Chapter 32 Dagny
Dagny
“Look! Emilia is staring after Arctos.”
“She’s staring at his neck,” Torben muttered. “Dreaming of a bite. Why are we even watching them? And why don’t you despise the vampire on sight?”
Dagny lifted her shoulders. “After the strigoi, that little leech appears almost cuddly.” In truth, she wanted something—anything—to change for Arctos, the flinty chief who hid his deep unhappiness behind command and discipline.
Over the weeks since the vampire had arrived, maybe something was changing.
Torben raised a brow. “I fear my warrior mate has a romantic’s heart.”
“You love my heart.”
“By the gods, I do.”
She gazed up at his earnest expression. Wind teased his blond hair, his dark-brown eyes clear and steady. My mate by fate. My love by choice. And that love had multiplied. She rubbed the big curve of her belly.
But lately Torben had grown secretive, protective to the point of smothering. He treated her pregnancy as if it were an affliction instead of a blessing. All because of one careless whisper from a member of the clan, a warning that still shadowed their joy.
Movement in the ravine below drew Dagny’s attention. Queen Yrsa descended the path with her guards, a storm wrapped in furs, to greet Arctos and his wife. The great queen’s power blazed beside the vampiric figure before her.
When Dagny glanced back at Torben, she found his focus narrowed on Yrsa. He often watched her that way—pensive and wary.
The queen’s recent choices had confounded many. Yet Dagny sensed a deeper game: a regent’s long strategy that only Yrsa could see. So Dagny gave her the benefit of the doubt. She always had. After all, if not for the queen’s summons to court, Dagny might never have met her mate.
And if not for Yrsa receiving divine powers at the Channeler Stone, Berserkers would be extinct.
Once the queen moved on, Arctos and Emilia passed below, the vampire’s gaze taking in his interactions with others.
“See that?” Dagny nudged Torben. “Emilia’s noting how the clan admires her husband, and she’s reassessing him.”
The warriors they passed straightened with respect. A few female gazes followed Arctos with more than admiration. He thought his scars made him unlovable; Dagny knew better. He simply intimidated mortals and immortals alike.
“When you speak to Arctos, do you sense his feelings toward her have changed over these weeks?”
Torben shook his head. “He was emphatic. He sees her as a parasite.”
“So that’s why he never brings her to feasts.” Arctos always left the princess behind with a guard posted at his den.
Those clan gatherings had once been rare, but Yrsa now hosted them weekly and would hold one tonight. To keep us content in the absence of war, Dagny suspected. She had slowed her pace for the babe, but afterward…gods help any enemies she came across.
She’d been born to fight, could only be sidelined for so long before she lost control of her Berserkerage. Her inner bear was slow to rouse, yet once risen, only obliteration could satisfy it.
“Maybe he just needs distance,” Torben said. “Yrsa sees to it they’re rarely apart. The leech is always underfoot.”
“And yet he eats little, drinks less, and barely speaks at the festivities. He’s haunted. What could preoccupy a warrior chief so completely?”
“Defense. He’s convinced she’s an infiltrator on a mission to destroy us. I share that conviction.”
It did outweigh the other: that she was the sole, decent vampire of her entire kingdom, and she just happened to scheme to reach their queendom.
“In any case, his desiring a bloodthief isn’t possible,” Torben added. “Not after what he saw done to his family. Those vampires drained his loved ones dry.”
And the same gang had beheaded Torben’s. At least he hadn’t seen his parents’ bodies. But she knew he’d imagined their deaths in a thousand gruesome lights.
Maybe a vampire living among them is too much to ask.
Unless she truly was different. “Emilia eats food though. You told me they share meals.” Vampires usually turned to blood before twenty, which meant Emilia had gone years without.
“For now. When her thirst rises, she’ll turn. A fed cub and a spring bear are two different beasts.” He exhaled. “She’s likely here for sabotage, and once her task is done, she’ll flee back to Bloodreach.” Arctos had posted extra guards over the food stores and wells.
Dagny tapped her lip. “Hmm.”
“‘Hmm’ what, wife?”
“Say Bloodreach dispatched her as a saboteur. Plans can change. When a female meets a good male, things…shift. And Arctos is very compelling.”
“Compelling is my cousin then?” Jealousy flashed in his eyes.
“There, there, my love. I’m taken.”
“Can we speak of something other than this farce of a marriage?” he muttered—then froze as Arctos’s big hand touched the vampire’s lower back to guide her along the trail. Emilia jolted as if shocked; even Arctos frowned at his own impulse.
In a knowing tone, Dagny said, “I hope that the princess is changing, because your cousin certainly is.”
Arctos’s hand lingered a heartbeat too long before he snatched it away. He tipped his face toward the bright sky above, as though it might absolve him.
Torben said quietly, “If there’s any…softening between them, it’ll vanish when the nymphs arrive later.”
Dagny’s brows drew together. “If Emilia feels anything for him, that will gut her.”
Torben shrugged. “Males have needs.”
Dagny gave a derisive snort. “Only males? Pity. I was going to invite you to bed to assuage my own, but apparently I don’t have them.”
He fought a grin. “Perhaps I misspoke.”
***
Torben
“My relaxation is not shared with you.”
“Huh?” He blinked, dragging himself from thought.
After making love, he and Dagny lay entwined in bed, staring at the fire in their room.
He rested his hand over her belly, waiting for the distinct flutter that always humbled him.
“I’m relaxed,” he lied. He hated deceiving her, but he wouldn’t burden her with his worries.
Not when she was carrying their child. He wanted to cocoon them within his arms forever, protecting them from any harm.
She turned her face toward him, cheeks pinkened, sky-blue eyes luminous. My whole heart, he thought. He’d once believed himself incapable of love after the slaughter of his family. Then Dagny had come, prying open his emotions with her laugh, her confidence, her strength.
Love had grown defiantly like a sapling between rocks.
“Do you worry about my due date?” she asked.
“No,” he said softly. “You’ll meet it like every battle, fierce and victorious.” In her village, his warrioress had slain so many strigoi that she’d begun teaching others her tricks and traps.
And her Berserkerage was a thing of beauty—slow to catch flame but then burning like a Ravinelun forge to smite all her enemies.
“Then what troubles your mind tonight, love?”
He hesitated. He could never tell her the truth: Yrsa. The queen’s behavior had grown erratic, her judgment suspect.
Arctos’s vampire wife had claimed that Bloodreach was undefended. So why hadn’t Yrsa struck? Why leave Arctos and others teetering on the edge of ohalla? None of it made sense.
He’d sought answers quietly—from nymphs, Fey, and a few demons—but all he found was silence. Fear. None dared speak against the Berserkers’ first channeler. Age had only empowered her Berserkerage until it verged on monstrous.
At last, he said, “I think about Arctos and his wife.” Not quite a lie. Those two were caught in Yrsa’s machinations. To what end? Why couldn’t Arctos see? “You’ve got a kinder view of Emilia than I do.”
“Yes,” Dagny said. “Because his view of her is changing. Do you not trust his judgment?”
No. Not of late. Fealty had blinded him. Or else I’m the crazy one, nursing suspicions. “Maybe I’m seeing ghosts where there are none,” he murmured. But he had another’s future to think of now.
Dagny rose up and the cover dipped, revealing her swollen breasts and belly. All her pregnancy changes—from the darkened pink of her areolas to her brow-raising cravings—fascinated him. “Then let me meet her myself.”
He sighed. “We’ve discussed this. It’s out of the question.”
Her raised brows said, Try to stop me. “I want to see how she acts with him in their home,” she pressed. “I’ll be able to tell you much.”
He knew that tone, would only be able to stall her for a time. “Let’s concentrate on this babe for now. After that? Have at it. Agreed?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Very well.”
Under his palm, the babe kicked with a small, insistent foot. “Our little son or daughter respects no bedtime.”
In a quieter voice, she said, “Hulda predicted a boy.”
The mention of the clan’s “seeress” further soured his mood. She was no soothsayer or Sorceri, yet the woman had slinked up to Dagny, whispering about what she’d read when she’d cast her bones: that Dagny would never bear another child, not in all her immortal years.
Why would she say that? Dagny was now nigh invincible, couldn’t die in labor. But the babe…
If they lost their child, would Dagny’s grief ensure she never had another?
He forced the thought away. “Many of Hulda’s predictions have failed to come to pass.”
Dagny said, “And many have come true.”
“She’s no seer. Just a snoop who uses her bones for cover.” He’d seen her skulking in shadows, eavesdropping. She probably knew more of Yrsa’s secrets than any living soul. But he couldn’t trust her enough to risk his life by asking.
“The midwife declared you and our child in perfect health,” he said instead. Yet she too had told them signs pointed to a boy. If so, Dagny had chosen Koda for his name. “And I trust that midwife more than a bones caster.”
He told himself this often. Still, in dark hours, he dreaded loss, imagining Dagny’s grief like a wound that could never close.
She studied his expression. “You’re hiding things from me. Don’t. I’m not fragile. I can still give you a challenge in the sword pit.”
“That you can.” The urge to confide rose again—they usually told each other everything—then the babe kicked once more, as if warning his papa to be silent.
Torben smiled instead. “After this birth, I’ll unleash a torrent of secrets that will shock you.”
For now, the sight of her lush, fertile body and her eyes lit with adoration aroused him once more.
Her grin curved slow. “What else will you unleash?”
“The positions we used to revel in.”
Mischief in her expression, she said, “If you have a problem with spooning me, we can cut out all that business.”
He hastily said, “No problem, woman. None.”
She rolled to her side, guiding his arm around her. “Then kiss my nape and mate me softly, my love. Afterward, as I drift off for a nap, whisper in my ear that you can’t live without me.”
So Torben did.