Chapter 34
Nordin stoops to penetrate my little hollow. I try to read the level of trouble I’m in from his expression and posture.
Oddly enough, he seems calm.
I wait for him to speak, but he just moves toward me, gait fluid and strong, then takes a seat beside me and stretches out his tremendously long legs.
The silence endures for so long that I end up shattering it. “What did your father say?”
“About what, exactly? He said a great many things.”
“About why he changed my birth year.”
Nordin reaches for the hand with which I wring my woolen skirt and spreads my fingers with his before pressing our palms onto his lap.
“He said he did it to keep me out of trouble.”
My uncle…such a formidable liar.
“He told the Council, and now the rest of the pack, that he received information from a reliable source, that you were born in the fall of ’65, not ’66.”
Did Ulf also tell Nordin that I am this “reliable source”? I assume not, since Nordin doesn’t bring up my involvement. I let him believe his father did it out of paternal love.
“What about Havrik?” I ask.
The angles of Nordin’s face whittle. “He went home.”
“And his demands?”
He moves his eyes off mine, tracing the opalescent chinks in the wall. “Will remain irrelevant and unmet because he’s not going to steal you or my immortality.” He tugs on my hand, paring me away from the wall at my back and guiding me onto his lap.
Once I sit astride him, he asks, “How’s your wrist?”
“Healing.”
His lips thin, and so does his stare.
To distract him from the memory of how my bone shattered, I steal my hand from his, clasp his shoulder, and ask, “Has your father given us his blessing?”
He spreads his fingers on my waist. “We don’t need his blessing.”
Does that mean he didn’t ask for it because he intends to keep our relationship hushed, or that Ulf didn’t give it? I throttle the question, not wanting to spoil the moment, since neither reply will suit me.
Instead, I lean over and brush another question against his mouth. “What shall we do now that you can lawfully taint and tempt my ripe body with wanton desire?”
Nordin cradles my cheek with one hand, staring so deeply into my eyes that it feels like he’s reeling up my soul. “Just because a piece of wood says you’re older, we both know that’s a lie.”
Frustration crimps the edges of my heart. “No, Nordin, we both don’t know this.” I lean back. “Everyone assumes I was five, but unless I came through that portal with my birth date inked on my skin, then no one actually knows when the Hel I was born.”
I try to climb off his lap, but he tightens his grip on my waist.
“How do you think it’ll look that your birth year miraculously changes, and the very next day, we step out as a couple?”
Bad.
Convenient.
The fight drains out of me. “So I remain your dirty little secret?”
His eyebrows drop low, darkening his eyes. “Don’t call yourself that.” He presses a lock of hair behind my peaked ear, giving the outer shell an almost harsh stroke.
When a shiver zips up my spine, he does it again, and again, my body reacts. “What should I call myself? And don’t say your cousin, because that’ll tick me off.”
“How about you call yourself…” The hand lodged on my waist slips to the small of my back and nudges me forward, grinding my center against his. “The love of my”—he moves me against his bulge again—“entire”—his hand presses me forward again—“life.”
Like my core, my heart clenches, because I wrote almost those exact words in one of my journals.
He leans forward and peppers my lax jaw with kisses. “Why did you seize up?”
“I wrote those words in one of my journals. One of the ones you… One of the ones…” I breathe out choppily, letting the end of my sentence hang there, unfinished.
He sinks his fingers into my hair. “I know. They terrified me at first, but now”—he nudges my nose with his—“I fucking love them. Almost as much as I love the woman who wrote them.”
My heart scrambles to pocket his declaration.
“I missed you this past week,” he murmurs. “Did you miss me?”
I nod, incapable of forming words.
In tandem, he applies pressure on the back of my skull and the small of my back. When our centers rub, a small mewl drops from my lips.
I press my palm against his chest, against the leisurely pounding muscle. How is he so calm while I’m a mess? “Wait, Nordin… Wait.”
He stops moving, and although his hands don’t lift off my body, he ceases to apply pressure.
“I need to understand what…” I lick my lips, trying to catch my breath. “What the rules are. I get we don’t flaunt our relationship, but behind closed doors… What happens there?”
“We keep our clothes on, for I don’t think I’d be strong enough to keep my hands off you if we were to have a repeat of the steam hut.” He pushes a strand of hair behind my ear, then slants his mouth over mine and takes it in a kiss that blanks my mind.
What further blanks my mind is when he grinds me against him.
I pull back with a harsh pant. “Is this a good idea?”
His brow furrows. “Is what a good idea?”
I nod to our joined centers.
“Terrible.”
“Should I climb off your lap?”
His cheeks hollow as though his reply causes him actual pain. “You should.”
Yet I don’t.
Not even after he lowers both hands to the cold, hard floor and forms fists. “I wish I were a better man.”
“Better?” I scoff. “Nordin Stormsson, you’re an incredible man.”
“An incredible man wouldn’t fantasize about a girl he helped raise.”
“You didn’t help raise me.” I trace his harsh cheekbone, then knuckle his scooped cheek. “You helped shape me. There’s a difference.”
I know him by heart, yet every time I take him in, I seem to discover something new. The day we played Rafbo, it was a tiny birthmark on his left earlobe. Tonight, it’s that diminutive groove on the underside of his chin that he rubbed the day he gifted me a new bow and arrow.
“What has you so entranced?” he asks.
“Your scar.” I poke it.
“Ah…” A sad smile bows his lips. “Bjorn gave that one to me.”
My hand drops from his face in shock, for the only thing that can permanently scar a shifter is the very same metal that can rid them of magic. “Your brother harmed you with silver?”
“Not on purpose. It was two days before my fourteenth birthday—the day of my first shift. He was on patrol duty in the Ravine tunnel. Varganson had just come into power, and I’d heard my father and the Council discussing how they feared he wouldn’t stop at taking over the Ravines.
I was scared for Bjorn and wanted to go patrol with him, so I borrowed a crossbow from the longhouse and raced out to Meadowpoint.
That was the moment Fenrir chose to turn me into a wolf. What poor timing…
“Bjorn didn’t realize it was me and let his arrow fly. Knocked me out of fur instantly. My poor brother. He became as pale as the moon.” Nordin sighs. “Whenever he starts to fade from my memory, a graze of the scar brings him back.”
“I wish my scars reminded me of someone I loved instead of my tawdry common sense.”
My comment darkens Nordin’s entire expression. “Accidents aren’t a lack of common sense.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, not feeling like spoiling the moment by discussing my burns. “How was it? Outside the valley walls?”
“Lonely. Quiet.” Nordin combs back a lock of my hair, then rests his fingers on my spine. “I didn’t find your dagger or your bag. I’m so sorry, Zas.”
“It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you came home to me.”
“How did I get so lucky?” He draws me forward, only relaxing his grip once our lips collide.
Yes, collide. The kiss is brutal, demanding, all teeth and need. When he grinds me against his thick, hard shaft, I lock eyes with him. His irises blaze so hot I half believe they could torch away the fabric on our bodies.
“How do I stop this?” His chest swells with a sentiment that lends his diction the texture of anger, even though it’s all pent-up frustration.
I smooth a white lock off his brow, feeling the bulge in his trousers pulse beneath me, still painfully rigid. I’m tempted to rock my hips and chase our collective relief but force myself to climb off his lap. “Like this.”
With a sigh, he curls his arm around my waist and tucks me against his side. “How many days to go?”
“Two hundred and…” Since I stopped counting, it takes me a second to complete the number. “Eighty-one.”
He lets his head fall back against the wall with a muted groan.
“Tell me more about your week.” I pillow my cheek against his arm. “Did you get a lot of soul-searching done?”
“No. My soul did not need any searching. It already knows what and who it wants.” He rests his mouth on the top of my head.
“So, what did you do?”
“Saga didn’t tell you?”
“She was very vague.”
“I used my imposed dismissal to map out the Wilds. That land needs to be ours. And I won’t rest until it becomes so.”
My pulse ramps up because the only way to take land is… “By battle?”
“No land is ever conquered without a fight. But this is a fight we can win.”
I frown and hinge my neck back to meet his stare. “Against dragons?”
“We’re wolves, Zas. We might not be winged, but we’re just as mighty.”
“They have a weapon they can use from afar. You might be powerful, but you can’t exactly pop your claws out like projectiles.”
He bristles. “I knew you didn’t have much faith in me, but I didn’t realize how little you have in my kind.”
“Don’t do that,” I snap. “Don’t twist my words. I have faith in you and your kind, but the day you fought that dragon, Vanoo got hurt.”
“His hair has already grown back. The only person who got hurt that day was Blaka.”
“Taeric wants him back; you want the Wilds. Perhaps, instead of resorting to war, you could make a trade?”
“Skarnir won’t risk leverage over sentiment. Besides, as long as the Wilds are no-man’s-land, they’re not his to trade.”
“He swore he’d retreat once Kjell was freed.”
Nordin’s eyebrows draw low. “He swore?” His hand comes to rest on my neck and grips it as though Skarnir were standing at the entrance of our cave, about to burst inside to snatch me. “Zas, tell me you didn’t interact with the Vampyr King again.”
“I didn’t. Koppar told me. There was a Council vote.”
He absorbs my explanation, sitting with it for a long beat before relief finally softens the lines of his face and body. “Once we hand Kjell back, the Sons of Odin will retreat, but it’ll be temporary. They’ll never fully leave the North until we make it ours. Which is why we need to go to war.”
“Lives are lost during wars.”
“I have a strategy that would spare our people.” Nordin twines one of his hands through my hair to support my upturned head, then shifts his nearer. This time, his kiss is gentle, molten like the metal I work into ornaments and weapons.
When we come up for air, I ask, “Tell me your strategy.”
“We free Kjell. The vampyrs retreat. We sweep in, and the five Jarls mark up our new borders with their piss to erect new wards.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“Because it is. The only reason we didn’t conquer more land before is because we had a truce in place, but the vampyrs broke it.”
Worry abrades my throat, reducing my murmur to a faint rasp. “If anything happens to you…”
“So long as you’re waiting for me, there’s nothing in this world that’ll keep me from coming home. No silver blade…no winged beast…no fanged monster.”