Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
By the time the drums faded into a low thrum behind him and the firelight gave way to moon-drenched shadows, Ward wasn’t entirely sure his legs still worked.
His brain was spinning—reeling—from the overload of sensory chaos that had been the feast. The meat still sat heavy in his belly, rich and thick with something that tasted like memory and ancient woods.
The drink burned low and slow in his blood, not numbing, and not quite intoxicating like he’d expected it to be, but it was shifting something inside him.
He hadn’t realized how tightly he’d been gripping reality until it started to give a little under his fingers.
“I’m not sure how to handle all this,” he admitted softly.
“No shit,” Viper replied, but there was no bite to it. Just something contemplative threading through his dry sarcasm. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t figure it out.”
Oh God, is he talking about the mate thing?
Shit.
I don’t even want to think about that right now.
“No. I mean, I don’t have any special skills.” He figured playing dumb might be the best way to ignore the mate thing completely. “I have no military training, and despite what those people think,” he nodded toward the warriors, “I have no magic bloodline and I’m not a druid or a warrior.”
“You gave your blood, just like I did,” Viper interrupted. “Don’t sell yourself short.”
“That was an accident.” He supposed it didn’t matter if he admitted it. “I meant to pull my hand away from your knife, but I wasn’t fast enough.”
“It was brave. You could have just refused. You were scared, but you did it anyway. In my book, that’s brave, even if you think it wasn’t.”
Ward’s throat tightened. That wasn’t something people usually said to him.
Brave was a word reserved for people like Viper or any of the other men in this room.
Brave wasn’t for an academic who cowered behind a boulder and needed saving before he could be skewered like a medieval appetizer.
Yet, when Viper said it—his voice low and certain, not trying to flatter but simply telling the truth as he saw it—it made something in Ward’s chest ache.
He glanced away, embarrassed, fingers rubbing over the edge of where the blue marks were now visible above the wrist bracer the warrior had given him earlier.
“Well… thanks for not thinking I’m an idiot. ”
“Anytime, Sutherland.” Viper chuckled under his breath. “At least for the compliment. Waking up a volcano by reading symbols on rocks like a book, that’s something we gotta discuss.”
“Ward.”
Viper raised his brow and cocked his head to one side.
“I told you. It’s Ward.”
The smallest hint of a smile tugged at the corner of Viper’s mouth. Not his usual wry twist or bark of sardonic humor—this was quieter, almost thoughtful. “Alright. Ward.”
Damn, who knew his saying my name like that could give me the shivers?
Before Ward could figure out what the hell that reaction meant—or why it made his heart trip like it did—one of the Fianna stepped forward, barking something in Old Irish that Ward only half-understood. He motioned with a massive hand. “The lake waits. You’ll rest now. The Crannógs are ready.”
They followed him through the torchlit ringfort of Dun Fianna, past the shadowed gates, and to a path that led them through thick woodland. The trees arched overhead in a canopy of ancient oaks and silver-leafed ash. The ground grew damp beneath their boots as they neared the edge of the lake.
Ward stopped breathing for a heartbeat as the view opened up.
The lake mirrored the moon like a polished obsidian plate.
It was still and quiet, but for the slow ripples of fish breaking the surface.
Rising from the center was a village like something torn from the pages of a time-long-forgotten story.
Crannógs.
Holy shit, they really are crannógs.
Circular wooden homes sat atop stilted platforms above the water, connected by arched rope bridges and narrow walkways that gleamed with softly glowing stones pressed into the wood.
Fires crackled in hanging braziers at the edge of each structure, casting flickers of gold across the water.
Tied currach boats, with their hides stretched over wooden frames, floated next to the massive wooden posts that held up the platform, and the air smelled of peat smoke, salt, and something faintly sweet that he wouldn’t have been able to name if one of the guys held one of those vicious looking guns they carried to his head.
He blinked in stunned disbelief that he was actually seeing real-life crannógs outside of a historical park. “They’re… beautiful.”
“They’re home,” the warrior beside them said with a proud smile. “The lake remembers the old ways, and so do we.”
Is this not the only life they’ve known?
Umm…
He made a mental note to ask Trace about it when the Fianna weren’t around. To insult their guests wasn’t something he wanted to do.
Juice and Trace were led across one bridge to a smaller house tucked close to the shore.
By the way they were wrapped around each other, he was going to guess that they wouldn’t come up for air anytime soon, because it already felt like they didn’t need doors to shut the world out.
They already existed in their own universe.
What would it be like to have someone look at me like those two do each other?
Ward shut that thought down hard. Mate mark or not, he shouldn’t be thinking those thoughts.
He should be focused on how to get them back to their own time, place, or world.
Still, as he watched as Kaze, Reaper, and Zero were pointed toward another, larger circular structure with space for weapons, armor, and brothers-in-arms, a tiny part of him wanted to wallow in the fantasy, soak himself soul deep in connection all the books and movies said came with being the mate of a supernatural being.
But Viper is as human as I am.
Mates and Grá Croí are for this place, not for real life.
He expected them to be pointed to the crannóg next to the others and frowned in confusion when the warrior guiding them motioned them onward and led them deeper into the center of the lake.
“As new Grá Croí’s, you two need more privacy than the others.
” He paused at the lone crannóg at the end of the path. “Here we are.”
Well shit.
How am I supposed to wait this thing out if I have to spend every night beside him?
Viper raised a brow as if the idea of them bunking together was nothing more than logistics.
But Ward’s mouth had gone dry. Of course, they expected them to stay together.
Of course, the universe—or fate, or whatever the hell ruled Tír na nóg—Fionn—had paired him with the man who’d somehow managed to make him feel both safe and like he was teetering on the edge of something that might send his sanity up in flames. All that was needed was a spark.
I’m doomed.
They say he’s my mate.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
How do I deal with that?
They stepped into the last house that looked to be smaller than the others. The door swung inward, revealing a single low- burning hearth and a massive bed piled high with furs sprawled across a woven mat. Viper placed his weapon near the bed and dropped his pack next to it. “I don’t snore. Much.”
Ward gave a quiet laugh. Tiredness slammed into him as if it had been waiting for such a moment to ambush him. “I won’t tell if you don’t. Once I’m asleep, I won’t hear a thing.”
Silence settled between them, awkward enough it made his skin itch.
He couldn’t even look at the bed, never mind do what he really wanted to and collapse in a heap and sleep for a week.
Instead, he walked to the door and stared out, his fingers curling on the rough-hewn frame.
“You ever feel like you’re in a dream that’s not yours?
Like you’ve stepped into someone else’s story…
and you’re not sure if you’re supposed to be the footnote or the twist? ”
Viper came to stand beside him, arms folded across his chest as he leaned against the wall on the opposite side of the door. He didn’t answer right away. Then, he softly said, “Every goddamn day, but today more than most.”
The hearth popped, and firelight caught on Viper’s tattoos—those new marks that mirrored the ones that crept slowly up his forearm.
Ward’s gaze lingered on them for a moment, then slowly rose to meet the other man’s eyes.
Neither of them moved as Viper held his gaze.
For one breathless moment, the war, the myths, the magic…
all of it faded. It was only them. Two men standing in the doorway, drawn to each other, but neither willing to be the first to act on impulses driven by the fire in their blood, the heat in their souls, and the marks swirling up their arms.
Time lost all meaning as they stood in the doorway watching the lake as silence crept slowly across the night.
Eventually, the chill in the air won its battle against the lingering firelight and sank into his bones.
Ward shivered from both exhaustion and cold and stepped back inside.
Viper followed, moving to a corner where his weapons were laid out, almost as if Ward had laid out museum artifacts after a dig.
As Ward sank down onto the bed—because it was that or collapse face-first into the woven floor mat—he watched Viper unsling the rifle from his shoulder with fluid familiarity.
The man knelt beside his gear, unscrewed the suppressor, and detached it from the end of his weapon.
He checked the magazine and racked the slide back with a click that made something in Ward’s chest settle.