Chapter 16 Hanne
HANNE
The next few days were quiet.
A shadow darker than the blackness passed overhead. It dimmed the light of the bonfire. Destroyed the hope that had grown in the tribe the last few weeks. Bows were constructed in the Gathering, the garden was attended to, and Caius and the others remained on their hunt.
I slept beside Morco in his bed every night, but it wasn’t the fantasy I’d imagined.
He held me close and cupped my cheek, gave me affection that was always superficial rather than passionate.
He was always fully clothed and bathed only when I left the cabin.
He seemed as disturbed by what had happened as I’d been.
After a few days, I’d moved on from it, and he didn’t.
He remained in a sour mood, carving the wood of the bows like meat off a bone, eyes always dark and possessed by a quiet rage that had infected his soul. He barely said a few words to me. His anger didn’t seem directed at me specifically.
He was just angry.
I stood across from him at the table in the Gathering, the bonfire behind him.
His eyes were down on his work, always focused on his hands.
“Morco.”
He stilled at the way I said his name, and I watched his hand grip the knife for a moment before he lifted his chin and looked at me.
When my eyes met his, I gripped them tightly and refused to release him. “I’m okay.”
Still angry and pained, he flinched as he stared at me.
“Nothing happened. I’m okay.” Maybe he needed to know that I was well so he could be well.
“He’s gone, and I haven’t thought of him since.
” I missed the closeness we once had. The kindling fire that burned between us whenever we were in proximity.
Our fire had been snuffed out by a cold wind, and I was ready to burn again. “I miss you.”
His stare remained rigid and infallible, but then the softness moved into his expression. His iron grip on his rage started to loosen, and like a flower that finally felt the sunshine, he began to grow. “I miss you too.”
At the end of the night, we returned to his cabin.
My stomach was tight in a nervous excitement I hadn’t felt in days. He set my skin on fire just by being in my presence. Obstacles had stood in our way, but now, they were all defeated. It was just the two of us.
He started a fire in the hearth to bring light to the room.
I stood there and waited, expecting him to kiss me once he was on his feet.
But when he was done with the fire, he moved to the table where my clothes lay. He grabbed them then turned to me.
I couldn’t hide the bewilderment that crept into my features.
“I’ll walk you.”
Like an enemy had tackled me from the side and I hadn’t seen it coming, I was caught off-balance. After a couple of blinks and seconds of confusion, I narrowed my eyes. “Walk me where?”
“To your cabin.”
I blinked several more times, processing the cruelest rejection I’d ever felt in my life.
“When I said I was okay, I didn’t mean I was okay to return to my cabin.
And you know that.” This man made me feel valuable, made me feel beautiful, even though he’d never said the words.
But now, it was like it’d never happened. “I’m sick of this shit, Morco.”
He stilled at my hostility. He glanced down at the pile of clothes he’d grabbed and tossed them back onto the table like he knew he’d stepped into battle.
“You said you were mine. You asked if I was yours—and I said yes.”
His eyes hardened in reaction to my volatility.
“Is this what it’s like to be yours?” I snapped.
“Kept at arm’s length. Distanced from your heart.
Sleeping in a different cabin. Because when I said yes, I wanted to be in your bed every night.
I wanted you to grab me and kiss me and fuck me like you did the others who came before me.
I shouldn’t be jealous of Allegra or anyone else, but they’ve actually had you and I’ve only had a piece.
You treat me like a porcelain plate that might shatter—but I’m not fragile.
I never would have told you there hasn’t been anyone else if I’d known you were going to treat me like this.
Exiled from love and passion, like I’m not entitled to it just because I’ve never had it. If you can’t accept that—”
“Do you still want to return to the surface?” He interrupted my impassioned speech with his calmness. His eyes remained hard and guarded, like there was still distance there because he allowed it.
The question made me lose my train of thought because I hadn’t expected it. Didn’t see how it belonged in this conversation. “What?”
“That was your intention when we met. Is it still your intention?” His calmness seemed controlled, like he was forcing it into a cage with a locked door.
My eyes flicked back and forth between his, seeing the emotion in his heavy gaze. “You said that was impossible.”
“I’ve learned that nothing is impossible with you,” he said quietly. “Now, answer my question.”
“I—I don’t understand why it matters.”
He gave me a long stare, one that was hostile on the surface and pained under the waves. “Because once you’re mine, I won’t let you go.”
It was the most romantic threat I’d ever heard.
“You’ve had more of me than any woman ever has, and I will give even more. Every part of me, every piece of me. And I will take all of you, every day and every night, and I will make you my chiefess.”
My breaths turned labored and uneven, a dull form of adrenaline racing inside me. He didn’t scare me, but his words made my fingertips shake the way they had in the presence of that Knife.
“Take this as a warning—because that’s exactly what it is.
” He looked angry, like my provocation had released a monster.
“I will defeat the Knives and reclaim the Depths for my people. We will thrive in the light of the apricum and live in peace. This is where we belong, not at the surface with battles between greedy kings. Now, make your choice.”
Returning to the surface had been my agenda when I’d arrived here, but my priorities had quickly changed, living among these people.
I longed to return to my warm bed and the luxuries that life offered, but there was nothing else I missed.
“The Obsidians have been kinder to me than my own people. Once my father was dead, everyone I knew turned on me and cast me out of my own home, took the crown imbued with my own blood. They said I was worthless…and stupid.” I pushed away the pain that tried to pierce the weak spot in my skin and invade my heart. “But you make me feel…like I matter.”
His hard gaze still wouldn’t let me in.
“Yes, I wanted to return to the surface. But now…this place feels like home. You feel like home.” There was nothing for me at the surface.
No family. No friends. Just a tyrant who’d stabbed me in the back while looking me in the eye.
I wanted to reclaim my throne in my family’s name and cut Vulgaris’s throat, but I could never do that anyway.
I didn’t have the power or the ability or the physical strength.
Morco continued to stare me down, his eyes still vicious.
It was a level of intensity he’d never shown me, its greatest potency.
I saw a man who wanted me but refrained, not to protect me, but to protect himself.
A man who made me feel beautiful with just a stare.
A man who recognized strengths that I thought were weaknesses.
He made my heart flutter…but also made it relax. “I choose you.”
His eyes didn’t move. Neither did his body. He accepted that answer in a weighted silence, in a suffocating tension. But then he took a step forward, a heavy boot against the floorboard, and like a predator that descended on its prey, he came for me with a hunger he’d never shown before.
My heart leaped into my throat. My palms collected a sudden sweat.
The vibration of my heartbeat was visible on the surface of my shirt.
I swallowed as I felt him move into me, as I felt him dig his hand into my hair and grip the strands with the most enthusiasm he’d ever shown.
His mouth sealed over mine, and he kissed me hard.
I gripped his shoulder with one hand, the other cupping his cheek, feeling him devour my lips like they were a feast for the taking.
He backed me up to the bed and yanked my shirt over my head unceremoniously. He hadn’t understood my bra the first time I’d taken it off, but he quickly figured it out the second time, snapping it free before he gripped both of my tits with his big hands and squeezed.
Oh wow.
He moved his mouth to my neck, and he kissed me as he backed me even farther into the bed, his hand hard on my ass.
He tugged down my pants and panties before he tipped me back onto the sheets.
My legs went into the air, and he stood with one knee on the bed as he yanked off my boots then pulled my bottoms the rest of the way off.
With those dark eyes on mine, he parted my thighs then looked at me folded underneath him, watched me breathe, my heart beating at a sprint. He gripped the area over my ribs as if to measure me. He moved his thumbs over my belly, and one swiped at my belly button.
He really looked like he wanted to eat me.
He let my legs rest against him as he yanked his shirt over his head, showing the powerful slab of stone of his chest, thick shoulders wider than a mountain range. He had a hard stomach with grooves between his muscles. It was hot skin on thick muscle over hard bone. A prime cut of man meat.
He loosened his pants and kicked off his boots. When he pulled them off, he took the shorts too, and then he showed me his length as he continued to stand above me, one knee on the bed, looking like one of the soldier statues I’d seen in the kingdom.
But this one was far more beautiful.