dawn.
He’ll need a minimum of three, perhaps four.
Only Alpha tresses can regrow in the span of one lunar cycle.
As Mor releases me to have a word with her brother, I wander toward the beam of life. My heart catches, and I whirl.
Although my uncle and mother are still arguing, he must feel my stare, for he glances up and gives me the barest nod. One I take to mean, Your turn.
I twist back around and reread the inscription to make sure I didn’t hallucinate the altered number.
ZASKJA STORMSSON—17TH DAY OF TWELFTH MOON, YEAR 764
764, not 765!
When did he change it? After he heard the abduction didn’t go as planned, or before Tyron tried to carry me to Vaelen? Does this also mean Ulf spoke to the Ravine Jarl?
I start toward the door but stop because Tyron is also walking toward it with Leif and five other shifters.
All toss me bitter glares, save for Tyron, whose stare is so devoid of emotion that it makes it the most chilling of all.
Whether it’s the venom distorting his temperament or a deep-rooted hatred surfacing, one thing’s certain: I can’t afford to lower my guard.
“Your dream is about to come true,” Mor says as she traps my hand and tows me out of the longhouse.
“Which dream would that be?”
From the accent of her flush and the anger vibrating her pitch, I fathom it isn’t stepping out with Nordin as a couple.
It’s only once we’ve reached our house, and she’s slammed the door shut, that she says, “The one about going to Ljosam?r.”